Budget Memo, Office of the President
Aug. 23, 2021 - 2:22 p.m.
Dear faculty and staff:
Welcome back for the 2021-22 academic year. Over this past year, we held several open forums explaining the current budget challenges we are facing. The concern and uncertainty, especially during the past year with the fallout from COVID-19, is understandable. University stakeholders, including the Board of Regents, have been diligently working to address the budget challenges we face — including a $19.2 million structural deficit — in order to solidify SFA’s future.
Some of the initiatives we have put in place are already showing positive results, such as increased interest and enrollment of first-time college students. We also are seeing an uptick in students living on campus and expect this trend will continue, as we have reinstated the minimum on-campus living requirement for those students with less than 60 credit hours. This also will assist us in increasing our revenue from other auxiliary services, such as dining and bookstore sales.
My reason for this email today is to point you to a new Transform SFA set of webpages that detail information on how we are closing out the current fiscal year (FY21), planning for the next fiscal year (FY22) and how we got to where we are today. The webpage contains information and graphs that are relevant to understanding our past and why we are in the current situation. This webpage will be updated throughout our Transform SFA initiative to reflect of-the-moment and future status.
An unfortunate reality has become clear through our initial efforts: some of the challenges SFA has faced in the last decade were not simply temporary anomalies which temporary solutions could solve. Rather, these were persistent trends which placed our expenses beyond the reach of our revenues. We need to correct that with more permanent changes.
As I have shared prior, SFA is operating under a shared governance process, where your input and participation in developing university policies and decision-making is welcomed and valued. The information on the Transform SFA webpage helps provide complete transparency regarding the university’s status. We also will soon be announcing several dates throughout the academic year when we will formally update you on our progress in reducing the structural deficit.
I am confident that together, we can work to chip away at our budget issues. Key to developing a solid budgetary foundation will be increasing enrollment, achieving greater retention rates, increasing residence hall occupancy and finding efficiencies campus-wide.
Please take some time to review the information of the webpage and reach out to me if you have comments, questions or ideas regarding how we can work to further strengthen SFA.
I thank you for your resilience and commitment to SFA and our students.
Sincerely,
