About 450 faculty members packed into the Anthropology Building to discuss financial issues with President David Schmidly on Wednesday.
UNM's faculty sounded off against the "centralization and unfettered control of University finances," and Schmidly defended his fiscal decisions during the two-hour meeting.
Jacqueline Hood, president of the Faculty Senate, said the meeting was the result of a petition that circulated among faculty members two weeks ago.
The Faculty Senate passed two resolutions to tackle financial decisions at the University and the growth in UNM's upper administration.
The first resolution, which passed unanimously, was aimed at opening the financial decision-making process to deans, department chairpersons and program directors.
Jane Slaughter said UNM's faculty is being left out of the financial decision-making process.
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"I believe the events and the developments of the past year in the realm of University finances and allocation of resources have undermined authority and decision making at the college and department levels," she said.
Professor of anthropology Carole Nagengast said UNM's financial decisions don't make sense.
"Every year for the past five years, the Legislature has increased University funding," she said. "The fact that University administration have been able to create and fill many senior administrative posts have cost many millions of dollars a year. It suggests a robust University economy."
Nagengast said many departments deal with substantial challenges despite the seemingly positive outlook.
"Departments face a 25 percent reduction in 2009 in (Facilities and Administration) monies. But also, we're looking at a 1 percent cut to fund the new provost's office," she said. "Colleges are having to lend the research office large sums of money for the next three years so that it can recover from its own debt."
Schmidly said he remains optimistic about UNM's financial situation.
"When I arrived here, the last thing I expected was to find that there would be a debt in May for all the research, because this is by far the largest research institute that I've had any association with," he said. "But we cannot continue deficit spending. We must do what is necessary so that we can avoid this deficit and slowly work our way out of these debts."
The resolution calls for oversight by the Executive Research Administration Committee on "all major financial decisions (current and future) regarding non-Health Sciences Center Facilities and Administration funds."
The resolution has a deadline of June 15 for implementation.
Schmidly said he will include more transparency in the financial decision-making process.
"It's encouraging that we all came to this room with the attitude that we want results," he said. "It is also important that we recognize that there are some stresses, but nothing we can't overcome, in my opinion."
The second resolution addressed higher administrative salaries. It calls for a "comprehensive review" of upper administrative salaries to be made public by Aug. 31. The resolution also calls for a comparison of administrative positions at peer institutions.
The resolution comes after the Faculty Senate submitted an analysis of administrative salaries in December, which totaled $8.2 million dollars. UNM's administration countered with a $4.7 million estimate.
Schmidly said his recent additions to the administrative team are necessary.
"One is the vice president for enrollment management to help us improve our graduation rate. I stand behind the creation of that position because I believe that, ultimately, it will earn a lot of revenue," he said. "We have very few minorities in our faculty. And also, our graduation and retention rates of minority students were far below those of our other students. So, I created the other vice president of diversity position."
Schmidly said the Board of Regents suggested creating the vice president of Rio Rancho Operations and Branch Academic Affairs position.
"I cannot be in Rio Rancho and Albuquerque at the same time," he said. "I felt like we needed a person to manage our operations in Rio Rancho, and so I created the position for the branch."
Howard Snell, of the Faculty Senate Operations Committee, said he was encouraged by the faculty turnout.
"This was invigorating," he said. "As a faculty member at the University of New Mexico, this was wonderful to get this many people. I think everyone's comments were very important. The faculty's comments were very important. I think President Schmidly's comments were very important. It was a very productive meeting."
Snell said he will continue to work with Mark Chisholm, director of Institutional Research, to come up with an analysis of administrative salaries.
"Faculty do not have summer support. So, we are not on contract over the summer," he said. "This is an important question, and I'm happy to put in that volunteer effort."
Schmidly said he will begin working on addressing both resolutions.
"We're going to move forward the resolutions, and we're going to do that study over the summer," he said. "We will cooperate on that shared governance resolution, as well. I think they are both very positive. To me, this indicates the faculty is interested in the well-being of the University."
