Provost Ben Allen has created three task forces to address efficiency and funding to help Iowa State further adapt to dwindling state support.

Howard Shapiro, vice provost, is leading a committee that is seeking programs, courses and areas that are too small to be viable during the tight budget conditions the university is facing.

Although evaluation of courses and programs is an ongoing process, the task force is designed to take a new look at ways to find better efficiency, Shapiro said.

“It is an overlying special look at it,” he said.

The committee is looking more toward long-term solutions rather than the short-term solutions sought for the current reversion problems, Shapiro said.

“It is not something that can be solved overnight,” he said.

With the budget cuts of the past few years, many of the smaller courses which could be cut have already been evaluated and cut, Shapiro said. He said he doesn’t have high expectations for finding any programs or courses suitable for cutting.

“I am seeing that there is just not a lot of opportunity out there,” he said. “There may be a few, but the fact is there is a small number.”

The task force is made of faculty members from colleges across the university, the associate dean of the Graduate College and a member from the Graduate Student Senate.

The committee is not in charge of eliminating anything; that is ultimately a choice of the Board of Regents.

Task forces to review alternate tuition structures and institutes and centers on campus have also been organized, Allen said.

Professor and chairman of chemical engineering Charles Glatz, along with his committee for evaluating alternate tuition structures, is considering issues such as differential tuition by class or program or the option of paying tuition by credit, Allen said.

The other task force headed by Diane Birt, professor and chairwoman of food science and human nutrition, is evaluating the appropriate roles of centers and institutions on the Iowa State campus, taking into consideration the number of centers and institutions and how the institutions are governed, he said.

The committee must consider the cutting of a course or program with low enrollment does not necessarily save any money.