Interim President Dr. Greg Postel addressed the senators about a number of issues, including:

• UofL’s current SACS accreditation probationary status

Postel said Senate Bill 107 is expected to pass the House week and its passage will address some of the foundational concerns raised by SACS that led to UofL’s current probationary status. The administration also responded to SACS with a 550-page document addressing some other questions related to the audit being conducted by the state. The document will be made available in full on the .��

UofL will “more than likely” provide a presentation to SACS at its June board meeting. SACS could lift probation at that time, but Postel said that type of action is typically done in December. A site visit will take place at UofL in September.

Postel said the probationary accreditation status does not seem to be affecting applications, which are up 6 percent from this time last year.

• UofL Foundation forensic audit

A forensic audit of the UofL Foundation, conducted by an external firm, is currently underway.

“They discovered this is more work than they initially thought because (the foundation) is such a complicated entity. They discovered lots of sub-corporations and real estate holdings and organizations that roll up into this organization that need to be looked at,” Postel said. “Nevertheless they feel confident they’ll get it done first or second week in May.”

The report will then go to the Board of Trustees. Postel said the audit is not causing donors to give up on UofL, but is causing some to “take a time out, see what the audit shows, regroup and then go forward.”

“The public simply wants to know what’s out there and move on past it,” Postel said. “We’re all anxious for this process to conclude.”

• Donors

Postel spent last week in New York City for the ACC Basketball Tournament and had the opportunity to meet with a number of donors, potential donors and alumni.

“In talking to those donors, this is how I feel so confident right now. These people still love UofL. They have not allowed negative publicity to change their impression,” Postel said. “They’re still there for us, but they’ve been a little stingy about writing checks until they’re sure that everything’s OK. I understand that.”

• Presidential Search

The 16-member Presidential Search Committee, appointed by Board of Trustees, has started meeting regularly. One of its first tasks will be to put out an RFP and select a search firm.

Then it will undergo a campus-wide surveying process, talking to various groups to get a sense of what students and employees want in their next president. These tasks will take place through the spring and summer. Postel said he expects to be in the interim role for up to a year and a half.

• UofL Hospital

The board voted to disassociate itself with KentuckyOne Health and that process is underway.

“An army of people are involved in this process. It’s a very well-coordinated function and it’s going well and we feel confident that hospital will be restored to UMC management this summer,” Postel said.

• Brandeis School of Law dean search

Postel addressed some of the recent new stories about the Brandeis School of Law, including rumors about closing the school.��

“I have never talked about closing the law school. I would never think about doing that. That is not something an interim president would ever suggest. And there’s no reason for it. The law school can be fixed. Its problems, while significant, are not that different from problems with other schools that need to be addressed; we need to look closely at the budget, generate more revenue, look at student selection, and make sure we’re hiring best staff and faculty. It’s not really rocket science but it’s a lot of work,” Postel said.

He also added that there is still an ongoing search for the Law School dean.

• Budget

Postel addressed the budget last, stating, “The bottom line is this school is a little too big for its current income.”

“The state budget went down about 32 percent over a 15-year period and there were never major adjustments to accommodate that. At the same time, we kept growing, hiring, and putting buildings up and adding more research. We started to outgrow the revenue stream,” he said. “When that happens, you start spending money from reserves. The UofL Foundation was used to cover shortfalls. We got to the point where there was no more money to spend. The foundation money is now down to nothing but restricted funds – donors who gave money for something specific. We can’t use it to fix a leaking roof. All of the fungible money is all gone.”

On the UofL side, cash reserves are too low to tap into in case a real emergency were to happen, Postel added.

“This is what I walked into. It has been a shock and people are mad,” he said.

To balance the budget, it will take $48 million. Postel said the administration is looking at ways to make adjustments that “cause the least amount of pain,” and has taken hundreds of ideas from faculty, staff and students.

“We are looking at every conceivable thing. My goal is to find as many ideas as possible that are non HR-related, such as the cost of our heating and air conditioning systems. There are ways to do that much cheaper. We are looking at the way our loans are financed, at our building projects,” he said. “My hope is that these things will be a substantial part of that $48 million. We’ll know what they are by May.”

Jeanell Hughes, AVP for HR, also provided an update from her department, stating that they have placed a bigger focus on customer service. To work on this objective, representatives are making themselves available via campus tours and sessions on retirement. Also, a 24-hour response time has been implemented. Hughes admitted HR has “taken a beating” because simultaneous projects caused delayed response times and they are working to rectify these issues.

HR is also hoping to have a revised website before summer.

COO Lee Smith said his department is still working on some repairs from the early-February power outage, and another two weekends of shutdowns are planned to fix lingering issues. Smith also said there will be some email updates coming and those who use Outlook will experience “virtually no changes.” More communication about this initiative will be shared soon.

Smith said one of his department’s goals is to highlight campus employees “in their element.” He has a new Twitter account to share some of these stories – @uoflcoo – and encouraged everyone to follow him and share stories from their areas.

Committee reports and other reports:

The Chair, Will Armstrong, gave his report. It is .

Vice Chair Vickie Tencer attended a number of meetings with the COO, AVP of HR and other administrators.

Credentials and Nominations Committee: All senators have been asked to complete an update form to assess what units have expired seats. The .��

Policy, Economics and Development proposed a revision to the Reduction in Force policy. Senators voted to send the revisions to HR. The and clean version are both .��

Services and Facilities did not meet.

