SEMO'S ATCHLEY TO WEIGH UNIVERSITY BUREAUCRACY

Southeast Missouri State University's interim president wants to know if the university has too much bureaucracy and is overstaffed in some areas.

The interim president, Dr. Bill Atchley, said Wednesday he plans to assess the situation.

Atchley told a meeting of the Faculty Senate that the university needs to be run efficiently and must secure more private funding.

"We have to run a very efficient ship," Atchley said. "I have only one goal, and that is to make the university better than it is today," he told the faculty.

Atchley wants the university to attract more private endowments to fund everything from scholarships to equipment.

Student fees and state aid can fund only so much of the university's programs, he said.

Faculty, he said, should be involved in raising funds, along with other Southeast employees. Atchley said living trusts offer a way of raising more money for Southeast.

In the past few years, Southeast raised $28 million in a capital campaign, and Atchley thinks another fund drive may be in order. "We should look at the feasibility of a $40 million fund-raising drive," he said.

He suggested the university consider greater financial autonomy for its colleges. Each college then would have greater control over its own budget.

If the colleges are poorly administered and run in the red, then new individuals could be brought in "to run the store," he said.

Atchley has signed a revised merit-pay plan. He said he would advise the Board of Regents of the plan, but doesn't believe the board needs to formally adopt it.

"As far as I am concerned, it is in operation," he said.

But the interim president said regents have the final say on merit pay when they annually approve the budget. "We can't tie their hands," he said.

Atchley said he would work to see that faculty are fairly evaluated for merit pay.

After he left, several faculty senators questioned whether the administration can be trusted to fairly administer any merit-pay plan.

Several faculty members criticized the former university president, Dr. Kala Stroup, for rejecting a plan to provide previously owed merit pay to faculty members even though they had retired.

"The faculty gets slapped on the face on their way out the door," faculty member Rick Althaus said.

But Dr. Charles Kupchella, provost, said Stroup believed the school couldn't award merit pay in the form of salary hikes to faculty members once they had retired.