The Kardia Group

In these economic and political times, the question of balanced budgets is easily loaded. While this article does not address how the United States (or any other country) should proceed, the press of this larger conversation is one of many factors that make faculty discussions of financial matters difficult.

Despite these difficulties, however, it is becoming increasingly important for faculty to have productive conversations about money - how much we have, where it comes from, where it goes and, most pragmatically, how do we do more with less.

5 Tips for Productive Faculty Discussions about Money

1. Give the discussion order and structure. Most people find talking about money challenging to begin with, and these fraught economic and political times don't help. Focus and clear boundaries (in content and time) helps offset this anxiety.
2. Be vigilant at sorting out facts and reality from opinions and fear. Where opinions can't be validated, make it an action item to get the facts. Where fear starts directing the conversation, shift to an assessment of the current reality - what are the specific resources, questions, and concerns that need attention?
3. Focus on and reinforce your underlying commitment. How do we continue and expand our innovative scholarship? How do we provide exemplary training to graduate students? Money contributes importantly to these goals, but it's a false and dangerous premise to say budgetary challenges mean we fail at our mission.
4. Stick with the big picture. Departmental budgets are incredibly complex. Grant funding, general funds, endowments, and other funding sources each have many rules and intricacies. Funding cycles, tenure decisions, retention packages, and other realities impact budgets across years, even decades, surpassing the life of any one fiscal year, budget model, or strategic plan. The faculty as a whole cannot and should not devote their time to tracking this complexity. Trying to discuss it in a faculty meeting - beyond broad brush educational strokes - will scuttle even the best discussions.
5. Keep the attention on the department. The discomfort and frustration of economic challenges often gets expressed through a critique of some other entity - the Dean's Office, the funding agencies, etc. These critiques can be a productive contribution to proactive strategy sessions that are intended to focus on that topic (i.e., X is no longer funding Y - how might we deal with this reality?). In a discussion about the departmental budget situation, however, griping and blame about other entities serves only as a distraction, preventing the conversation from moving forward with reasoned, creative solutions.