Natural sciences faces $2 million budget cut

Editor’s note: This is the seventh installment in a series

examining the effects of budget cuts on each of the university’s

eight colleges. Next Tuesday’s Collegian will feature the College

of Agricultural Sciences as the final installment.

Majors within the College of Natural Sciences are not the only

ones affected by the college’s budget cuts.

The college lost about 9 percent of its budget due to state

cuts, which is roughly $2 million, said Rick Miranda, the dean of

the college.

These cuts have forced the Department of Mathematics to cut back

the operational hours of the Individualized Mathematics

Program.

Brett Sandford, a student staff member at the IMP office, said

he has noticed a change in the flow of students due to the

reduction in hours.

“That’s had a pretty substantial effect in how busy it’s been.

Not so much in the morning, but in the evening,” said Sandford, a

junior biological science major. “It increases the frequency that

people are in here.”

Simon Tavener, the department head of mathematics, said IMP

hours could be cut back again in the spring.

“We are not able to replace retiring faculty. That’s

fundamentally how we are able to face budget cuts,” Tavener said.

“We are having to cut back on IMP hours. Next semester we will have

to close on Friday.”

IMP staff consists of student and faculty who earn hourly

wages.

“If we cut back those hours we cut back our costs,” Tavener

said.

Tavener said so far lecture sections are still at manageable

sizes.

“We have not had to go to teaching in extremely large sections,”

Tavener said.

Miranda said they have done a variety of things across the eight

departments to meet the budget cuts.

“We used to run the lab on the second floor of Weber

(Building),” Miranda said. “We’ve had to close that lab.”

College-wide, natural sciences has about 15 empty faculty

positions. It has also cut back on the number of graduate teaching

assistants it hires, Miranda said.

“That hurts us in our ability to offer laboratory classes,”

Miranda said.

The Department of Computer Science has seen its number of

teaching assistants decrease.

“One of the main ways it’s affected us is we’ve cut back on

TAs,” said Darrell Whitley, the department head of computer

science. “It will be a continued problem until the cuts

change.”

Both of the department heads in biology and chemistry are new to

their positions this year.

“I’m sort of having to deal with the effects,” said Tony Rappe,

the head of chemistry. “We’re trying to reduce spending any way we

can. We will try not to do anything that will affect the overall

program.”

Rappe said that while there has been a reduction in some

courses, the department is basically teaching the same amount as

last year.

Daniel Bush, the head of biology, came to CSU from the

University of Illinois, which has been dealing with budget cuts for

the past few years.

“What’s happened in Colorado has happened around the country,”

Bush said. “I’ve been impressed at how positive the faculty are.

Their response has been looking forward. Not all faculties respond

the same way.”

The biology department lost two faculty members.

“(The budget cuts) have a lot of broad impacts, some of them are

more subtle,” Bush said. “You lose a couple faculty, you’ve lost

some expertise. You lose that research quality as well.”

Core classes are often the focus when looking at areas to cut,

but that can have an impact on the other classes that are

offered.

“When we put faculty in the core classes, there’s an impact,”

Bush said. “There’s a few students, usually biology majors, that

may have less-specialized classes.”

Most of the cuts have been done for this year with minimal cuts

coming in the future.

“I’m hoping it won’t get much worse than that,” Miranda said.

“It’s not easy and it’s not comfortable. We’ve been able to patch

things together.”