UWGB slashes budget UWGB Chancellor designate Bruce Shepard (photo by H. Marc Larson). Chancellor Shepard said he hopes the cuts over the next two years will help preserve the school's academic prowess By Christopher Clough News-Chronicle Longer lines for students who need help. Smaller staff and fewer instructors. Those are two of the many impacts of the proposed University of Wisconsin-Green Bay budget for 2003-05, the next two school years, Chancellor Bruce Shepard said. The initial proposal was presented at an all-campus forum for students and faculty on Thursday. If passed as is, the $144.4 million budget will trim from the previous budget a total of $2.36 million over the biennium; $1.419 million in 2003-04, which includes a one-time reduction of $473,000; and $946,000 in 2004-05. The total budget this year was $73.8 million, with $25.1 million from the state tax levy. "We're doing a lot of things that are really bad," Shepard conceded. Shepard said the university is planning to reallocate $1.4 million toward unfunded mandates, including computer replacements, insurance-premium hikes and billing and collecting student loans. He said the unfunded mandates existed before he came to UWGB two years ago, and the school simply operated under a structural deficit instead of accounting for them. "We had over $1 million in unfunded mandates that have never been covered," Shepard said. "That's just a bad way to budget. What it means is in addition to the $2.3 million, we had to find another $1.4 million, so the target we worked on is really $3.7 million." He said the budget was worked out on the assumption Gov. Jim Doyle's proposed state budget will pass in a form close to where it is now. The Doyle budget calls for the UW System to lose $250 million in state funding while asking schools to make up $150 million of that through tuition hikes. Even allowing for the tuition increases, the net $100 million loss would be the largest budget cut in the system's history. Shepard said he has kept in close contact with area representatives to the Capitol. He acknowledged changes could happen in the state budget, but, "I think the higher-education component (of Doyle's proposal) is going to pass as is." He stressed the cuts were made in areas that will preserve the school's educational quality as much as possible, mainly at the expense of services and access. The university will lose 16 full-time positions out of 650 UW System positions statewide. Shepard said that affects about 25 UWGB employees, with some totally eliminated and some changing to three-quarter-time. "There's a number of administrative positions all across the board," he said, "some in enrollment services, some student services, some information services. Two faculty positions will be lost." Students are taking a hard hit. In addition to increased tuition, about 40 on-campus student jobs will be cut, saving $119,000. Shepard noted the departments those jobs were in will be hard-pressed without student help. "We're talking about a 7 percent cut," he said. "With the tuition increases, that's a double hit for the students." One of the cuts is a program that was slated to begin in the coming school year. The Learning Experience initiative was aimed at helping academic freshmen with advising and other services in the interest of increasing student retention. It was budgeted for $423,000. "That program was to improve the quality of student advancement," Shepard said. "(Eliminating it) goes in the wrong direction. We need to be working even harder to help retain good students. My top priority remains improving the quality of the experience for the first-year student." About $186,000 will be removed for part-time instructors, which Shepard said will make it harder for students to get some necessary classes. He said the funding will go toward the one-time reduction in the budget's first year, and the positions will be restored in the second year of the budget. In addition to administrative cuts, Shepard's office is losing $55,000. While he acknowledged that figure sounds small in comparison to the big picture, he said his office took the largest hit of his first budget two years ago, and he has only three people in his office. Shepard said if increased state funding, compared to the Doyle budget, does appear, he hopes to use it for Learning Experience and similar efforts aimed at freshman retention and toward allowing the school to grow to meet increased demand. The UWGB proposal goes to the school's Strategic Budgeting and Budget Building Committee, made up of faculty and student representatives, before a final proposal is submitted to the UW System by the end of the month. Shepard said he doesn't expect any changes there. "I think it's already been through the whole university structure," he said. "It went through 12 drafts to get to this point, so there's not much left that can be done."