Southeast gets state funding increase

Anticipating a 4 percent increase in state funding -- equating to about $1.7 million for fiscal year 2015 -- Southeast Missouri State University is looking to add a few positions and expand supplemental instruction and its information technology help desk.

Vice president for finance and administration Kathy Mangels said the total general operating budget for fiscal year 2014 was about $104 million. Mangels, working on the fiscal year 2015 budget, said it is expected to be $106 million to $107 million, an addition of about $2.6 million.

"We're very pleased with the recommendations that came from the governor and then also what's working through the Legislature," Mangels said Thursday. "It shows us there's a commitment to education and higher education."

Two new health-related degrees and a minor were approved by regents this week.

"So we're going to take some of those funds and add another faculty position in health care administration to teach courses related to that. We're going to be expanding the tutoring services in our supplemental instruction, so we approved funds to go toward student labor and staff costs for tutoring," Mangels said.

A couple of new positions also were added at the River Campus, with the new building opening this fall -- a custodian and a staff position for a resource center -- a library for the arts, Mangels said.

"A big portion of our costs is personnel," Mangels said. "We do allocate for merit-based salary increases. ... Salary and benefits is about 60 percent of our operating budget."

Equity raises to bring Southeast faculty and staff more in line with peer institutions took effect Jan. 1. "This would be our annual cycle," Mangels said. "We do our increases and performance appraisals along with the fiscal year."

The past couple of years, funding has been based on performance measures, mostly retention rates, graduation rates, expenditures related to instruction and support of students, Mangels said.

Over the past five years, Southeast's state funding has been a mixed bag. It saw slight increases in fiscal year 2013 and 2014 at 2 about 2 and 1.3 percent, respectively. But the university saw flat allocations in fiscal year 2010, a cut of 5.2 percent in fiscal year 2011 and a 7 percent reduction in fiscal year 2012, Mangels said.

Southeast's fiscal year ends June 30, so board of regents approval for the budget is sought before that date, Mangels said.

One item Mangels reviewed at the May 6 regents meeting is dating to 2010, Southeast planned ahead for possible funding reductions.

"We knew that based on where the economy was, the state was going to have some challenges financially, which meant we would probably see reductions in our state appropriations. But we didn't know how much and what years, so we set ourselves a goal that we needed to identify $20 million between that point and the FY 15 budget," she said.

Officials took into account the cost of continuing to run the university, utility increases and annual costs such as employee benefits and salaries.

"We were able to address those cuts with some of the preplanning that we had done as an institution," Mangels said.

rcampbell@semissourian.com

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