The last budget cut period eliminated several hundreds of staff positions. At the same time, the university increased the number of administrative positions, concerning some of the faculty and staff members of the university.
“It looks like quite a few administrative positions have been created,” President of the Staff Senet Rachell Stevens said. “This has concerned some of the staff. The concern is that at least eleven new administrative positions either have been created or going to be created through strategic planning. At the same time, we have about 300 fewer staff than we had before the budget cuts. It seems like we are increasing the ratio of administrative to other staff positions.”
According to Academic Dean’s Organizational Chart (September 2017), currently there are six vice provost positions.
“It used to be two or three associate vice provost positions. Now there are six positions,” Stevens said.
The Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Professor Kate Miller said, “When I came into this office, there were three Associate Vice Provosts, now there are six, so that’s correct. However, the enrollment management functions were transformed from student affairs to me, and we had to hire an associate vice provost for enrollment management to cover those new obligations.”
According to a 2016 press release, the University’s Board of Trustees approved a budget that reduced spending by about $19 million and internally reallocated about $6 million in one-time funding during the fiscal year that began July 1.
The same press release states that Gov. Matt Mead directed $35 million to be reduced from UW’s state appropriation for the 2017-18 biennium.
The reductions were a result of a drop in the university’s state block grant, caused by Wyoming’s economic downturn and loss of state government revenue.
The main concern of the staff is not budget cuts themselves, but rather the disproportionate numbers of staff and administrative positions.
“Some of that is inevitable when you do reorganization, but the concern of the staff is that we are moving to a position that we have even more administrative positions and less faculty and staff,” Stevens said. “So, we are getting more and more top heavy. Most of the salary money is going to high administrative levels and less salary money is left for the faculty and staff.”
Miller said, “We also lost two associate deans, so we lost administrators as well in the reorganization of Outreach School. It’s a mix of things and all of these positions were in the FY 18 budget and they were approved by the Board of Trustees.”
University President Laurie Nichols said, “There is no place that I can think of where we increased administrative position[s]. I suppose one area where that may be true is with our Chief Diversity Officer position. But I think, in this day and age, it’s really important for the university to have that position.”
