We will explore ways that Department Committees on Planning (DCOP) and College Committees on Planning (CCOP) can be used effectively in identifying possible budget-reduction and revenue-generation strategies, as part of the process outlined by President Schulz in the August 17, 2009 memo to the K-State community. It is important to note that, although DCOPs were conceived (FSM 9-14-82) to function as part of the university's response to declared states of financial stress or financial exigency, K-State does not plan to make such declarations. However, these committees have the potential to serve valuable roles this year as we seek campus-wide input.
The intent of the current process is to encourage university-wide brainstorming and generation of ideas that may have impact across the campus, rather than having units focus exclusively on budget-cutting or revenue-enhancement strategies within their own units. We are NOT giving units another assigned percentage budget reduction and asking them to identify ways to meet these reductions within their units.
We have posted some resources on the Provost’s webpage that contain ideas and strategies used by other universities (http://www.k-state.edu/provost/resources/budgetcuts.htm). We are not advocating the specific implementation at K-State of any of these ideas, but rather we hope that these resources will stimulate the idea generation process on our campus.
A “Budget Initiative” link has been established on the K-State homepage, http://www.k-state.edu/budget/initiative.html, and all members of the university community have been asked to contribute, before October 15, ideas relative to budget-cutting or revenue enhancement, via a two-question survey. The DCOPs and CCOPs can share their thoughts through their dean or directly by means of the survey.