November 4, 2005

Dear Faculty and Staff,

We want to take this opportunity to bring you up to date on a number of important issues facing the university and the decisions they are requiring us to make on a daily basis.

We are facing unprecedented fiscal challenges right now. In August we made a commitment to continue paying the full time faculty and staff. That is a commitment of roughly $30 million dollars in a period when the university is unsure of its income stream. As many of you know, we are also heavily dependent on tuition (80% in a regular budget year). With students now at 360 different institutions, we do not yet know how many tuition dollars we will be able to recoup for the fall semester. Some schools have told us to keep the tuition dollars students might have paid us already for the fall semester, but many have not. We are working, institution to institution, to sort out our tuition income. So far, none of the supplemental bills, passed by Congress, are directed to higher education nor are higher ed institutions eligible for funds like Bush-Clinton. The President’s supplemental spending bill has no money for higher education either for schools, like Loyola, directly affected by Katrina or schools who took in our students.

Our fiscal challenges will also depend on the number of students who return to us in the spring semester and the number of new students who come to Loyola next fall. Even optimal Spring enrollments will leave significant challenges to our budget and may entail cost reductions. Enrollment shortfalls, of course, would present further difficulties. But, at this point, we have decided to prepare for different potential reduction scenarios and wait until we have a better sense of what our enrollment will look like before making any decisions. Having said that, we want to thank the faculty for all their work in remaining in contact with students. We know from alumni chapter events and other events that students are very appreciative of what their faculty have done during this period.

We are truly empathetic to the difficult circumstances in which many of our faculty and staff find themselves personally. So many of our colleagues have substantial losses. We have been working with FEMA and private realtors to find housing options for faculty, staff, and students. The work with FEMA has been almost daily and very frustrating. But we continue. We are trying to open as many doors and options for faculty, staff, and students as possible. Because of so much uncertainty about the timeline and what FEMA may ultimately do to provide housing, we again encourage those of you able to offer housing assistance to fellow members of our community to do so. We have also been working with Tulane and the Orleans Parish School Board to help open the Lusher School as a charter school in January as a means to assist in educating the children of our faculty and staff.

Recognizing the circumstances of the aftermath of Katrina, the Board of Trustees, at its meeting in October, directed the President to prepare a Strategic Blueprint showing how Loyola University New Orleans might recover and move forward over the next three years. The Board asked that the Blueprint be presented at its December meeting. The Blueprint will be informed by the work of the university community over the last several years but will do so in light of our new circumstances. The impact of Katrina on Loyola and New Orleans will be long lasting. The Blueprint is to stabilize the University until we again focus on our longer term direction. (You might remember that the President served on the Loyola Board for six years before becoming President and, for all of those years, served on the Academic Affairs committee of the Board. He is acutely aware of the various planning documents which the university community has presented to the Board.)

Even as we move forward with the internal affairs of the university, we are at the same time deeply concerned about the suffering of the Greater New Orleans community. Therefore, Loyola’s faculty and administration are and have been involved since the beginning of discussions in both the Mayor and the Governor’s efforts to rebuild the City and the region. Father Wildes, for example, is a member of the advisory council for the education committee of Bring Back New Orleans. There are other faculty and staff members involved as well. We anticipate there will be many opportunities for more of us to become involved in that rebuilding effort over the next few years.

Several of our sister institutions were physically devastated by Hurricane Katrina and her aftermath. As many of you know from news stories, in early October Loyola joined a consortium with Tulane, Xavier and Dillard universities to explore ways the universities might work together to support one another to educate students. Given the resource limitations each of us is facing, there are major challenges to achieving viable solutions. Yet, it is important to New Orleans and the region that each of the institutions survive and continue to carry out the important mission for which each is known. The next meeting of the consortium will take place on our campus on November 11.

The Council of Deans has been discussing now for several weeks how we might structure a spring calendar that further serves both our students who were enrolled elsewhere during the fall semester and those forced to sit out during that time. At its last meeting, the Council agreed on a set of creative designs that will allow us to provide two back to back semesters between January and the end of July structured in such a way as to meet the minimum number of contact hours required per course. These designs make use of sub- sessions, as well, so that departments choosing to use them have additional means of serving their students. The basic idea is to create a structure that best attracts students back to Loyola; a structure that allows students to catch up; and a structure that generates additional revenue over and above that which can be expected with an ordinary second half to the academic year.

At the urging of SACS, the university determined it was in its best interest to move ahead with the SACS reaffirmation process since much of the work for the initial submission was completed prior to Katrina’s strike. As all of you have heard over the last two years, the SACS reaffirmation process has changed substantially in the last ten years since Loyola was reaccredited. Submissions are now done in two parts. The first is the submission of the Certificate of Compliance which is strictly an administrative documentation of how well the university meets SACS standards and criteria. The second submission due several months later is the Quality Enhancement Plan. Last summer the faculty and staff subcommittees of the QEP Team submitted their 6 draft reports with 13 separate project proposals to the QEP Team chair. Over the last several months those drafts have been edited into a coherent report. During this period when QEP Team members have been scattered around the country, the Council of Deans has substituted for the team in providing input into the development of the QEP report. As soon as we are in a position on campus to hold town hall style meetings again, that report will be presented to the university community for further input before its submission to SACS on January 31. In his meetings with alumni, students, and parents, around the nation, one of the questions Father Wildes has been asked consistently concerns the impact of Katrina on Loyola’s accreditation. That we are moving forward in this process is reassuring to parents.

The President and Provost value the participation and advice offered by all members of the university community in the care and operation of the university. In matters of curriculum and faculty hiring and tenure decisions, the Faculty play a primary role, and we honor that role. While faculty advice is valued in other areas, such as budget and facilities, the President, his staff, and the Board of Trustees are responsible for the administration and fiscal operations of the university, and the unique circumstances in which the University finds itself may require immediate decision-making in these areas. We look forward to all of us continuing to work together for the betterment of Loyola University New Orleans. There is no doubt we all love this university, and we will persevere through our current adversity to make it an even greater university. We will be providing periodic updates directly to faculty and staff.

With Deepest Sincerity and Thanks to All,
Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J., President
Walter Harris, Jr., Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs