By Paul A. Anthony, Editor in Chief

With the semi-annual Board of Trustees meeting less than a week away, the university administration has all but finalized its plans for the 2004-05 budget, and officials say they expect the Board’s approval.

The plans include $4 million in budget cuts, a reduction of about 30 faculty and staff positions and the elimination of several academic programs. The Board meets Friday and Saturday.

“We have finalized most all the decisions we have put out as presented on the front end,” said Phil Schubert, vice president of finance. “There are no major shifts.”

Schubert said the university would make the plans official in the first week of March. Thus would end a seven-month process of decision-making that resulted in a comprehensive early-retirement program, followed by a list of 60 budget moves to pare down a projected $5.5 million shortfall.

The President’s Cabinet chose the list of 60 from a larger list of suggestions made by 13 strategic teams created by President Royce Money over the summer.

Among the final decisions are the elimination of the Department of Academic Advance and the Learning Enhancement Center, cutting back the English as a Second Language program and cutting an additional 15 faculty and staff positions besides those left vacant after early retirement.

“The president has kept the Board informed of what’s going on,” said Dr. Dwayne VanRheenen, provost.

Of the 44 positions left vacant by early retirement, Schubert said about 30 would be filled, with an additional 15 positions either cut or left vacant for the 2004-05 budget year. Of the 30 cut or vacant positions, about 15 are faculty and 15 are staff, he said.

Among the university’s five divisions, Schubert said, about 20 positions have been reduced in Academic Affairs, five in Campus Life, one each in Finance and Development and two or three in Operations, which includes the offices of University and Alumni Relations and Physical Resources, among others.

Schubert declined to release exact numbers or specify which positions would be cut.

Of the roughly five Campus Life reductions, two will be in the Office of Student Multicultural Enrichment, where coordinators Dave Merrill and Bob Gomez will be leaving, the two confirmed.

“They told me in late November that due to financial constraints, my position is being cut,” said Merrill, also the director in the Volunteer and Service-Learning Center.

Gomez said he decided to take early retirement because he already was close to retirement age. The university will not fill his position.

“It’s still to be seen what they do with the office,” Gomez said. “I think an option would be to staff the office with interns-and probably that’s what’s going to happen.”

La Shae Sloan, director of OSME, was unavailable for comment. She, Merrill and Gomez are the only full-time workers in the office.

“We’re in discussion about this,” said Wayne Barnard, dean of Campus Life, in an e-mail, “but no plans have been finalized.”

Plans for replacing Academic Advance and the LEC also are set to be finalized, said Colleen Durrington, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. The plans, which call for a mixture of classes and labs to be added to the departments of English and Math and Computer Science, have gone through two faculty-comprised academic councils, with one more to review them Wednesday.

“We really don’t expect there to be anymore changes,” Durrington said. “So many people have looked at it.”

Classes for students with low SAT and ACT scores now would count for graduation credit, except in planned lowest-level classes, which would provide instruction below freshman level.

The ACAD and LEC eliminations and other restructuring within the University Studies division would save the university $350,000, according to university estimates. Early retirement vacancies and additional cuts are projected to save more than $580,000.

The 2004-05 budget was presented in January to the Board’s Finance Committee, which gave its tentative approval. Final approval after a Friday presentation would allow the committee to recommend it to the full Board for consideration Saturday.

Money will deliver a brief version of his Jan. 20 address to faculty and staff that announced the planned cuts.

VanRheenen said the effort the administration puts into preparing reports for the Board is like “a term paper.”

“You might begrudge it while you’re doing it,” he said, “but in the end, it brigs together a lot of information. … It’s an important process.”