During an all-campus forum held virtually on Wednesday, UNMC Chancellor Jeffrey P. Gold, MD, joined by Doug Ewald, vice chancellor for business, finance and business development, discussed how the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has affected UNMC’s budget for 2020-21 and beyond.
He started the meeting by thanking UNMC students, faculty and staff and then went on to provide a pandemic transmission update for Nebraska with updates from earlier today. Dr. Gold stressed that through all decisions, the health and safety of the university community remained paramount.
“The medical and emotional safety and wellness of our entire med center family is the North Star, and all of the decision-making we’re going through and have been going through as it relates to budget, staffing, research, construction, etc., is all keyed to that basic principle.”
Dr Gold shared the following budget information:
In 2020-21, budget cuts at UNMC will affect 69 positions. Of those, three filled positions in support staff will be eliminated; 55% are unfilled positions that will be eliminated; and 41% of the positions will have their funding source reallocated from state funding to another source (e.g., a clinical partner such as Veterans Affairs, Madonna, Nebraska Medicine, etc.).
Of the 69 positions, 59 are related to academic positions and 10 are related to staff involved in support services.
Over the next three years, UNMC will take a $9.9 million budget cut (all but $1.8 million is taken in Year 1). This assumes a 2.75% tuition increase (with additional differential tuition increases) for 2020-21, but tuition rates remaining flat for 2021-22 and 2022-23. It also assumes a 0 percent salary increase for the coming year, with an estimated 4.5 percent increase in 2021-23.
In all, by the end of the third year, 85 positions will be affected by the budget cuts. Four filled positions in support staff will have been eliminated, 48% of the cuts will be currently unfilled positions, and 48% of the positions will have their funding reallocated. Of the positions, 74 are related to academic positions; 11 are related to support staff.
The total reduction from academic side for the coming year is $5.7 million, with 59 positions affected, and no employees have been separated, the chancellor said — the positions either are unfilled or have been reassigned to other sources of funding.
“All of these decisions are difficult, really difficult. Removing unencumbered positions reduces flexibility,” Dr. Gold said. “Reassigning positions adds stress to other sources of budgets . . . But this is as firm as we can be at this time, and I think it’s important that we get refocused on our mission now.”
UNMC is continuing to hire essential personnel, he said. “The budget has been created to allow that to continue to happen.
“These were hard decisions,” Dr. Gold said. “There has been a tremendous amount of input from our vice chancellors, deans and department chairs, with faculty and student input as well. Now we’ll allow the deans and the directors or department chairs to work closely with faculty and staff to talk about the details of what this means to the individual colleges, institutes, etc.”
“It’s been a long few months, but collaboratively across this campus we’ve had a lot of broad-based input,” Ewald said.
The university has put into place opportunities to furlough individuals or have people take time off, but those potential savings are not built into the current budget model. He said there have been requests for information about buyout packages, as well.
“We’re taking $9.97 million out of the budget over a three-year period, which is a big number,” the chancellor said. “But we’re doing this in the most humanistic way we can possibly do it. We are planning to have a reasonable amount of reserves as we move through the pandemic.”
Other topics the chancellor covered included:
- Masks: “Wear a mask, wear a mask, wear a mask,” the chancellor said. “The data is absolutely clear that masks protect you . . . and masks protect others.” The chancellor said he was proud of UNMC’s pandemic mitigation and response planning in relation to its teaching, clinical and research mission.
- The NeXT Project: Dr. Gold spoke on the NeXT project, a proposed state-of the art academic medical center facility and federal all-hazard disaster response military and civilian partnership. He said the project was “alive and well” and pointed to broad support for the project, especially in the philanthropic community. The project will have between a $2.5-$4.1 billion construction price tag, employing 42,000 people in construction, and adding more than $220 million to the state tax coffers and nearly $8 billion in economic impact just during the construction period.
- The appointment of Ted Cieslak, MD, as interim executive director for health security at UNMC. The chancellor described Dr. Cieslak “incredibly knowledgeable when it comes to these matters.”
- De-densification efforts to reduce the density of our classroom and laboratory experience. The chancellor said that a little more than $1 million has been spent to ensure classrooms and meetings are Zoom capable.
- Enrollment: Dr. Gold said UNMC is seeing extremely solid enrollment projections for the fall, although he did point to a small number of international students who are currently unable to get visas to enroll so far this year.
- Emergency leave: The emergency leave available to employees for COVID-19-related issues ends Dec. 30.
- Structural racism: UNMC is in active listening mode and exploring programs and partnerships to continue proactively to address structural racism through every level of the organization. “I am proud of the fact that the med center has made multiple substantial efforts, but we need to ramp that up,” he said. The next campus-wide session is scheduled for July 29.
- Returning to campus: Faculty, staff or students who are uncomfortable returning back to campus or are in a medically vulnerable position should speak to the supervisor about possible accommodation, Dr. Gold said. Human resources can review a supervisor’s decision.
- Parking: The med center is evaluating parking, looking to be flexible and make parking affordable. Parkers who choose to pause their parking permit while working off campus have a “high likelihood” of being able to retain the spot in their original lot when they resume paying for parking.
- Children returning to school: UNMC will try to work with employees and students who have childcare conflicts as area public schools decide how and when they will open in the fall.
- Research: UNMC is up at least 16% in extramurally funded research, well over a total of $160 million in extramurally funding research, an all-time high and, the chancellor said, a credit to the research faculty.
- Construction: The chancellor listed several campus construction projects, including:
- The Munroe-Meyer Institute’s new building on Pine Street, which is on budget and a month ahead of schedule;
- The Dr. Edwin G. & Dorothy Balbach Davis Global Center, which is complete and operational;
- The Wigton Heritage Center, on schedule and on budget; and
- The renovated McGoogan Library for Health Sciences, which the chancellor called beautiful.