More than a year after the College announced its plan to cut $100 million from its budget, academic departments continue to adjust to reduced funding in a variety of ways, according to several department chairs interviewed by The Dartmouth. Departments have had to lay off staff members, reduce course offerings and delay the updating of equipment, the chairs said.
In response to budget cuts, the computer science department eliminated three classes and laid off two staff members, according to department chair Thomas Cormen. The department faced a cut of 11.14 percent during the past fiscal year.
"We had three administrative staff and three system administrators the people who run the computers and we lost one of each," Cormen said.
The two largest expenses incurred by departments are professors' salaries and the salaries of staff members such as administrators and department assistants, according to John Carey, chair of the government department.
All the academic departments located in Reed Hall classics, comparative literature, Jewish studies, linguistics and cognitive science and Russian language and literature had to merge their administrative assistant offices into one office, Jewish studies chair Ehud Benor said.
The Jewish studies program had three full-time administrative assistants before the cuts, Benor said. While the department did not lay off any assistants, only one staff member still works full-time, he said.
"The [Jewish studies] program is funded privately by a donor and that means many aspects of the budget cuts have not affected us," Benor said. "Our course count was not affected what was affected is an aspect of the program that depends on administrative assistant support."
Extracurricular activities such as inviting speakers to the College have been difficult to arrange without administrative staff, Benor said.
Several departments, including chemistry, Jewish studies and computer science, also lost department assistants, according to department chairs interviewed by The Dartmouth.
The government department reduced an administrative assistant position's hours in order to save money, according to Carey.
"We did take a hit in terms of our assistants," he said. "Most departments did also."
Student assistants who work part-time in the government department have been "picking up the slack" caused by the administrative assistant's absence, Carey said.
The computer science department did not offer either of its First Year Seminars Ideas, Ideals and Computer Science and Interactive Storytelling this year.
One upper-level course, Security and Privacy, was also eliminated, Cormen said. The department plans to bring back two freshman seminars during the 2011-2012 academic year, according to Cormen.
"Tenured track faculty teach their normal load," Cormen said. "It doesn't save the College any money of they don't teach. We hire visiting faculty because they're paid by course."
The department selected to eliminate Security and Privacy because it is not a requirement for the major and was taught by a visiting faculty member. College administrators who informed the department that a course would have to be eliminated did not offer input as to which course should be chosen, Cormen said.
The chemistry department experienced a 5 percent budget cut during the 2009 fiscal year and an additional 6.37 percent drop during the 2010 fiscal year, chemistry department chair Peter Jacobi said. The department experienced its highest reduction yet in 2011 at a 12.97 percent decrease according to Jacobi. As a result, the department lost one of its three technical staff and two of its four administrative staff, he said.
Although the chemistry department has not reduced its program offerings, the budget cuts affected the laboratory equipment available to students and researchers, Jacobi said.
"Where cuts really impact in a department that is an experimental science is that we need to maintain certain equipment supplies," Jacobi said. "There's things like depreciation of equipment equipment that needs to be replaced or updated and in the last couple of years we've really fallen behind in maintenance."
The chemistry department typically updates labs on a regular basis but recent financial restraints have prevented researchers from purchasing new equipment in certain cases, Jacobi said.
The department recently developed a spreadsheet that separates equipment into three categories partially based on the lifespan and price of each item, which will help the department budget decide in advance which old equipment needs to be replaced the most, Jacobi said.
"[The spreadsheet] is a very positive thing," he said. "In the past, things were done on an ad hoc basis, and now we're planning ahead."
While Carey said implementing budget cuts is "a miserable process for everyone," he said he has not seen any "red flags" in ways in which the student experience at the College has suffered.
"We didn't lose any professors," Carey said. "Everybody's pay has just risen less or not risen at all, but we didn't lose any people and have been able to replace people who retired."
Carey said there have been no program changes in the government department as a result of the budget cuts.
"We still have our two foreign study programs," he said. "The honors program has had more students than it's had in all of my eight years at [the College]."
The Asian and Middle Eastern studies department was "spared significant cuts," department chair Steven Ericson said in an e-mail to The Dartmouth.
The department received a financial gift from private donors this year that has allowed the department to sponsor various events and conduct other "enrichment activities," according to Ericson.
Several of the department's partner organizations have been unable to provide the same level of financial assistance that they offered in past years, he said.
"Where we've really felt the budget reductions is in the ability of administrative units such as the [John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding] and the Office of the Associate Dean for International and Interdisciplinary Studies to provide cosponsorships and other forms of support," Ericson said.
The AMES department is unable to secure funding for an independent study program in Hindi-Urdu with a visiting professor in the Spring, although many students had expressed a desire to participate in the course, Ericson said.
All departments have tried to "maintain the quality" of their academic offerings despite budget cuts, Jacobi said.
"I think everybody has taken their fair share of cuts under this budget process," Jacobi said. "We're doing the best we can, and hopefully we've turned the corner."
