Three Baker University staff members were laid off Monday.

“We laid off one person in Baldwin City and two people in Overland Park,” University President Pat Long said Tuesday night. “They were all manager, director levels, but I can’t give names.”

Long said Tuesday was spent talking with faculty members who might be impacted by the reduction and reallocation process.

The Academic Program Review committee, the Education Programs Committee and the Faculty Development and Evaluation committee combined to form a joint committee that assessed programs by looking at three areas – how the programs fit with Baker’s mission, how viable they are now and would be in the future and the quality of the programs.

“We won’t release names of anyone or programs yet, but in some cases, faculty will be doing a different job next year,” Long said. “A few faculty have decided they want to take on different roles, and then we may have a few faculty that aren’t here next year, but it will be very few. I can’t give numbers yet, but I’m hopeful that the impact on students will be certainly minimal.”

Changes and elimination of programs and faculty will be announced in mid January.

“We had four retirements and then we had some faculty that voluntarily have said ‘let me step down or limit my teaching load and do some other things,'” Long said Thursday. “So, all in all, I think we’re going to see a minimal impact, but a good budget relief for us.”

Long thought the committee did a “fabulous” job with the difficult process.

“Any time you have a faculty committee that has to look at programs, and knowing that they’re looking at colleagues with the programs, that is a hard job to do,” she said. “I think they were objective in the way that they looked at data and then in making decisions.”

At an Oct. 27 faculty town hall meeting, Long announced that effective July 1, the provost position, filled by Randy Pembrook, would be eliminated.

“He’s been an incredible leader here,” Long said. “I’d love to be able to find a way to keep him, maybe in some other position, because he’s just so good.”

At the meeting, Long also announced Baker’s deficit was predicted to equal $406,171 at the end of the fiscal year, which ends June 30. However, Long said the rolling forecast is now down to a little more than $300,000.

“The challenge that we have right now is that we borrowed too much short-term money and so we have to get out of that challenge and get back to always having a budget where revenue is more than expense, because we can’t go on like this,” Long said.

Long doesn’t anticipate more mass layoffs, but if there are, they’ll be on the staff and administrative side.

“All of these things seem to be moving in the right direction,” she said.” The endowment is going back up again … so that’s a good sign. Fundraising is starting to come up again. So if we can just maintain enrollment or increase enrollment after the first of the year, we’re turning a huge corner.”