The chancellors met with President Broad and the members of her staff last Thursday. Much of the meeting was involved in a detailed discussion of the next biennial budget (2003-2005).  As you may be aware, the budget is aggregated across all campuses into priority categories based on the system’s strategic direction. The slides of the draft budget are attached. In addition to the materials presented, there was discussion of our out-of-state teacher initiative, and I would anticipate that the final budget request will include an expansion of this program.

http://www.wcu.edu/chancellor/index/updates/0305budgetrequests.htm

Of more immediate impact was the discussion around system expectations regarding salary increases. Attached is President Broad’s memorandum regarding salary adjustments. The core issues addressed in the President’s memo involve market and equity. I believe that data will show that Western’s faculty are significantly underpaid compared to our peers both in-state and out-of-state. Therefore, given the specific instructions from the President, I plan to make the case for market adjustments in faculty salaries. I will keep you informed regarding this issue as it matures.

http://www.wcu.edu/chancellor/index/updates/Salariesfor2002-2003.htm

The Board of Governors met on Friday. The critical actions taken by the Board that are of most interest to Western are:

1.   Our new graduate degree program in student personnel was approved.

2.   Our recreation center was approved.

3.   The proposed rules for implementing the pilot out-of-state teacher recruitment program were approved.

For those of you who might be unaware of this last issue, Western developed a proposal that out-of-state students who are willing to contract to teach in North Carolina after graduation would be treated as in-state students for the purpose of budget and tuition payment. We recruited Elizabeth City and Pembroke to join us in the proposal. These three institutions were given pilot programs for the upcoming academic year. Each institution is authorized to enroll 20 students in this program next year. If we are successful, we will seek permanent status for the program.

If we can gain permission to make this program permanent and to expand it significantly, it will have major impact on programs both in education and in arts and sciences. Because of our location near major metropolitan areas in South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee, we have every expectation that we should be able to recruit significant numbers of students.

Because these students need to qualify for the teacher education sequence, and because we need to assure that no North Carolina student is denied access to teacher education because of this program, it is very important that we set a program qualification standard that is significantly higher than that which is required of the general teacher education student. I have asked Tom Canepa to work with Michael Dougherty to assure that we have appropriately high standards for this program.