Iowa State is still coping with the $3.5-million shortfall in the 2000-2001 budget, and a top ISU administrator said some faculty positions will have to be eliminated in response.

ISU Provost Rollin Richmond said up to 12 active positions have been identified as positions that could be eliminated, and 18 positions will be left unfilled.

“We will be, at most, laying off 12 individuals from our merit and professional and scientific categories,” he said.

Richmond added that positions that have been left open following the departure of faculty will be left unfilled.

“We will be eliminating about 18 faculty positions. These are not positions in which faculty are currently employed, but rather lines that are currently vacant because individuals have left the university or retired and we were in the process of replacing them, and so we will suspend those efforts and leave those lines empty for the foreseeable future.

“We will also be doing the same thing for some graduate-student positions that we will not be filling,” Richmond said.

The layoffs won’t take effect immediately, Richmond said. He added that there are notification requirements and other efforts being made to find positions within the university for these individuals.

Also, because of the union contract with the merit employees, they have seniority rights, and individuals in particular positions may not leave the university at all if they are senior to others, Richmond said.

Iowa State received a $900,000 increase from the 2000 budget and more than $256 million from the state in 2001. Although Iowa State experienced an increase in the budget, it was about $60 million less than the university’s request to the Board of Regents of $317 million.

The university protected several areas from the cuts though, ISU President Martin Jischke said.

“In absorbing this $3.5-million shortfall, we first decided to exempt certain areas of the university’s budget from cuts. That included student financial aid, library acquisitions, building repair, admissions, matching funds for grants and start-up funds for new faculty,” he said.

Jischke added that each of the vice presidents had a share of the remaining money and worked with the people who report to them on how to deal with the cuts.

“In general terms, it was taken mostly by not filling vacant positions. There were a few layoffs. We’re talking somewhere in the 50 to 60 positions were lost,” he said. The 50 to 60 positions Jischke referred to include the ones that will not be filled.

Richmond said the layoffs and unfilled positions will have serious effects on ISU students.

“The consequences of this are that we will not be able to serve the needs of the students as well; class size will go up as a consequence of these reductions, and we will probably have fewer classes available to students as well,” he said.

Students may also face an increase in tuition, but a definite figure is still unknown, Jischke said.

“I think it’s almost a certainty that our recommendation will be higher than the 3.5 to 4.5 percent range,” he said.

David Fisher, member of the Board of Regents, said a major concern is the perception the faculty and administration will have in regards to the Governor’s and the Legislature’s commitment to financing the university.

“The Legislature and the Governor as they have up until this year been very supportive of funding initiatives on campus, and we certainly want to encourage that they will continue with that and hope that this is just a one year blip in the process,” he said.

Jischke added that faculty and staff members will receive a pay increase. “We estimate that the average percentage increase for compensation for faculty and staff will be in the neighborhood of 3.8 to 3.9 percent,” he said.

Stork said that’s a concern.

“The board really hasn’t approved them yet, but one [of the priorities] based on past years, will be full funding of salary increases from state appropriations,” he said. “That’s just a real important area of funding because it is just crucial that we be able to compete effectively for faculty and staff.”

Fisher agreed that faculty and staff salaries are an issue.

“We just don’t want to revert back to the mid ’80s when faculty salaries, they were frozen then, and we really slipped back and had to make some major salary increases in the very late ’80s and early ’90s to get up to where we were competitive with the peer institutions,” he said.