Colleagues

The Governor has informed the Heads of all state agencies of reductions in their FY 09 budgets. For the UW, we have been asked to ‘contribute’ $8.864 million as part of the budget freeze and $0.809 million as part of the 1% across-the-board budget reduction. The UW total of $9,673,002 is a permanent reduction in our state funding of about 2.4% and is effective during the current FY. A further budget cut likely will be imposed next biennium starting on July 1, 2009.

At this time, the budget reduction at the UW has not been allocated to the campuses, schools and colleges. However, we have been instructed to think strategically about how we might absorb targeted reductions in both the FY 09 budget as well as further permanent cuts that will likely follow in FY 2010-11. Given the recent update of our College’s strategic plan, I believe that we are in a good position to have this conversation. As soon as we gain additional information from the University regarding how the budget cut will be implemented at the College-level, we will be in touch.

B. Bruce Bare, Dean