Although the College of Family and Consumer Sciences is facing many of the same problems as other colleges as a result of state budget cuts, faculty, staff and students are dealing with them in ways unique to their college.

FCS professor and outgoing dean Carol Meeks said the college had two options for dealing with cuts.

“We decided we either needed to cut areas or increase revenues,” Meeks said.

Meeks said the college decided to shift its focus to increasing revenues in three different ways.

One way in which revenues were increased was lengthening the operating hours of the Child Development Laboratory School, which prior to the budget cuts operated only when students were in session, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. five days a week.

The school now runs 10 hours per day, five days a week, year- round. Meeks said parents’ fees for sending their children to the school were substantially increased with the idea the extra money would cover the salaries of graduate assistants who work in the laboratory school.

“The costs shifted toward the parents, but the fees aren’t that substantial considering the increase of hours,” Meeks said.

The cost of some menu items in the college’s Joan Bice Underwood Tearoom were increased, and students are now required to pay for their own meals, where the department had previously paid for students’ lunches, Meeks said.

Another way Meeks said the college is attempting to save money is by having the Marriage and Family Therapy Clinic certified by the state to work with adolescents in trouble. Certification requires the state to pay for services, Meeks said.

Despite those efforts, Meeks said, some programs and classes have experienced cuts.

She said the biggest change affecting the faculty and students was the loss of the FCS career services program, which included the school’s career fair.

“We miss the career fair. Now some companies feel we’re not supportive, and we’ve lost that central contact,” Meeks said.

Services offered by the career office were shifted to individual faculty members and student advisers, Meeks said.

“We’ve had to put more work on the teachers and faculty, but we’re trying to protect the actual [college] programs,” Meeks said.

Students have felt the impacts of these decisions as well.

“We have nothing, so we’re pretty much on our own [with finding employment],” said Ashley Drahn, senior in apparel merchandising, design and production. “I wish we had somewhere to go to get [job employers] to come to us.”

Another area Meeks said has been affected by cuts have been popular classes, which have seen increased enrollment over the last few years.

Considerable cuts in the number of sections have made it difficult for students to obtain the classes they need to graduate, more specifically human sexuality and textiles and clothing classes.

“For both classes we thought about trying some kind of enrollment cap,” Meeks said. “Some of the students having difficulty [getting into classes] are being forced to take the classes in the summer.”

Budget cuts have caused inadequate apprenticeship support and fewer available student services, said Mary Gregoire, professor and chairwoman of apparel education studies and hospitality management.

“Students are finding themselves in larger class sections and are experiencing more difficulty getting into courses offered in other departments as fewer sections are being offered. Some courses are now being offered only once a year instead of each semester,” Gregoire said.

Drahn said as a senior, she hasn’t had much trouble getting into classes, but she has noticed her peers have had trouble, and there have been fewer sections of classes offered.

Meeks said the extra burdens put on the FCS faculty and staff have sometimes resulted in a loss of faculty.

She said the school has lost at least 10 faculty who have either retired or left for higher salaries, and some of these open positions have not been replaced.

“In the engineering college [a loss of] 10 faculty [members] may not be much, but here it is more than 10 percent of our faculty,” Meeks said. “Faculty feel they are being asked to do everything with the classes being larger and more student supervision [being needed]. When we try something new [in the college] most faculty say, ‘Don’t ask me’ because their plates are already full.”

JaneAnn Stout, FCS associate dean and ISU Extension to families director, said with the budget cuts the Extension Program has had to minimize losses by becoming entrepreneurial in their efforts.

“We have had several years of budget nibbles and cuts, and as a result we have had to delay hirings and in some situations are no longer able to fill positions,” Stout said.

Students are the ones being primarily affected by cuts, Meeks said.

She said fewer class sections reduce students’ choices and the quality of time faculty has for each student can hurt individual grades.

Meeks said focusing on the schools achievements should still encourage top students to perform. Unfortunately, Gregoire said the students are also being asked to bear more of the cost through their increased tuition and fees.

“Finding new sources of funds is always a challenge,” Gregoire said. “Our college is exploring more options.”

Before next year’s budget comes out around May, Meeks said there needs to be a lot more discussion with the different colleges to create changes as a whole university instead of breaking it down into the separate colleges.

“Can we consolidate? We do so many things separately,” Meeks said. “It’s all based on history and we keep going along the same road.”