Dear Colleagues,
In the spring of 2021, as part of the University’s ongoing efforts to support institutional priorities and achieve a sustainable budget, I shared with the campus my approach towards achieving these goals—Closing the Gap. Closing the Gap includes actions we can take to strengthen the financial health of the University while maintaining our ability to support student success and sustain our academic mission.
As a reminder, the Closing the Gap Toolkit includes:
- Stabilizing and, where possible, increasing enrollments;
- Implementing the Strategic Hiring Freeze;
- Realizing savings, where possible, through attrition and vacancies;
- Participating in the Support Services Review;
- Offering a Retirement Transition Program;
- Launching a program review/reduction process.
The best way to understand the “gap” is to look at the amount of funds we need to draw from reserves to cover the gap between our revenues and expenses. In FY22, the university needed to use just over $15 million in bridge funds to cover this gap, of which $11.1 million was OAA’s share. For FY23, PSU's budget has $9.6 million in bridge funds, of which $7.1 million is OAA’s share. As you can see, we have closed the gap in OAA by $4 million. I indicated at the beginning of this process that we expected this work to take about three years. We are on track to achieve that goal.
- Stabilize and, where possible, increase enrollments - FY22 Estimated Financial Impact: $2,932,000
- Retirement Transition Program - FY23 Budget Savings: $2,040,000
- Attrition and Vacancies - FY23 Budget Savings: $656,000
- Program Review and Reduction Process - potential impacts in FY24 and beyond
- The ReImagine PSU inititaitve - potential impacts in FY24 and beyond
- The Operational and Support Services Review - potential impacts in FY24 and beyond
- Other Budget Savings: $748,000
- Understanding the Impact on the Academic Affairs Budget
Closing the Gap is making important progress, but there is still work to be done. I am grateful to all of you for your continued collaboration as we work to achieve our shared goals of achieving financial sustainability so that we can achieve our mission and purpose. Our success requires that we focus both on revenue and reductions, which means that we need to utilize all of the resources in our toolkit. In order to Close the Gap, we need to sustain our enrollment and retention goals. Additional losses in enrollment can cause us to have a greater gap to close. I will continue to keep the Faculty Senate Budget Committee updated through the coming year. I will continue to update all of you regularly as we move forward to achieve our collective goals.
Sincerely,
Susan Jeffords
Provost & Vice President for Academic Affairs
