Leadership Team Memo

September 30, 2008

Dear Campus Community:

As you may have read in recent media reports as well as the system-wide address last week from President Benson, the state may be facing financial challenges in the current budget year given the state of the national economy and the challenges faced by our nation’s financial systems.

The Governor instituted a hiring freeze for most state positions in state agencies and asked public higher education institutions to join him in this effort to slow the spending of state revenues in case current year actual revenues do not meet projected targets.

In the spirit of working with the Governor’s request, the campus leadership team this morning adopted an additional step in the hiring process in that all vacant UCCS positions will be brought to the weekly leadership team meeting for discussion. The vice chancellor whose area includes the vacancy will present the vacant position to the leadership team. Currently, we are not delaying the filling of open positions. We are closely monitoring the state’s financial picture.

Additionally, Vice Chancellor Burnett has had several inquiries from the media about the Governor stopping capital construction projects that had not started construction. As you may know, the Science/Engineering building is on this list even though construction has been continuing for many months. We are working through the Governor’s budget office process to get this project exempted from this order as work continues by our contractor to meet an opening in Spring, 2009.

These issues may be detailed in media reports tomorrow as area media outlets have inquired about the impacts of the Governor’s orders on the campus. Through this communication, we wanted the campus to be aware of these developments prior to any news reports that may be forthcoming.

The campus, working together, will get through this time just as we have in years past when we faced financial challenges. Our enrollments are very strong as more students find UCCS to be a great place to get an outstanding education and these strengths will only help us continue to thrive in these challenging times.

We appreciate all of the support of the faculty, staff and students.

Sincerely,

Pam Shockley-Zalabak, Chancellor
Peg Bacon, Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor
Brian Burnett, Vice Chancellor for Administration and Finance
Robert Wonnett, Vice Chancellor for Student Success
Martin Wood, Chief Operating Officer