The Faculty Senate met for the last time this semester to talk about the Tuition Recovery Model as well as the elimination of the John Wiley periodicals and recent budget cuts.

Blair Lord discussed the recent cuts and how these budget concerns were going to affect Eastern’s funds in the long run.

Lord spoke about how the budget ambiguity in Springfield could have an effect on funding during year.

Lord also talked about how within the past two weeks, the president received an email from the executive director of the IBHE. The email detailed how the university should be expecting in a 20 percent cut in funds in 2016, as well as explaining how they should be prepare to take another 10 percent in cuts.

“At this point, nobody has a clue of what’s going on,” Lord said. “I do know that IBHE had a meeting today somewhere in Chicago. The president went there this morning to talk about what their liaison have heard.”

One of the senate members, Jeff Ashley, responded to Lord’s report by asking what reductions have been made the vice president, the dean and even the president’s offices.

“We’ve had FTE reductions every single year for the last seven years,” Ashley said. “We’ve had some significant ones in the past and it looks like we’re going to have another one.”
Lord said the dean’s office has had many positions become open and has not filled them, the same being said for the departmental offices.

Lord overviewed the Tuition Recovery Model. The Tuition Recovery Model is a program that helps college departments develop academic programs for outside the school year.

The Tuition Recovery Model is how Eastern manages to spread funding to the four different colleges. The model takes profit made from non-major courses designed to gain students and then send them out to different colleges.

The funding this year, however, is nearly half of what it was last year.

“The idea of TRM is seems wonderfully simple,” Lord said. “You plan all the coursework and all the things you’re going to do with faculty you have on salary and you have all this assignment to work on.”

He mentioned the memo that was signed back in 2010.

“The bulk of this memo is identical to the one drafted by Dr. Weber,” Lord said. “The only things that’s changed in this version of it, and there are two bullet areas that talk about when the distribution will be made to the departments.”

Luis Martinez can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected]