Regents at Texas Woman’s University approved a $259.8 million expense budget for 2009-10 during the university’s quarterly board meeting Friday. The budget reflects an increase of nearly $48.8 million from the previous year.

Operating expenses were cut by nearly $3.7 million, taking the operations budget down to $146.9 million for the next fiscal year.

The upcoming fiscal year is the first one adhering to the state’s formula funding without additional legislative support of $5 million a year, and those expense cuts had to be made, said Dr. Brenda Floyd, TWU vice president of finance and administration.

“It’s a challenge when you have to cut the budget,” Floyd said. “No one wants to do that, but we have to do that.”

There will be no salary increases for staff and faculty for the upcoming school year.

The university is planning to hire fewer adjuncts and more tenured faculty will teach lower-division classes.

But TWU will be able to prosper under the state’s formula funding guidelines, said Harry Crumpacker, Board of Regents chairman.

Regents have examined how other Texas universities have worked within formula funding constrictions and are confident the university will be able to implement the guidelines, Crumpacker said.

As TWU learns to live with less money, student education is still a priority, he said.

“Our primary objective is to preserve the high-quality university education and students will stay with TWU because it’s a wonderful place,” he said. “We don’t want to dilute the educational experience that students receive at TWU. If there is a dilution, we won’t do it.”

For the last eight months, as part of reducing the operations budget, officials at the university have reviewed class schedules in hopes of making some class section cuts and better using faculty, said Dr. Kay Clayton, TWU provost and vice president of academic affairs.

Officials with TWU reviewed three years of the university’s class schedules and compared the information across semesters in a program-by-program review, Clayton said.

Based on that information, with the help of deans and department heads, the university will cut an estimated 3.5 percent of class sections over five semesters beginning with spring 2010, Clayton said.

By accessing the data and applying the state’s formula funding to the university’s class section schedule while weighing accreditation requirements, officials hope the impact on students will be minimal, Clayton said.

“We’ve certainly got an opportunity to see how this works when we implement it,” she said. “We will have to assess it as we go along. We were pretty efficient already and with these areas we could achieve even greater efficiency.”

Glenn Dowling, a higher-education consultant, was brought in by TWU to help with the class section cuts.

Dowling, retired associate vice chancellor of the Texas A&M University System, applied state formula funding standards to departments and faculty to come up with effective class sizes for TWU.

TWU has an average classroom teaching efficiency of 110.8 percent, which is better than the average Texas classroom teaching efficiency of 104.9 percent, Dowling said, but changes need to be made across departments universitywide.

Accreditation and statewide requirements for certain programs only muddied the efficiency percentage, he said.

The class section cuts will likely affect the arts, sciences and government studies more than medical specialties because of accreditation requirements, said Dr. Larry Petterborg, speaker of the Faculty Senate and a physical therapy professor.

A small number of TWU faculty members have expressed concerns over the larger class sizes that will take effect next spring, he said.

“The concern is that larger classes potentially are going to cause less satisfaction with the students,” he said. “Other universities have class sizes in the hundreds and we haven’t had to do that. We have prided ourselves on smaller classes with more intimate contact. … We’ll see how it shakes out, but it has to be done.”

Although this was a difficult process, it went as well as could be expected in the summer when many faculty members aren’t in town and the university was forced to make cuts, Petterborg said.

“The lines of communication were very open and very public,” he said. “This wasn’t something done secretly. It was done openly, and if faculty had concerns, they had opportunities to express it.”

The negotiations between the provost’s office and individual department chairpersons and faculty were important given the circumstances, Petterborg said.

“This was a collective effort; every unit gave up something and everyone is contributing to [dealing with] the budget shortfall,” he said.

CANDACE CARLISLE can be reached at 940-566-6889. Her e-mail address is ccarlisle@dentonrc.com.

IN OTHER ACTION

Texas Woman’s University Board of Regents:

* increased the contract with HKS and Associates by $362,000 to design a 600-space parking garage, which will support the T. Boone Pickens Institute of Health Sciences in Dallas;

* recommended the construction request for the $17.5 million new Fitness and Recreation Building be sent to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board;

* approved selling $17.5 million in bonds for the construction of the Fitness and Recreation Building on the Denton campus. The bonds are expected to be repaid through a recreation fee over a 20-year period;

* approved purchasing 1119 Frame St. for $101,250, which will become part of the university’s master plan area;

* approved a differential tuition of $25 per semester credit hour for undergraduate and graduate nursing courses to fund faculty recruitment for the program;

* increased board authorized tuition for graduate courses from $40 to $45 per semester credit hour;

* approved a new library fee structure of $9 per semester credit hour, which replaces the current flat rate of $50 per student per semester. This would mean an increase for most full-time students.