President Roselle discusses budget with faculty

President David Roselle cautioned faculty members attending the semiannual general faculty meeting Oct. 1 that the University's budget outlook for 2002-03 and beyond "is more uncertain than at any time during the last decade."

Roselle told the faculty that he saw the next fiscal year as difficult from a financial point of view and the year following that as "very difficult." He asked for the "cooperation, hard work and ideas of the faculty and staff to help our University come through this period of uncertainty and emerge an even stronger institution."

Starting the meeting with good news, Roselle told the faculty the University had surpassed the fundraising goal of the Campaign for Delaware with two years of the campaign remaining. UD has greatly increased the number of student scholarships and named faculty positions, he said.

"We wanted to have 10 percent of the faculty as named professors," he said, "and we are slightly above 70 positions now." He said the University would like to reach 100 named professors during the next two years, though he cautioned that it may be harder to raise money in the coming years. "Giving money away requires a measure of economic confidence by the donors, which may have been lost after the events of Sept. 11," he said.?Roselle told those attending the semiannual general faculty meeting that the University's endowment lost value during the trading week immediately after the Sept. 11 tragedy but has since recovered a portion of the loss. He compared UD's drop favorably with the 14.3 percent drop in the Dow Jones average. He also said the University received no new programmatic funding from the state for the current year. "The state set a zero growth target for the next fiscal year, before the likely negative economic impact of Sept. 11," he said.

In addition, Roselle pointed out that health-care costs increased by nearly 13 percent for the current fiscal year and could increase as high as 20 percent by the next fiscal year. The cost of oil and natural gas has moderated somewhat, he said, but the cost of electricity and water in Newark is up significantly.

These increased costs will affect the University, Roselle said.

In the early 1990s, he said, UD was successful in reducing costs while streamlining the administrative processes. "More of the same will be necessary to meet the economic challenges ahead, and we will need to make cost reductions throughout the University," he said.

The state's capital budget has been reduced, Roselle told the faculty, indicating that this will slow the pace of the University's ongoing program of renewal, renovation and construction.

Despite the prospect of difficult budgets for the next interim, Roselle pointed out that the University is currently in good financial health and that the economic conditions in Delaware remain more favorable than those in certain other states.

He pointed out that during the budgetary difficulties of the early 1990s, the University had gained a competitive advantage with other state-assisted institutions and that this should be the goal for the present.

Prior to Roselle's presentation, memorial tributes were presented for Robert W. Knecht of the College of Marine Studies, Russell Remage of the Department of Mathematics, Luigi Venanzi of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Alan Gowans of the Department of Art History.