To start the 2014-15 school year, Baker University was faced with a pile of budget cuts that surprised faculty and staff members. President Lynne Murray addressed Faculty Senate on Sept. 2 and discussed the cuts and their effects on the university.

“I know you came in to budget cuts,” Murray said. “I am looking into that and greater than that, I’m looking into greater transparency.”

Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Brian Posler said that most of the cuts were made before Murray arrived. He said the Board of Trustees directed former President Pat Long, outgoing Chief Operating Officer Susan Lindahl and him to find inefficiencies and places where cuts could be made.

Posler said many members of the BOT were in favor of the budget cuts.

“The Board has worked hard to pay down debt over the past several years and has done that very successfully, decreasing it by more than $5 million,” Posler said in an email. “After working to achieve that goal, some Board members were reluctant to add any debt back to that total.”

Cuts came in the form of $500,000 from operational budgets and $500,000 in personnel. Posler said many of the cuts were based on year-end spending levels last year and how certain departmental expenses could be cut while still sparing student and faculty experiences.

Although the total $1 million figure seems large, Lindahl said that it is spread throughout all of Baker’s campuses, which have a total annual budget of $40 million.

“We wanted to find those funds in the best possible way without hurting the environment and the morale of the institution,” Lindahl, who recently submitted her resignation, said. “Our mission is to deliver the best education that we can, and we don’t like to reduce any budget but we are required to meet certain financial indicators, and if we aren’t meeting those, for any institution, we have to look at what we can reduce.”

To help with the tough financial times, Murray hopes to have decreased spending on events and other presidential occasions, so the cuts will not have a direct effect on teaching budgets.

Murray will also be facilitating a faculty budget group along with creating a “President’s Visionary Fund,” through which a significant amount of fundraising can be done for the university.

Posler hopes the cuts do not affect the students in any way.

“We all tried our very best to insulate students as much as possible,” Posler said. “Some administrative offices will be more thinly staffed, but we all will strive to serve students just as well as before. My hope is that very little will change for the student experience this year as a result.”

Lindahl said that even in a time of budget cuts, the university has hired new faculty on the Baldwin City campus and is starting more growth programs on the satellite campuses, including new accounting and criminal justice majors at the School for Professional and Graduate Studies campus in Overland Park.

“There’s great synergy across the university toward those growth programs,” Lindahl said. “We focus on investing in our campus so that our facilities are welcoming and a place that students want to be and an investment toward the commitment to hire faculty to meet the mission of the university. But now we just have to have a laser-light focus on revenue and growth and quality programs.“