University Budget Committee Structure Review

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University Budget Committee Structure Review
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Attributes of Effective Committees

• State-wide Academic Senate Survey of effective
  budget committees revealed
• Frequency of Meetings
• Continuity in Membership
• Regular Attendance
• Staff Support for Research

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Other Important Attributes

• Honest and full disclosure of information and
  ideas
• Investment in time and energy to train faculty
• Well-organized process
• Substantial commitment of time

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Best Practices

• Appoint and elect diverse and dedicated committee
  members
• Memberships most often contain more faculty
  members than other represented groups
  memberships also often include representatives
  from administration, staff, and students.
• Provide strong leadership and clear goals
• Establish an environment of trust
• Communicate frequently and openly

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HSUs University Budget Committee

• Frequency of Meetings monthly meetings in the
  Fall accelerated schedule for Spring
• Continuity in Membership
• staggered 3 year terms, or
• term by virtue of members appointment
• Academic Senate President is Co-chair
• Associated Student President is one-year term
• Associated Student representative is one-year
  term
• Regular Attendance dedicated members attend
  almost every meeting
• Staff Support for Research

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HSU University Budget Process

• Open and transparent budget process with exchange
  of information and ideas
• Membership has been through the process twice
• Process is really designed to address budget
  increases and not budget reductions
• Committee has spent a lot of time trying to
  understand the functions of the major divisions
  and the impacts that reductions would have on
  their divisions, but did not feel they knew
  enough to make a recommendation to the President
  on matters of divisional reductions.

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HSU University Budget Process

• Membership
• Some feel that the Committee is too heavily
  weighted with faculty members
• Some feel that the Committee should have
  administrative representatives
• Some feel that the staff are overwhelmed by the
  process in that they are not used to speaking
  about policy issues

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Areas to Reexamine

• Summary
• UBC struggles with budget process timeline
• In order to provide each division with planning
  time to respond to the Governors January budget,
  the UBC planning timeframe requires almost weekly
  meetings from March through early May
• UBC has been understaffed and so the Committee
  did not start the process of looking at Peer
  institutional data for benchmarking and
  comparative data

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HSU University Budget Process

• Summary
• Significant improvement over past budget
  processes
• Open and transparent process
• Faculty, staff, and students are engaged and
  making a meaningful contribution

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Questions?