In line with other colleges at UC Davis, the Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences was assigned an initial budget cut for the 2009-10 fiscal year proportional to its previous year’s budget. Yet the division has very little capacity for cuts in academic programs, warns Dean Winston Ko.

This year’s “first wave” of $480,000 in proportional cuts for the division comes on top of the nearly $800,000 in one-time and permanent cuts the division absorbed last year. And its instructional budget has also taken a hit this year — of close to $400,000, based on an anticipated reduction in enrollment.

MPS budget cuts impact students campuswide

Because his division provides a wealth of required foundational classes to virtually every incoming science and engineering student, the reductions worry Ko.

“What we do in terms of instruction affects all science and engineering students on campus,” he said. “Comparatively speaking, the engineering, biological and agricultural sciences departments don’t see their students as much as we do for the first year or two, because students spend this time taking our calculus, physics, and chemistry classes.”

“If we want a solid foundation for our students, it starts here,” Ko stressed. “If we can’t provide that foundation, no matter how beautiful the house may be, it will crumble.”

Budget trimming through layoffs, START program

For the time being, Ko said, departments are using standard strategies to trim expenses. For example, phone service is being pared back (some departments have switched to voice over Internet), along with budgets for travel and seminars. Fewer lecturers and temporary and associate instructors have been hired, and faculty have been asked to teach larger classes to compensate.

Some staff are also taking advantage of the START program — Staff and Academic Reduction in Time — and working fewer hours. The division also has had staff layoffs. And in many cases, positions that are vacant are not being filled in anticipation of pending permanent budget reductions.

So far, Ko has been leaving decisions about cuts up to the departments. “Since I’m asking my units to make a sacrifice, I want to give them the maximum amount of flexibility in determining how to do this,” he explained.

But in planning for the second wave of cuts, he said the departments’ ability to absorb additional reductions will be "seriously compromised.”

“At this point, and in light of the pending permanent budget reductions, the situation now calls for bringing our department chairs together to talk about how we can work with the division as a whole," Ko said.

A good year for grants

On the bright side, Ko said this is turning out to be a good year for research grants.

The federal stimulus program allocated billions of dollars toward research, and one agency administering these funds, the National Science Foundation, has already announced nearly $3 million in grants to 10 MPS faculty members. Given that only a fraction of stimulus-funded grants have been announced to date, Ko expects this number to rise substantially.

In addition, a number of division faculty will receive stimulus funds as co-investigators on projects awarded to other departments and institutions.

And, thanks to the America Competes Act of 2007 -- a bipartisan resolution to double funding for the physical sciences in 10 years -- non-stimulus funded federal support for the physical sciences also increased this year.

Ko, for example, recently received word that he will receive supplementary support of $275,000 for his federal high-energy physics grant. Half of the award will be used to support the research efforts of seven graduate students.

“Without these federal grants, we would have experienced much more of an impact on our ability to retain our technical staff,” Ko said.