Informational Meeting for all MSU Faculty Members

I have two issues to discuss in today’s blog post.  First, I wanted to do a follow-up to my last blog post regarding the state of the MSU budget.  I think it safe to say that the budget situation has improved in the past several months, which is certainly good news.  Second, I am happy to announce that the MSU Faculty Association is finally ready to give an intermediate report in a public meeting for all MSU Faculty members regarding our listening campaign over the past 6 months.

MSU’s and Missouri’s Budget

First, let me briefly note the very positive news about the budget and tax receipts in the state of Missouri.  Governor Nixon noted those positive at a news conference he held this past Monday a summary of which you can read at:

http://politicmo.com/2013/02/05/nixon-releases-funds-for-higher-education-spending/

To summarize:

1.     The State general revenue fund is up currently over the past fiscal year by 18.5%.  Income tax collections, which are the largest source of tax collections, are up 6.1% for the current fiscal year and continue to show improvement each month.

2.     Gov. Nixon announced that he would release the ~ $8.5M of withholding from the current FY budget in higher education.  Of this, $7.1M is to go to four year colleges including MSU.  This is an announcement that the current FY higher education budget will be fully funded, which has been extremely rare in the recent past.

3.     At his recent State of the State address, Gov. Nixon released his budget for the next fiscal year, which has built in an approximately 4% increase in funding for higher education with, as I understand, some possibility that performance funding will be applied for that budget year.

These announcements and, especially, the trend in tax collections for Missouri, are extremely positive.  If acted upon by the legislature, the increase in state funding for higher education will be the first in Missouri since the beginning of the recent financial crisis.

There remain, of course, important concerns on campus at MSU regarding budgetary priorities.  Most importantly, it remains the case that the core mission of MSU, defined to include academics (instruction), research, and public service remains underfunded in the MSU budget.  Notwithstanding President Smart’s recent announcement that MSU had met all five of the Performance Funding measures by the State CBHE (Clifs-notes-vol-2-no-4) the method by which MSU met the core mission requirement was solely a result of changes in how the numbers were calculated (apparently mandated by the data collection protocol and not by MSU) and not by any actual improvement.  In fact, funding of MSU’s core mission actually fell slightly as a percent of the total budget when discounting the changes in the accounting method.  As a result, the core mission at MSU remains underfunded in the budget and needs to be addressed for future performance funding. 

Improving funding for MSU’s core mission, especially funding for instruction and research, remains one of the fundamental priorities of the MSU Faculty Association.

Informational Meeting for All MSU Faculty Members

To the right, you will notice a link for a flyer regarding our upcoming meeting to report the results of the MSUFA one-on-one listening survey of faculty.  This has been a time-consuming and labor intensive activity and is far from done.  Let me summarize the information on the flyer:

·       All MSU Faculty are invited to an information meeting about our listening survey and the MSU Faculty Association.

·       Date/Time: February 21, 2013 @ 3:30 to 5 pm.

·       Place: University Heights Baptist Church, 1010 South National Avenue (on the SE corner of National and Grand) just south of the Educational Community Credit Union. Come in the Grand Street door and you will be directed to the meeting room.

We will have a panel of speakers, who will present the finding from the listening survey including both MSU Faculty Association members and representatives of the Missouri NEA.  You are cordially invited to come and learn what your colleagues view as the major concerns they have about their jobs at MSU and what they think about collective bargaining at MSU.

There will be a Question and Answer session and light refreshments will be served.  Please come and join us as we discuss the future of MSU.