Budget may impact Engineering

The loss of state funding will affect the Engineering school's ability to improve and to grow, Engineering Dean Gregory Farrington said last week. "The loss of money is going to diminish our ability to invest in improvements," Farrington said. "The improvements we were hoping to make in labs, classrooms, libraries and in bringing computers into education will be very difficult." "This is where we feel it the hardest," he added. The funding loss will also affect the amount of staff the school can maintain. "The loss of money is certainly going to affect staffing levels in the school and the ease with which we can staff our programs," he said. "Also, it's going to diminish our ability to replace staff who resign. "In this situation, constancy is success and we are trying to avoid getting smaller and making really serious cutbacks," he said. "The problem is, whether we have the money or not, we still have to figure a way to [pay for everything,]" Farrington said. Farrington would not specify where the cuts were being made, because he said there were too many to list. "I find it hard to put in exact figures, it comes out of so many funds and allocations," Farrington said. Director of Fiscal Operations for the Engineering school Patrick Burke was not available for comment last week. The budget cuts are due to Governor Robert Casey's proposed budget which eliminates all funding for the University. Last week, administrators announced the 1992-93 budget, assuming that Pennsylvania legislators would approve Casey's budget. President Sheldon Hackney said the primary concern of administrators in formulating the budget was to "protect academic core functions of the University." And Budget Director Steven Golding said the schools have "sufficient time to reconstruct their budgets to account for the loss of Commonwealth funds." While the Engineering School is trying to deal with the loss, Farrington said, "It's just not fun."

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