The University of Alaska is seeing the impacts statewide of the $6.8 million reduction in funds from the state for fiscal year 2016.
The Kenai Peninsula College was prepared to deal with its $425,000 budget reduction according to Director Gary Turner, who oversees all four peninsula campuses and said there will be no faculty cut.
Turner: “The way we’re going to handle that is we had some retirements this year so we’re not going to fill two vacated Kenai River Campus faculty positions, one of those is a history position and the other one was a digital art professor.”
Turner said the Digital Art Program was not growing, so after the professor’s retirement in May, administration decided to leave that open.
History requirements can be filled via distance courses from a history professor at the Kachemak Bay Campus and community adjunct faculty.
Turner said five faculty retired this year, creating openings along with giving the Kenai River Campus a salary surplus.
Turner: “And when you have somebody that’s been with the university or the college for 20 years, 25 to 30 years, typically when you rehire, you’re rehiring at a lower level and so you have the difference between what you paid the past person and what you’re paying the new person. So that added up to quite a few dollars as well.”
The Kenai Peninsula College is one of the only University of Alaska colleges to show consistent enrollment growth for the past 5 years.
Turner said administration began planning in January to balance that growth with the increasingly slim state funding forecast for Fiscal Year 2017.