FAS Makes Limited Progress in Cuts

The six working groups charged with addressing the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ $143 million budget shortfall are scrambling to regroup as their deadline for drafting budget cut recommendations looms at the end of October.

FAS Dean Michael D. Smith formed the groups in May to outline potential reductions or ways to restructure their respective divisions—student life, College academics, the humanities, the sciences, the social sciences, and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

The groups, which are composed of faculty, staff and students, have no formal power over FAS’ budget and discussions are confidential.

But with two months remaining, many of the groups have only met once—at an introductory meeting in May. Some faculty and student members said they have not received any communications about the meetings over the summer months.

“I confess I know nothing of the schedule of the working group and have not heard anything recently,” Lowell House Master and student life committee member Diana L. Eck wrote in an e-mailed statement.

According to a rough timeline posted on the FAS Planning Web site, the groups were intended to address a number of issues at the “initial meetings” in May and June, such as to “establish financial and programmatic goals, define data/analysis needs going forward, [and] define roles and responsibilities.”

Undergraduate Council President Andrea R. Flores ’10, who is on the student life working group, said that a joint meeting for the two College working groups in May focused on broad principles for the committees’ future meetings rather than concrete action plans.

The two College working groups, chaired by Dean of the College Evelynn M. Hammonds, met together once as a larger group in late May and have not received any communications since.

Still, as the first day of classes approaches, some committees appear to be in a state of disarray.

English Professor Louis Menand is listed on the planning Web site as a member of the College academics working group, but Menand is on academic leave for the Fall semester.

The four student members selected in May by the UC have not been added to the Web site.

The humanities working group, chaired by Humanities Dean Diana Sorensen, saw its membership list overhauled in late June. Ten professors who were initially listed as members in June were removed and six other professors were added to the list.

According to a humanities professor who asked to remain anonymous, Sorensen said that the division must cut $19 million, or 25 percent, of their $76 million in faculty salaries and benefits. Smith had said several times in the spring there are no plans to reduce faculty salaries.

In an e-mailed statement to The Crimson on Saturday, Smith appeared to walk back some of his previous statements that suggested the $143 million budget gap would be closed over the course of two fiscal years.

“The goal is a balanced FAS budget sometime in the future, not specific cuts or specific dollar amounts in each division or in the College,” he wrote.

After the working groups submit their recommendations in October, the Academic Planning Group—composed of FAS’ highest-level deans—will discuss potential budget cuts in November and December. They also plan to float ideas to the FAS community before finalizing the budget in spring 2010.

“Maybe it’s just a necessary step that [the working groups] meet and talk and can’t come up with anything except for minor modifications...and this time they say, ‘Hey, we gave you guys a shot, and you didn’t come up with anything,’” said a humanities department chair who asked not to be named in order to protect the department.

While on such a fast-paced schedule, the working groups’ success may hinge on their chairs’ management skills.

The social sciences working group, chaired by social science dean Stephen M. Kosslyn, has already met several times well into the summer. According to working group member and Economics Department Chair John Y. Campbell, the group is about to start the second phase of their discussions in September.

Over the summer, their working group engaged in the first phase, “divergent thinking,” where the working groups’ 11 members proposed ideas without worrying about their practicality or desirability. Three more members will soon join the working group for the second phase: “convergent thinking,” where the working group will decide what to recommend to Smith by the end of October.

—Staff writer Bonnie J. Kavoussi can be reached at kavoussi@fas.harvard.edu.