Budget update

(Steve Marino)

If we were a patient in the emergency room we would be classified as stable.

Targeted cuts have not completely compensated for revenue shortfalls, so we are $300,000 behind where we had hoped to be, but will still improve on last year’s deficit.

Please continue to be very cognizant of spending.

Next year will be even tougher, even if we are reasonably successful with the enrollment of new students, because we have a small returning class.

JDJ Update

JDJ walked us through the timeline for curricular change that needs to happen this spring, relative to the new language guidelines.  It is an expedited timeline that allows us to deal with the essential elements of the language guideline implementation in time for the fall 2020 recruiting season. (NB — the guidelines and timeline are both posted here for public access: https://sites.middlebury.edu/miis-info/languageiccpolicy)

• JDJ mentioned student concerned raised by Erin and Chelsea (who are on beak) — questions about the student forum, and concerns about the brevity of the process. He will follow up on these after break.
• Laura Burian briefly described the next step, which is a retreat on March 29 for program and LS folks to come together, with other stakeholders.
• David Wick spoke to the importance of a manageable process for APSIC.

Discussion of various WFP issues:

Question:  if a faculty member takes the ISP, can LPP hire that person back as an adjunct.  Cathy indicated that here was nothing in the ISP proposal to limit this, as long as there is money in the budget to cover the adjunct costs.  Amy noted that there is a limitation of a 6-month waiting period if the person taking the ISP is also beginning to access his/her retirement account. (That restriction is built into the retirement plan itself, and is not directly related to the ISP.)

Karen Miller is visiting next week and will hold an open meeting on Workforce Planning.

There are two main questions that he hopes to be able to address with her:

• On the staff side, there are concerns about “what happened to the future state.” There is a sense that we were asked to project a future state, but there is little information about how we are to move forward toward it, including support for the changes in responsibilities for continuing staff that were part of the premise on which we based reductions.
• On the faculty side: we know that 20 faculty applied for ISPs. Not all of them are likely to accept the offer, if made. That means we are almost certain to need a “plan B,” and we need to make sure that the process we follow makes sense in terms of both fairness, and the academic integrity of MIIS programs.