Faculty Senate president discusses budget funding

Editor’s Note: This is the second part of a three part series.

Judith Lewis, an associate professor in VCU’s School of Nursing began serving her second term as Faculty Senate president this fall. Because of her position and the changing face of VCU’s faculty, the Commonwealth Times interviewed Lewis to discuss the major issues she and other Senate members will work on during the 2004-2005 academic year.

CT: There was also a request for more state funding to raise faculty salaries and subsidize a greater share of tuition costs for in-state students. What was the result of that?

What has happened with that is what is called “base-adequacy.” What that means is that there are state-driven formulas that say how much money a university should get. VCU was pretty low-the only school in this state that had a lower percentage in terms of base-adequacy funding than VCU was Old Dominion University.

And with this year’s budget, despite all the turbulence that happened last year, higher education made out pretty well. We can be really grateful to Governor Warner’s leadership and to the members of the General Assembly. VCU came out quite well in terms of base-adequacy funding. The only group that got more money than we did was the community college system.

Do we have enough money to do everything we need? No. But this is the first year in several years that there will be a faculty raise. Actually there was a raise last year, but really faculties in this state have not done well in terms of keeping up. As a whole we are below the national norm by rank. Now some schools are better; some schools are worse. This year there will be a significant amount of money available for faculty.

And then the university has gone beyond that and given us a pool of money that is equal to 1 percent of salaries that will be distributed on a merit basis as bonuses so that there will be money to, hopefully, help us recruit and retain faculty. You know, through the whole thing, I never heard faculty ever whine about the fact that ‘I’m not getting paid enough.’ I mean, some of us aren’t getting paid enough.

But what I heard as the faculty’s concern was that budget cuts are increasing the size of classes to the point where the students aren’t getting the same quality outcome. So the faculty was committed through it all to making sure that students didn’t get hurt.

Now when you look at your education as a student, really there are two sources of income for your tuition: one is the taxpayers and one is you. So basically the issue has to be: What percentage of your education as an in-state student is going to be paid for by the taxpayers, and what percentage of your education are you and your family going to be responsible for?

So I think the students did a really good job as well. At several public hearings I went to there were VCU students present. The students did a very nice job of sharing their views with the taxpayers.

One of the things that’s really special about VCU to me is when I go to graduation every year-and I always go to graduation-it’s really cool to look up in the stands and you see families and you see people and you can really tell there are families there who are dressed absolutely in their very best clothes, and this is the first person in that family ever to graduate from college.

So when a person graduates from VCU it’s not just changing their life-in many ways it’s changing the lives of the whole family. And I get such a high seeing them that I get very excited, and I never ever want to see VCU price itself out of the ability to be the university of access. And I think we can do that as we continue to increase quality.

CT: Is the faculty mentoring program still in effect?

It is. There are faculty members involved. It’s also now become much more institutionalized in terms of student service and enrollment. But part of what we really think is important is students who actually have an individual relationship with a faculty member seem to get more out of their educational experience.

For example, even though it’s not through the mentoring program, one of my students from last semester is my student worker this year. So she’s working on lots of projects with me, and as a result she sits here and reads books and she learns and she’s interested in women’s health. And so it’s a mentoring in a much less official way. And so I think a lot of us are involved in it.

The program is still alive, but it hasn’t been as active in the last couple of years. But there are lots of really good recruitment and retention programs in the works for students right now.

CT: Are budget cuts still the main issue that the Faculty Senate is dealing with?

I think the state legislature sent a message last year that we were rewarded for staying the course. And I think that at this point in time what we’re looking at as a university is strategic places to invest in, ‘Which are the programs that we should be investing in?’

I think this year is going to be the year that the university is working on its strategic plan. And I’m really pleased to be on the executive committee of that. We haven’t yet set the main themes for the strategic plan-looking at where VCU wants to be in 2020.

I think we’re all going to be working together to come out with some themes that are going to make VCU a strong research institution that is well-respected and a quality undergraduate experience, and to decide on the kind of infrastructure we need to support that and to recruit and retain the best and brightest faculty and students.

I think we’re going in the right direction. As a faculty we will be working to make sure that our voice is heard. One of the things that is going to be a very important initiative this coming year is we’re going to be searching for a new provost since Dr. McDavis left. The provost is the chief academic officer of the university. So we need to find someone with a vision.