I want to welcome
everyone back to school for the Fall 2012 Semester. We have a number of things that happened
during the summer on campus and we have an exciting academic year ahead. Below I address a few of these issues.
The
MSU Bookstore
During the
summer a controversy arose with the MSU bookstore. The Links to the right include a link to the
most recent NewsLeader article on the topic.
As most of you will already know, during a routine internal audit of the
bookstore irregularities with cash flow in the bookstore were discovered. As far as I can tell, this was discovered at
least partially by happenstance. The
auditors wanted to find a missing check for, as I recall, $16,000. The Bookstore manager was on vacation but
told them it was in his desk. Rather
than waiting for him to return, they opened the locked desk and found $81,000
in cash. To date, more than $500,000 has
been found missing from several cash accounts in the bookstore and the manager,
Mark Brixey, resigned/was fired. The
university has referred the matter to police for investigation and have termed
it “embezzlement”.
This is, of
course, a major public relations blow to the university especially given an
internal audit in 2007 that had previously found approximately $6,000 cash
missing from the bookstore. In addition,
the 2010 audit from the State of Missouri auditor (see link to the right) found
that cash controls were inadequate specifically as it related to the Child
Development Center and ticket sales. In
the public discussion of this audit at the time, Auditor Susan Montee noted
that they found no evidence of embezzlement but that given the loose cash controls
embezzlement could easily occur. I find It
a bit alarming that it took another 2 years to find the loss of so much cash in
the bookstore and that cash controls had not been tightened by the university.
MSU
Budget Situation
Let me note
that both the MSU budget outlook and state appropriations for FY 2013 have
improved over the past 9 months. The
initial recommendation by Governor Nixon for FY 2013 funding for higher
education in January was to reduce state funding by 12.5%. By February this had been reduced to a 7.78%
decrease. In May, the State General
Assembly FY 2013 passed a budget that held state appropriations flat with no
decrease, later amended in June by the Governor to include a 1 % decrease in
state funding for MSU.
Initially the
MSU FY 2013 budget was built upon an assumption of a 7.78 % cut in state
funding. As noted in the June 27 issue of Interim President Smart’s Clif’s Notes, MSU Board of Governors in
their June meeting agreed to 3 priorities for the “additional” dollars in state
funding: (1) increasing salaries for employees, (2) making strategic
investments in programs, and (3) restoring sources of one-time funds originally
used to help cushion the planned 7.78% cut in state funding.
As a member
of the President’s Executive Budget Committee, I have seen firsthand how the
budget process was dealt with over the past year. While it was not particularly fun to
contemplate additional loss of state funding, the university administration did
listen to faculty voices on budget issues especially as it related to
priorities both for the initial cuts and then for priorities for the additional
money once funding levels were cut by lower amounts.
Listening
Campaign
As many
faculty members know, the MSU Faculty Association has been engaged in a
campaign to listen to faculty members on campus over the past year. We plan to announce the results of this
campaign in a public meeting for faculty members to be held in October (time
and place to be announced). The
listening has been done one on one by MSU FA members to non-members and, hence,
is labor intensive. Let me just say both
from my personal experience and reports from other members that this has been
an extremely useful and positive experience.
We are not ambitious enough to think that we can talk to all, or even
most, faculty members on campus.
However, we intend to get a significant percentage of the total number
of faculty members.
An incomplete
tally of results illustrate that the top 4 issues among faculty surveyed to
date include: (1) increasing salaries, (2) improving faculty governance, (3) improving
the university administration and (4) increasing faculty influence in
priorities for university funding. Given
that it has been so long since merit pay has been funded and that even across
the board raises have been so slight, it is not terribly surprising that
salaries remain the number one issue for faculty. The fact that improving the university
administration is in the top 3 even a year after the exit of the previous
provost and president is significant as well.
Of course, these are only preliminary results. Stay tuned for more results in October.
