Williams tells faculty not to lose heart

by Sarah R. Buchholz, Chronicle staff

sking the faculty to focus on its strengths and not lose heart in the face of budgetary difficulties, interim Chancellor Marcellette G. Williams addressed the Faculty Senate Feb. 28.

     Williams reported that uncertainty is a current hallmark of the budget. The governor's proposed budget for FY03 includes what could be a $1.7 million cut to the campus budget, and the number of employees who ultimately will opt for early retirement is unknown.

     "The critical number for us for next year will be whatever the 2003 budget actually is," she said. "That is the number within which we will need to operate the campus.

     "In difficult times, we are confronted with a challenge: how shall we know ourselves? Shall we know ourselves only in terms of our limitations? Or shall we know ourselves in terms of our strengths?"

     Williams listed a number of recent accomplishments on campus: the Microsoft Center for Women in Engineering and Science, numerous awards to and recognition of faculty, a $460,000 Davis Educational Foundation grant, the success of the COMEC Campaign, among others.

     "Highlighting positive achievement is not meant to deny the severity of the challenges we face," she said. "But I do believe that a preoccupation with negativity can quickly drain our collective energies. By continually reminding ourselves about our challenges, we risk forgetting our strengths.

     "And what we can least afford to do now is forget our strengths. What we can least afford to do now is lose heart."

     In addition to focusing on the positive, Williams said, faculty can bolster the campus's credibility with legislators and the media by considering answers to questions she has heard about course offerings and faculty teaching loads. Advocacy for the campus will be enhanced when the campus demonstrates "a new commitment to accountability"..." as a central dimension of the academic enterprise in ways that make sense to our constituents."

     "We hear rumors that if the state's revenues keep on falling, we could even be at as high as a 15-20 percent reduction if various other things don't come true," said senate secretary Ernest May. "We know there's always uncertainty, but my question is, are we going forward on the basis of some kind of planning numbers, between those two somewhere? Or how are people going forward in planning for next year because you can't wait until July - or it might even be October - to do things."

     "That unknown is the biggest source of frustration for me personally as chancellor, and I know for all of us in the executive advisory group," Williams said. "One of the processes whereby we've engaged the planning, as you know, is having as much data as we possibly can to inform every decision that's made so that we never find ourselves in the position, when some of the unknowns become more known, of then having to pause to get data and get information and have discussions and conversations.

     "Come July 1, this university is going to be faced with a budget number in which we'll need to operate. And ... we will also have a curriculum to deliver come fall semester."

     Williams noted the irony that students will be able to secure spots in fall courses through a new registration system this year, thereby necessitating decisions about which courses the campus will deliver before the budget is known.

     "One of the things we know we may need to do is provide a transition period of a sort we've never mounted before," she said. "The good news, I think, is that we live in a valley that's rich in intellectual capital of former retirees, not just those who may be taking advantage of the current system, from this campus and from the campuses in the consortium."

     Williams cited the length of time necessary for academic planning as a contributing factor to the need for a transitional plan and mentioned Provost's Office initiatives in the works.

     "One of the things that may happen is a longer transition period, and by that I mean since we know that we have students in majors, we have programs and departments, we have tenure, we have commitments around grants, we know that nothing happens instantly in Academic Affairs with regard to [planning]. We know it can't happen overnight," she said.