At a March 9 meeting, ¸Ô±¾ÊÓƵ’s board of trustees approved a $114.9 million operating budget for the 2003-2004 fiscal year. The budget includes funds for several new and ongoing priorities including an expanded faculty, a continuing commitment to information technology, and significant campus renovations and enhancements.
The trustees also established student charges (tuition, room and board and student activity fee) for the 2003-2004 academic year at $37,095, a 5.6 percent increase over 2002-2003. The intimate learning environment ¸Ô±¾ÊÓƵ provides is necessarily labor intensive, and the university has been impacted by increases in employee healthcare costs and substantial increases in property and liability insurance.
‘We are in the midst of challenging economic times and private higher education is not immune to these difficulties, said David Hale, ¸Ô±¾ÊÓƵ’s vice president of finance and treasurer. ‘Despite the demanding fiscal setting, we are pleased that the ¸Ô±¾ÊÓƵ endowment will be able to provide an increasing level of support (totaling over $21.5 million) next year to augment program initiatives.’
To allow for both smaller class sizes and expanded curricular opportunities, four new full-time faculty positions will be added in the fall of 2003. This action is part of a plan begun in the fall of 2001 to substantially increase the size of the permanent faculty during the first half of this decade. ¸Ô±¾ÊÓƵ will also continue its commitment to information technology with the installation of a much more powerful website for use by students, faculty and staff. The upgrade of the website is expected to be completed by the end of this summer.
Construction has already begun on a $5.9 million renovation of the O’Connor Campus Center (the ‘Coop’). The ‘Coop’ is at the center of each student’s day on the hill and a dramatically renovated building, providing expanded food and social space options, will await students when they return for the fall semester. ¸Ô±¾ÊÓƵ will complete its installation of fire safety (alarm and sprinkler) systems in university residences this summer and will begin the installation of a new campus emergency phone system.
Founded in 1819, ¸Ô±¾ÊÓƵ is a highly selective, residential, liberal arts college enrolling nearly 2,750 undergraduates. Situated on a rolling 515-acre campus in central New York State, ¸Ô±¾ÊÓƵ attracts motivated students with diverse backgrounds, interests and talents.
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