In an apparent preemptive strike against upcoming budget cuts, the University System of Maryland has imposed a hiring freeze across all state institutions.
A memo from the USM went out late Thursday afternoon to all state campuses, Towson provost James Clements said. The hiring freeze applies to all faculty, support staff and administrative positions that have not yet been filled.
The USM has foreseen a significant budget cut to higher education due to the struggling economy, administrators said. It could be the largest decrease in funding since 2003 when hundreds were laid off across the system.
"The expectation is that there will have to be a budget reduction and the USM will not be exempted," James Sheehan, Towson vice president of administration and finance, and chief financial officer, said in an e-mail. "The freeze is [in my opinion] in anticipation of the budget reduction."
Sheehan said Towson expect to have the budget within the next two weeks. The USM did not respond to multiple e-mail requests for comment.
As the state's growth institution, Towson has taken on hundreds of additional full-time equivalent students each year for half a decade. The state's funding for each student has grown by over $1,000 during President Robert Caret's six-year tenure. The impending budget cuts, however, could jeopardize the University's ability to continue to take on additional students.
"You can't really grow unless you have faculty to teach the classes and people to support the students," Clements said. "We don't know what's going to happen. Sometime in the next couple weeks we should learn a lot more."
The campus took on approximately 700 additional FTE for this academic year and was expecting to continue to grow at the same rate next year, administrators said.
"The president has stated on many occasions that Towson University will continue to grow as long as we receive the resources to support that growth," Sheehan said in an e-mail. "If there is a continuation of this budget problem into fiscal year 2010 it will likely have an impact on our growth."
September is annually an important time for the searches for new faculty and staff to begin in order to have the employees in place by the following fall semester. Towson was prepared to launch many searches in the coming weeks, including a permanent dean for The Jess and Mildred Fisher College of Science an Mathematics which has been led by acting dean David Vanko for the last year, Clements said.
The freeze has halted any motion toward the hiring cycle, and until the USM receives its final budget for the year, Towson will not be able to conduct a search, Clements said.
Vacant full-time faculty positions will remain unfilled, leaving the option of adding part-time faculty, Clements said. "Critical hires," however, will continue, according to Caret, who said Towson has been given flexibility to approve particular hires.
"As a designated growth institution we will have to handle it differently than an institution that is not growing - we are looking at all of our options and what that all means now," Caret said in an e-mail.
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