The University of Wyoming 2021 budget reduction plan was approved by the Board of Trustees on November 12.
The budget cut plan impacts both academic and nonacademic programs at the university. The academic departments that are being affected include the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Business, and the College of Health Sciences.
Interim Dean of Arts and Sciences (A&S) Daniel Dale said that mainly low-enrollment programs in the A&S department are up for review in the budget cut plan, but some programs with substantial amounts of students are up for review as well.
“Nothing has been decided yet, but most of those programs don’t have a lot of students,” Dale said. “If we do lose some of the programs with substantial amounts of students, it would be a big blow. It minimizes what we could offer the state.”
Dale said that low-enrollment programs include the Master of Arts in psychology and the Bachelor of Science in journalism. The high-enrollment programs include American studies and creative writing.
“All of our programs are important,” Dale said. “It’s a shame that we have budget issues that we’re grappling with.”
Meiqi Jiang, a student in the UW college of pharmacy, said the budget cuts could create issues for students in programs that are currently up for review.
“I feel like it’s necessary due to the pandemic, since a lot of things have changed financially,” Jiang said. “However, I don’t think it’s good for a lot of students who are pursuing certain majors. Some students chose this university to be in a certain program.”
In terms of nonacademic programs, the Department of Athletics will reduce salaries and team travel costs under the budget cut plan.
Rachael Hulet, Associate Athletic Director for Budgeting and Financial Management, said that the dramatic decrease in ticket sales impacted the athletic department on top of budget reductions.
“While our cut from the university doesn’t seem as high as others, we also have lost a lot of self-generated revenue,” Hulet said. “We typically budget about 2.5 million from football ticket sales. This year we had 180 thousand.”
Hulet said there were inherent savings this year with team travel due to the pandemic, and travelling has stayed more regional. She said the budget reduction has also affected the summer school program.
“One big area we cut that has unfortunately affected students is summer school,” Hulet said. “We usually have a lot of atheletes that attend summer school, and we’ve had significant cuts there.”
Community support for both academic and nonacademic programs at the university has resulted from the budget reduction plan.
“There’s been a lot of awesome support from A&S departments and faculty,” Dale said. “They spoke at public forums on behalf of American studies and creative writing. They wrote letters of support to the president and myself as well.”
“We’ve received support from donors in a campaign to raise money due to COVID so that we could maintain the levels of service to student athletes that we wanted,” Hulet said. “There were people from the Laramie community included in that campaign, and we were very appreciative.”
For more information on the 2021 budget reduction plan, visit the following link: https://www.uwyo.edu/uw/news/2020/11/uw-board-of-trustees-approves-budget-reduction-plan.html
