Senate Approved 4/27/05

Institutional Goals and Priorities

Report of the Planning and Finance Committee of the Academic Senate

Introduction

Educating Illinois, the strategic plan for Illinois State University (ISU), is a product of ISU’s shared governance system. The plan recognizes that “implementation is the shared responsibility of all members of the campus community,” and that its performance indicators will be “reviewed by shared governance groups.” The Planning and Finance Committee of the Academic Senate plays a key role in the design, implementation, and review of that plan.

Committee Charge

The Planning and Finance Committee of the Academic Senate is to make recommendations to the Senate on all programs, procedures, policies and proposals that have a broad or long-range budgetary impact (ISU Blue Book, 2004). The committee will: 

a. Evaluate the progress made in allocating campus resources (both new and reallocated) to the University's highest priorities as defined in its academic and capital strategic plans.

b. Recommend changes in either the broad goals or directions in campus planning or in budget strategies aimed at achieving those goals.

c. Evaluate the sources of funds available to the University including:
1) Study the effect on the budget of proposals requesting new or internally reallocated resources.
2) Analyze policies and trends in the reallocation of resources.
3) Analyze the trend in new State resources and in tuition and fee income.

In particular, as directed in the Academic Senate Executive Committee Memos of 9/3/02 and 8/23/04, the Planning and Finance Committee is to annually develop a Priorities Report, in which it outlines the issues, ideas, and goals it believes should be our top priorities as a University. It is to disseminate the report to Vice Presidents and Deans, and follow up on the implementation of recommendations in the report.

Background to the Committee’s Work
In order to obtain information on the University’s fiscal policies and progress towards achieving its goals, the Planning and Finance Committee held meetings with a number of University representatives in 2004-2005. These included meetings with the following:

Steve Bragg, VP, Finance and Planning

Helen Mamarchev, VP, Student Affairs

Brent Paterson, Associate VP, Student Affairs

John Presley, VP and Provost

Joe Rives, Director, University Planning

Debra Smitley, Asst. VP, Finance and Planning

Sharon Stanford, Associate VP, Academic Administration

Susan Kern, VP, University Advancement

Information provided by these representatives, and from ISU documents such as Educating Illinois and its Accountability reports, the ISU Academic Plan, the NCA Self-study (Emphasis on Coordinated Planning), and the ISU Board of Trustees Recommended Policies for Guiding Price Setting, Revenue Generation, Affordability, and Use of Funds Decision-Making were used in preparing this report.

Recommended Administrative Action
The Planning and Finance Committee requests that the Vice Presidents and Deans respond to the recommendations below, either supporting or rejecting them. If an administrator rejects a recommendation or recommendations, the Committee requests that the administrator provide reasons for doing so.

Analysis of trends State resources, tuition and fee income, and reallocation of resources:
Beginning in 2001-02, Illinois State University has had annual reductions in State support, due to rescissions and to reallocation of funding for Group Health Insurance. As a result, appropriated funds available from the state are down by about 15 million dollars (from $92 million in Fiscal Year 2002 to $77 million in Fiscal Year 2005). Despite these significant decreases, ISU has managed the shortfall reasonably well. In part, this was due to recent improvements in coordinated planning and budgeting at ISU, as called for by the Fisher Report in 1998 and evidenced in the first draft of Educating Illinois in 1999-2000. Nevertheless, improvements still need to be made in coordinating planning and budgeting. Recognizing this need, ISU selected this topic as one of the three special emphases to be examined in its NCA accreditation self-study, which culminated in the NCA’s site visit in February 2005. The Planning and Finance Committee feels that although current personnel and processes have performed well, there is a need to further formalize and systematize the planning and budgeting process, and to make it more universally transparent and inclusive. Moreover, the current systems were developed in a time when regular increases in state funding were expected to be the major source for new initiatives; the process at ISU should be re-evaluated in light of the realization that this is no longer true.

Tuition and fee increases, the Redefining normal campaign, and other efforts have helped offset cuts in available funding from the state of Illinois. Internal reallocations have also played an important role in allowing ISU to address its two main priorities over that period - additional resources for faculty recruitment and retention, and the continuation of high quality educational offerings at the previous capacity while attracting high quality students. Some of these reallocations and their effects are listed below.

· There has been limited funding available to maintain aging infrastructure and deteriorating facilities.

· Teaching capacity has been retained, but crises in scholarship funding and curricular issues have emerged. Also, other divisions of the University (Finance and Planning, Student Affairs, and University Advancement) have absorbed relatively higher proportions of cuts to protect our instructional mission.

· Numerous personnel positions across the divisions have been eliminated.

· Numerous positions across the university remain unfilled due to hiring freezes.

· Divisions have shuffled their funding methods for various positions that are filled.

· Many smaller desirable programs and initiatives have been delayed, reduced or eliminated.

Priorities:

Summary of Priorities Report endorsed by Academic Senate in April, 2003
In its April, 2003 Priorities Report (there was no report forwarded in Spring 2004), the Planning and Finance Committee listed the following as its top short-term priorities.

· Raise faculty salaries to enable the institution to attract and retain top faculty, and

· Raise staff salaries to enable the institution to attract and retain top staff members.

Also in that report, listed as 3-5 year priorities, were actions that supported the two priorities listed above, and actions that supported the institutional aspiration to “seek students who are academically talented, motivated learners.”

Illinois State University was able to focus on these priorities over the last two years, and make progress on most items listed in the Priorities Report. The recent update of Educating Illinois states that ISU’s top priority remains the competitiveness of faculty and staff salaries. This update also shows that ISU has made some progress in that direction over the last few years, although current salaries remain at only about 95% of the salaries in comparable institutions. ISU has also done well, overall, in recruiting more high-achieving students, developing a comprehensive student retention plan, implementing its Plan for Diversity, and addressing the most pressing facilities needs; these were all listed in the previous report as high priorities that support the goal of seeking academically talented learners.

Priorities drafted by Planning & Finance Committee, April, 2005
Based on the information gathered, the Planning and Finance Committee believes that while competitiveness of salaries remains a top priority, other needs now require equal attention. In particular, recent structural and support problems in residential halls and academic buildings give evidence of the difficulties of a deteriorating infrastructure. We therefore recommend the following as top university priorities:

Content:

· restore resource bases to units to help maintain aging facilities,

· continue efforts to improve competitiveness of faculty and staff salaries,

· continue efforts to recruit high quality students to ISU, and

· increase operations budgets.

Procedural:

· continue to improve our coordinated planning and budgeting system to allow for permanent new resource allocation and old resource reallocation for stronger and higher priority initiatives,

· make it easier within the budgeting system to build a fund over a multiyear period for major non-recurring projects,

· establish policies, processes, and procedures that facilitate:

o early Senate involvement in university level financial planning and prioritizing,

o the integration of financial planning and prioritizing with academic planning and prioritizing at every level of the university,

o continuous improvement of university financial planning and prioritizing, and

o an examination of various assumptions, models, and philosophies of financial planning and prioritizing and their appropriateness to the current context.