Thursday, June 18, 2009

Like many campuses nationwide UNL is faced with a budget cut for next year. Nebraska though is better off than most states in this recession and thus was able to increase the state appropriation 1.5%. This still was not enough to meet the needs of UNL including increased utility costs, costs of opening new buildings, a modest salary increase (1.5%) and so on. Thus the Chancellor announced on Wednesday a proposed 1.1 percent (3.7 million dollar) cut. For details see http://www.unl.edu/ucomm/chancllr/2009budget/

The College of Arts and Sciences portion of this cut is $385,292 which is less than one percent of our budget (.7% to be exact). While this is a significant cut it is only a small portion of our budget and thus I am confident that we will come through this relatively unscathed. Certainly my goal is for the impact on our students, faculty and staff to be as minimal as possible. That we are taking smaller cuts than most of peers should allow us to be even more competitive. I welcome your thoughts on this.

Sunil Narumalani has accepted my offer to become Associate Dean for Academic Programs in the College starting August 17. He will be replacing Associate Dean Jessica Coope who will return to the faculty of the Department of History after serving four years as Associate Dean.

Sunil is a Professor in the School of Natural Resources with tenure home in the College of Arts and Sciences. Sunil's reserach interests are in GIS, remote sensing and environmental studies. His PhD is in Geography. Sunil is working with Jessica and others in my office this summer to make sure the transition in leadership is smooth.

Please join me in welcoming Sunil and thanking Jessica for her excellent service.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

New media and communication tools are of great interest to me. I must admit though I have been quite a sceptic when it comes to Twitter. Yesterday I decided to give it shot though. WOW! Totally fascinating but I am not sure why yet.