Action has been taken to help Ouachita deal with the economic recession that stirred a new financial awareness among the adminstrative staff last fall.
Brett Powell, vice president for administrative services, realized that these nation-wide economic changes were going to bring about financial tightening at Ouachita.
“The more investment values dropped the more it became a concern for us,” he said. “Probably since January we knew that we were going to have to make some changes in order to get next year’s budget put together.”
These changes came in the way of eliminating some staff, which impacted approximately 12 percent of Ouachita’s full-time administrative and support staff, reducing work hours, reducing pay for other staff members and declining to fill several current staff vacancies.
Despite the circumstances, Ouachita’s mission and vision must be supported, according to President Dr. Rex Horne.
“It was very painful because you’re dealing with people and their families and their livelihoods,” Horne said. “There is not anything pleasant about that in the least.
“In our situation if you’re going to save any considerable money, we had no other places to look because it’s just not there in other parts of the budget.”
The budget cut proposal was approved by Ouachita’s Board of Trustees on March 12 and will provide projected budget savings of more than $1 million.
Horne said financial challenges are “not uncommcon” for private Christian universities, but a financial strain of this magnitude is rare.
“We were working through some challenges even when I came, but nobody could see world-wide recession hitting as deeply and as quickly as it did,” he said. “So when it impacted not only our endowment, which we depend on strongly for some aid, but also people who give year after year, we saw that we had a real challenge.”
Horne said his committee decided that Ouachita’s constituents, families and students expect them to “deal prudently” with the university’s finances. Therefore, action had to be taken.
Every possible alternative was considered before the staff positions were eliminated, according to Powell.
“We explored everything before we decided,” he said.
“We asked all of our [deans] to look at their areas and see if there were things that could be done differently. We tried to find every possible angle to reduce our budget before we cut any people.”
According to Powell, because Ouachita’s endowment has lost a portion of its value, administration is not going to draw as much funds from it next year. Therefore, Ouachita must find a way to replace that money.
“It’s either find more revenue which means charging students more — and we didn’t want to do that — or it means cutting expenses,” Powell said.
One goal of this financial repositioning, according to Horne, is to protect Ouachita’s academic standard.
“Whatever cutbacks we had to make we did not want to touch the faculty and the academic side,” Horne said, “so it is as strong and as whole as it has been, which I think is both the right thing to do and honestly pretty remarkable when you consider other institutions.”
Another goal is to protect Ouachita’s student life.
“We want it to be fun here,” Horne said. “Since we are a residential campus we want it to be a place where students enjoy living, and the university affords that opportunity.”
Some may wonder why new dorms, an entrance and improvements are being made while personnel are being fired. But both Horne and Powell made it clear that these improvements are not part of the budget, and they are going to benefit the university in the long run.
“We’re not looking just at next year,” Powell said, “we’re looking five years ahead with new residence halls and things that we are trying to do to maintain what we have. We are trying to get building endowments for the new residence halls so we have some money to keep them maintained. That was in our planning process.”
Horne also believes the new dorms will not be a financial burden on Ouachita.
“I think it’s [new dorms] going to be a part of what’s going to help us grow out of it [financial strain],” Horne said. “We have such great facilities over there, and student housing is such a great recruitment tool.”
In fact, Horne is looking for enrollment to keep increasing every semester, just as it has in the past.
“Even in the midst of belt-tightening, our spring enrollment is up more than 3 percent over last year’s spring enrollment,” he said. “Our applications and acceptances are running 8 to 9 percent ahead of last year.”
He believes Ouachita has something distinct to offer students.
“We believe that students are still going to be looking for an education,” Horne said. “Families are still going to want their young men, young women to get an education and so this is a good time for us to step up and show our distinctiveness, and we believe that there are a lot of people looking for places like Ouachita.”
The administration has also asked faculty, staff and students to do what they can to help Ouachita out of this financial difficulty.
“The faculty and staff have been encouraged, if there are things that are not necessary, to not spend money on it,” Powell said. “We try to encourage people to think of other ways to do things.”
Students can help by being aware of energy conservation.
“People don’t realize how much that really does go to help,” Horne said. “If there’s money available because of our conservation efforts, those things help.”
Horne knows Ouachita cannot “get down” because of the financial strain, but thrive.
“I have great appreciation for our staff and faculty here at Ouachita and a great admiration of our students,” Horne said. “I really don’t want our students to be worried about any of this. We are going to be fine. I believe that great days are here and even better days are coming.”
