Your Budget Suggestions and Questions

To: UT Knoxville Faculty and Staff
From: Interim UT Knoxville Chancellor Jan Simek

While I’ve always known that our faculty and staff are invested in the success of the university, the enthusiastic response to my call for your ideas on ways we can become more efficient has reinforced that fact. In less than two months, members of our campus community have shared more than 450 ideas for cutting costs, working smarter and generating new sources of revenue for the campus.

Along with suggestions, we’ve received many good questions about just why we do things the way we do.
 
I would like to thank each of you for giving this some thought and sharing your insights. As we await more detail from state officials about the next round of budget reductions, we must explore ideas that lead us to the best decisions and solutions for the future.

Many of your suggestions relate to programs already in place or that we could expand. Others relate to streamlining complicated processes and procedures that relate to the size and the scope of the university and our services to more than 26,000 students. Below, you can read more about these issues and the ways we are approaching them, and where you can make more suggestions.

Scheduling — Many faculty and staff have inquired about whether changes in various campus schedules could save operating dollars. There are a variety of factors to consider that relate to classroom space and core services that we must continue to offer. While we’re always exploring options, it is difficult to determine if a “small city within a city” such as ours can ever cease its operations or services enough to realize significant savings.

Energy efficiency — From the need to better seal windows and doors to eliminating space heaters and other small appliances, faculty and staff recognize the high cost of energy and how much it takes to run our 220-plus buildings and related services. A few folks even suggested we limit the number of hours that we burn the torch! You can click here find answers to two of the most commonly asked questions.

Reducing mailing and printing — Many employees wonder if it might make more sense to send just one copy per department of many common mailings throughout the university. Many more asked if Telephone Services really needs to give almost all employees a university phone book.

While these reflect the most noted topics, many other suggestions also are being explored. I’m encouraged by your input, and I plan to share more information as we go forward. Please continue to share your thoughts and also look for answers to more of your questions—including several that I’ve mentioned above—in upcoming editions of Tennessee Today in your inbox, and on the Web.

Thank you for your dedication and commitment to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Posted December 15, 2008