Dr. Kathleen Curran
By Cheyenne Lazarus (Whetstone Staff Writer)
Dr. Kathleen Curran needs more money.
The biology professor and chair of her department isn’t talking about personal finances. She’s talking about her department.
Her department, and many others, including Media Arts, had less money in their budgets this year than in previous years.
No department heads knew how much their budgets were going to be until late last summer, a few weeks before fall semester started, she said.
Media Arts received a smaller budget compared to past years, said Dr. Tery Griffin, who chairs the department. She said she was surprised when she saw the budget for the department.
“We need more than we’re getting right now since we use most of the money to fix broken equipment,†she said.
A welcome change was the College’s IT department paying for the computer software used in the Mac lab, she said.
Curran said no one had enough money last semester. The budget for science was tight and did not allow the professors to buy a lot of the equipment they wanted.
“The budget got switched in August, so it was hard for us to buy the supplies we need and take advantage of the sale prices,†Curran said.
She said that the process of getting a new Chief Financial Officer, who is in charge of the College’s budget, created problems at the beginning of the school year. Christine Gibson was hired last summer as Wesley’s CFO after Ron Reck, who lasted a year, left.
Dr. Julie Fisher, a nursing professor, served on the budget committee, which met through must of last summer, as one of two faculty representatives.
She said she thought the budget process was fairly open and transparent with a lot of people involved. However, she agreed that getting a new CFO created a problem.
“Not all information got communicated effectively from the previous CFO to the new one,†she said.
Fisher said Nursing got some money back last year from student lab fees and that gave them a little extra money, but not substantially more.
“The budget process was fair, but the outcome was disappointing,†she said.
