President Liebowitz issued a new update on College finances, and a schedule outlining when the Board of Trustees will be deciding on certain financial decision in the coming few months.  Read below!

To the College Community:

As I reported in my October 26th memo, the Board of Trustees will devote its December meeting to an in-depth review and discussion of major policy items that most affect our financial position: financial aid policy; salary goals; student-faculty ratio; endowment management; new degree programs; and maintaining the College’s physical infrastructure.  Although no decisions will be taken at this meeting, we plan to carry these deliberations over to our February meeting.

In thinking about the February Trustee meeting, I would find it very helpful to have a sense of how faculty, staff, students, and alumni would prioritize the aforementioned major policy items.  Therefore, the Budget Oversight Committee, working with representatives from Faculty Council, Staff Council, the Student Government Association, and the Educational Affairs Committee, is developing a brief survey designed to gauge the community’s prioritization of the policy items mentioned in my October 26th e-mail message.  The survey will be emailed to the College community during the first week of December.

In the meantime, we are sharing some detailed financial information that you may find helpful in understanding the College’s current situation. First, there is the College’s website on the economy, which is accessible on the front page under the section “The Economy and Middlebury,” and contains all the memos and information we have provided to the community since last September.  The url is: http://www.middlebury.edu/administration/budget/challenge/. We are also posting additional materials on a password-protected College website that is available to all members of the College community with Banner access (http://www.middlebury.edu/administration/budget/challenge/budget_20091113/). These materials include: (1) a memo from me outlining the College’s financial situation that I sent to those who attended the Board Retreat in October, (2) an online calculator that will enable you to see the impact of changing the value of some major variables that influence the College’s overall budget, and (3) a list of frequently-asked-questions (FAQs), generated by Faculty Council and the Educational Affairs Committee, that highlight key budgetary issues.  The memo and the calculator are on the site now; the FAQs document will be posted early next week.  We hope these materials will be helpful to your understanding of the questions that will be reflected in the December survey.

In addition to reviewing the materials, I encourage you to participate in some of the discussions that are being organized by various constituent groups on campus.

Best,

Ron