Welcome Back

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.