The Staff Grievance Committee reported that no grievances were filed.

Morale and Outreach is creating a pamphlet and exploring other communication opportunities, such as social media. The report is .��

SHARE did not meet in March but is coming up with a marketing plan, including a postcard for employees on campus. Bonnie Dean also encouraged senators to donate and mentioned a possible fundraiser in the spring.

The Treasurer’s report shows that the current balance is $8,180.89. The SHARE balance is $13,326.47, and the technology budget is $4,174.

Dr. Bob Staat read the Faculty Senate report, which is .��Guests at the March meeting included Dr. Dale Billingsley, Dr. Postel and Dean David Jenkins from the Kent School of Social Work, which is starting a new program that includes oncology care.

The Academic Technology Committee report is .��

The University Police Advisory Committee report is online. Also as a reminder, April is Sexual Assault Month and there will be various events, such as Take Back the Night, .

The next Staff Senate meeting is April 10 in the Chao Auditorium at 2:30 p.m.

Postel, who is seven weeks into the job, said he has been meeting with as many different groups around campus as possible to address concerns about the budget and other topics, such as the university’s probationary SACS accreditation status.

Before diving into the budget, Postel outlined numerous positive news stories out of UofL, including the generation of Fulbright Scholars, increase in applications compared to this time last year, and the Student Success Building currently under construction. He also noted his meetings with donors and potential donors have been promising.

“This university has folks who are extremely passionate about what we do and they want to support us. Some of them have been on the sidelines because they are concerned and want to see resolution before being comfortable about opening up their checkbook and resuming contributions,” Postel said. “That gives me a lot of momentum to continue on the path we are on and resolving issues.”

The $80 million, state-funded Student Success Building is on schedule and expected to open next summer.

“What’s exciting is it represents a new opportunity for new and improved types of teaching,” Postel said. “There will be areas that are focused on new and innovative learning and teaching techniques and our students will clearly be the winner.”

Postel also touted UofL’s commitment to community engagement, its active student government and its successful athletics programs.

“But these positives being the case, obviously we’re also faced with a lot of challenges. This is part of living, it is part of operating and it is just what we have to work through,” Postel said. Among the current challenges are:

SACS accreditation. Postel said UofL has navigated three steps toward resolving our current probationary status with SACS, including the passage of Senate Bill 107, a comprehensive response to SACS, which is available on the UofL President’s website, and the formation of governance committees to ensure internal documents are synced and accurate in accordance to state law. The next step is a SACS site visit in September, and an accreditation review in December.

“There is no reason to think the university won’t resolve this issue in December,” Postel said.

State audit and forensic audit. The state auditor finished a review in the winter, which Postel said covered governance, transparency and checks and balances. A forensic audit continues and is expected to be complete in early May. This audit is examining transactional issues.

“Between the two we’ll have a good understanding about the process and making sure history doesn’t repeat itself,” Postel said. “It’s critical we get past this as soon as we can. Our donors are out there, they’re strong, they’re still Cardinals at heart, and they’re waiting to give money. They just want to understand a resolution before their comfort level returns.”

UofL Hospital. Postel also briefly touched upon the transition of UofL Hospital from Kentucky One Health management to University Medical Center management. The hospital includes about 2,300 employees and a bed census of about 300 patients per day. He expects the transition to be completed this summer.

Budget

Postel saved the budget conversation for last, stating his objective was to “help people think about budgets in a slightly different way.”

“The budget is a guiding document. It may or may not reflect the actual experience. The actual experience becomes the result of the work of the community during the year. Our objective is to beat the budget,” he said. “What I want to impart today is the budget we present to the Board of Trustees will be nothing more than a best-guess estimate of what things will look like at this point next year.”

Central Administration has until May to present the budget to the Board of Trustees for approval and has received hundreds of ideas from faculty, staff and students across campus on ways to cut costs and boost revenue.

Postel admits he was surprised about the size of the deficit when the process began in January.

“That being said, this is a big organization. From a percentage point of view, this is manageable,” he said. “When I came into this situation in January, we had to do a quick assessment and things were not good. Cash was low, resources were significantly depleted. It was very precarious. We were on track to spend ourselves into real trouble. We had to take some quick corrective action and stop the bleeding.”

Postel said he’s confident everything is going to be OK and we’ll get to a point where “we’ll be able to have nicer conversations about how to use our resources.”

“We have to put something down on paper in May. It’s going to be wrong. We’re going to do so much better than that. I hope that’s some encouragement,” he said.

Q&A

Postel answered some questions from the crowd, including how the new budget model can benefit units, such as A&S, that generate net dollars, and how to avoid compromising the student experience during the budget shortfall.

He said they are studying models that work for net contributors and admitted one of the biggest solutions is an increase in enrollment.

“We need more students on campus and more online students. We have about 23,000 students and that is not sufficient for all of the things we want to do,” he said. “We need to be extremely aggressive with this. But we can’t ask people to do that unless there is a fair model.”

Postel also said that, despite the tight budget, many student benefits will be untouched, including the flat tuition rate for next school year. UofL is the only school in Kentucky not raising its tuition next year. He also noted the state-of-the-art Student Success Building and the $40 million renovation to the SAC as examples of UofL’s commitment to students’ experience.��

The full forum is available below: