Dear New Paltz Faculty and Staff:

As shared earlier, we have been developing a process and standards to inform decisions about investing new revenues from increased tuition, and will begin implementing this process during the current semester.  This will not be a “one off” effort focused on this specific tuition increase, but instead the start of what will become a regularized process of using long-term planning and assessment information to guide resource allocation decisions each year.  This overall process will be informed by the strategic planning process that we will undertake next year, building on the vision points that have served us so well.  One of the major recommendations of last year’s Middle States report is that the College develop a more formalized process for linking planning and resource allocation.  Our process this spring is a first step in that direction.

We will hold an open forum on February 22 (3:30-5:00 PM, LC 100) to discuss this process, with an immediate focus on the current semester.  At the Administrative Council meeting on February 17, Department Chairs, Directors, and Deans will receive further details and guidance about the process and their roles in it.   [Materials will be available soon in my.newpaltz.edu and on the budget Web page at budget.newpaltz.edu. We will send a separate e-mail once those documents are available].

Criteria for investment.  All SUNY policymakers – Chancellor Zimpher, Board of Trustees, legislators, Governor Cuomo – have made clear that new tuition revenue must support instruction and student outcomes, learning, success, and access.  Given that recent funding changes have shifted the cost of a SUNY education even further to students and their families, New Paltz campus leadership sees that focus as right and equitable.   Accordingly, these criteria will have the most weight in the funding review process.

Additionally, alignment with other elements of campus vision points and themes of The Power of SUNY strategic plan, as articulated in the report of last spring’s task force, will be considered as important but secondary criteria.  Reflective of our growing culture of assessment and recommendations from our Middle States review, department or unit assessment plans and results will be expected to support requests for new funding.  Without question, we will consider enrollment trends and respond to recent shortfalls in course availability in our decisions.

A campus task force worked during fall semester to revise the criteria, ground rules, and constraints used in our two recent budget cuts, redirecting them to apply to allocating rather than cutting resources.  While our primary criteria are set by last month’s major addresses by the Governor and the Chancellor, the repurposed criteria developed by the task force provide an expanded guide to those more specific criteria.

Scope of Investment.   Governor Cuomo has included “maintenance of effort” for SUNY in his executive budget proposal.  He has also supported a second year of tuition increase, and there is optimism that the legislature will as well. Based on this information, preliminary estimates are that we may have as much as $1.6 million of new revenue, certainly a significant infusion of resources resulting from the tuition increase.  This estimate is uncertain because of decisions that will be made external to the campus (legislature, system administration directives) that may impact our estimates of tuition and state support for next year.  Although these uncertainties may affect the amount we invest this spring, the conversation and process in which we engage will inform both the investment we can make this year and our longer-term planning and budget processes.

We reiterate that we intend to complete last year’s $6.3 million budget-reduction plan, and we continue to progress in achieving that goal. New investments will support high priorities for our future, not merely return to a previous status quo or replace items eliminated as a result of our budget-reduction planning, including restoring adjunct funding.   An opportunity to invest in new faculty or staff positions or other opportunities does not lessen the need for us to continue the hard work of developing new ways of doing our work; even a second year of tuition increase will not begin to compensate for the budget reductions we have taken since 2008-09.

Process.  Requests for new investments may originate at any level in the organization. Those put forward by individual faculty or staff will be submitted to chairs or unit directors for review.  If supported at that level, requests will be forwarded for review and prioritization by deans/directors, vice presidents, and ultimately the President’s Cabinet.  Faculty and student governance groups, advisory groups (Administrative Council, Wonks), bargaining unit leadership, and faculty and staff will be consulted at key points during the process.  To assure sufficient time this semester for generation and review of ideas, decisions may not be finalized until summer, although we will try to finalize decisions so that time-sensitive initiatives can proceed over the summer.

Our clear priority must be on requests that are transformative and that support the above criteria.  We encourage conversation at each level of the organization that will improve proposals, and encourage discussion about consolidating several proposals into single, multi-department or -unit initiatives.  Such discussions should include identifying alternative strategies such as the use of unit/division one-time resources for one-time requests or for “seeding” a new initiative; leveraging of all-funds budgets; or reallocation of existing resources.  We expect chairs and deans/directors to prioritize proposals and exercise their judgment about which to recommend, recognizing that more ideas will come forward than the available budget can support.

New revenue will provide base (recurring) funding.  Our priority will be to support ongoing initiatives that require year-to-year funding (tenure-track faculty positions are one example), rather than one-time expenditures; however, we recognize that launching some initiatives may require one-time investment.  In general, we will encourage units, schools, and divisions to spend down their own cash balances on one-time requests before we allocate central funds for such purposes. However, we encourage submission of ideas for one-time efforts, because that may help us understand long-term budget needs.

The approach to budget allocation that we are developing is standard at many institutions. It is new to our campus, and we recognize that its adoption will entail a cultural shift.  This process incorporates opportunities for good ideas to arise from all corners of the College; consultation, transparency, and exchange of views on budget proposals; responsibility for judgment and decision-making at multiple levels of leadership; and a tighter alignment between institutional goals and budget allocation.  All of these are values that will improve how we do our work, and help us to become an even better institution.  We appreciate your interest and engagement in this process.

Donald P. Christian, President
Jacqueline DiStefano, Vice President for Administration and Finance