DePaul faculty discussed ongoing concerns including budget restraints, faculty roles and responsibilities in shared governance and curriculum development at a Plenary Council meeting on September 17. .
The Plenary Council is a special type of faculty meeting where DePaul’s faculty discussed and passed five motions relating to current faculty concerns and addressed other priority topics.
578 faculty attended the meeting, including more than half of DePaul’s 874 full-time faculty members – a large turnout for this unprecedented event.
The faculty met on serious concerns with the leadership of President A. Gabriel Esteban and the Board of Trustees. Esteban blocked the board’s finance committee from reviewing an initial budget proposal that was unanimously approved by the Strategic Resource Allocation Committee (SRAC) – the representative body of faculty responsible for propose DePaul’s annual budget.
Instead, Esteban presented the second, more financially restrictive SRAC budget to the board. Although the secondary budget was also unanimously approved by the SRAC, it was not their preferred recommendation.
The board’s finance committee rejected SRAC’s second more restrictive budget and approved its own even more austere budget. Although the board has the power to change the budget, it did not consult the SRAC before doing so – an unusual practice.
The finance committee made drastic changes to the budget without considering all of the issues raised by the SRAC. The Council’s two-year budget includes tuition increases, hiring freezes, ongoing salary freezes, cuts to academic and research funding, and an under-representation of donations and donor grants, forcing faculty, staff and administrators to do more with less. According to a press release from the faculty council, this severely limits “students’ access to world-class education at DePaul”.
“The budgetary priorities of the council outlined in its imposed budget will seriously undermine the university’s academic mission to provide high quality education to best prepare all DePaul students for the future,” the statement said.
The council budget also reinstated DePaul’s unusual return to the main practice, which redirects a large portion of endowment income to endowment, instead of reinvesting it in university operations. According to the press release, this practice has helped DePaul’s endowment grow from $ 420 million in 2016 to $ 966 million today, while constantly underfunding the school’s academic programs. DePaul predicts the endowment will exceed $ 1 billion by the end of the next academic year.
“The repeal of the arbitrary practice of returning to the mainstream would provide the additional funds necessary for the annual budget essential to reinvest in the educational enterprise,” the statement added.
Stepping away from DePaul’s shared decision-making process is about faculty who help maintain the university’s academic and Vincentian success. According to the Faculty Council, the lack of shared governance threatens the long-term academic excellence of the University, confidence in leadership and the ability to retain the best faculty.
The Plenary Council discussed the split in shared governance and its implications for DePaul. The faculty also overwhelmingly passed five proposed motions, which must be ratified by a majority of 438 full-time faculty in the final vote on Oct. 4.
