Southern Board approves reorganization

The Southern University Board of Supervisors unanimously approved Friday a reorganization plan for the main Baton Rouge campus that will lead to nearly 90 faculty and staff termination notices going out early next year.

Southern Chancellor James Llorens said an additional $2.94 million in new state budget cuts announced Friday will force many of the staff layoffs to come earlier in the spring semester. The initial hope was to keep everyone in their jobs at least into May.

The expedited layoffs of an estimated 52 staff members now will be “staggered” throughout the semester, Llorens said. Approximately 35 faculty terminations notices will go out Feb. 1, he said, but they will keep their jobs until the end of the semester in May.

The Southern “retrenchment and reorganization plan” also means consolidating many of the university academic colleges and departments. But Llorens insisted he is not proposing eliminating any individual academic degree programs yet.

“It makes for a hell of a Christmas,” said Southern Board member Tony Clayton of Port Allen. “This retrenchment plan needs to be retrenched again. How do we get out of this? This is a black hole.”

Llorens called the continuing budget cuts a “dire” situation. “We may have to operate with an even leaner operation than we anticipated,” he said.

Southern declared a financial emergency, called exigency, in October as a result of ongoing state budget cuts and student enrollment losses. Exigency, which is generally considered a serious blemish to a university, allows Southern to more easily lay off tenured faculty and ax degree programs.

“This cutting, cutting, cutting – we can’t take anymore,” said board member Myron Lawson of Alexandria. “There’s nothing left. There’s only so many minutes you can hold your breath underwater. You’re going to drown.”

In addition to eliminating more than 10 percent of the Southern faculty, the plan calls for staff layoffs in human resources, information technology, campus maintenance and then spread the other terminations around the rest of the university, Llorens said. The academic college consolidations also will mean fewer deans and academic department heads, he said.

Areas like financial aid, university admissions and the campus police are being protected, Llorens said.

Although he is not saying exactly where the faculty layoffs will be, Llorens said a majority of the departments will be impacted. However, one email from Southern interim Executive Vice President and Provost Janet Rami that was leaked to faculty indicated that as many as three School of Architecture faculty members could be cut.

The faculty-to-student ratio will increase from one faculty member for every 20 students to one for every 23 students, Llorens said, but there will be little impact on course offerings.

Some Southern faculty members continued to oppose exigency and the reorganization on Friday arguing that the administration is making unilateral decisions while asking for – but ignoring – faculty input.

Southern Faculty Senate President Sudhir Trivedi reiterated plans to sue the university while alleging that the university and Southern Board ignored their own bylaws and guidelines for declaring and implementing exigency. The faculty have raised more than $10,000 for legal fees, he said.

What is still being tweaked in the reorganization plan is the exact structure of the consolidation of academic colleges, Llorens said. But the end result is to consolidate nine academic colleges and schools into five and to reduce the number of campus deans from 14 to five.

The most recent draft plan would have the five colleges as the College of Education, Liberal Arts and Social Sciences; College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology; College of Business; College of Natural Sciences and Agriculture; and College of Nursing and Allied Health.

“Somebody woke and said, ‘We must collapse our academic enterprise into five colleges.’ That’s it,” Trivedi said, complaining about the lack of inclusivity.

Llorens countered that Trivedi was on the reorganization advisory committees and that lots of faculty and alumni input was solicited.

The immediate goal of the reorganization plan is to create about $8 million in savings for the next school year by cutting nearly $6.8 million in salaries and fringe benefits, $649,000 in operating services, $100,000 in travel, more than $75,000 in supplies, and more.

Llorens has emphasized that the reorganization should eliminate the need for faculty and staff furloughs for the next school year.

Employees are required to take 10 percent of their job time off without pay for the current fiscal year that ends June 30.

After another school year of anticipated enrollment losses in 2012-2013, Southern is projecting to start growing student enrollment. Continuing tuition increases also should offset some state budget cuts, according to the reorganization plan.

“The only way we get out of this is through increased enrollment on the Baton Rouge campus,” said board member Chip Forstall of New Orleans.