Five-year financial plan offers guide to campus
priorities
Carolina
knows where it wants to go.
And now there's a map
on the table that lays out how to pay for the trip.
The University this past
summer adopted an academic plan that charts its future for the
next five years. Complementing it will be a five-year financial
plan being developed by Nancy Suttenfield, vice chancellor for
finance and administration, and her staff.
Suttenfield unveiled a
first draft of the blueprint at the University trustees' November
meeting. Along with reflecting the academic plan, it accounts
for other recent planning efforts that have been undertaken
by campus units such as Human Resources.
Based on these various
efforts, administrators from both the academic and administrative
sides of campus came together to develop a list of Carolina's
top 10 priorities that range from bolstering undergraduate programs
to ensuring compliance with regulatory measures. It's the job
of the five-year financial plan to put a price tag on these
priorities as well as find ways to pay for them.
"Our financial plan
represents a framework for informing the campus about University-wide
goals and aligning our resources with our highest priorities
when we establish future budgets," Suttenfield said in an interview
after the trustees meeting.
The plan totals $200.7
million and would be funded by a variety of sources, such as
private gifts and endowment income, student tuition and fees,
enrollment-growth dollars allocated by the General Assembly
to the UNC system, and overhead receipts generated by faculty
research. Some existing revenue would be reallocated as well.
While it's impossible
to know for certain that the plan's funding mechanisms will
pan out as predicted, Suttenfield said she and her staff took
a conservative approach to the numbers.
"We believe that
our assumptions regarding revenue streams to pay for the plan
are reasonable, although we remain in a highly uncertain environment
where many outside factors make it a challenge to forecast budgets,"
she said.
The top 10 priorities
include full implementation of the First-Year Seminar Program,
which now serves a little more than half the entering class.
At full strength, the program would allow every freshman to
take at least one seminar.
Another priority aimed
at undergraduate education would double Carolina's Honors Program
from 200 to 400 students.
The plan also would earmark
additional dollars for the University's research priorities,
such as genome sciences and nanotechnology.
The most money would be
slated for making faculty and staff compensation at Carolina
more competitive with peer universities to strengthen retention
and recruitment efforts.
Money for faculty support
would include start-up funds as well as salaries. Pay for eligible
SPA employees would be boosted by dollars set aside for In-Range
Salary Adjustments.
The financial plan also
calls for funding these other priorities:
Routine
equipment and facilities upgrades;
Regulatory
compliance measures;
Regular
management information system upgrades or replacements;
Recurring
classroom technology maintenance, upgrades and repairs; and
Support
unit assessments.
