The Daily Bulletin

Over the past several years, I have detailed our budgetary and enrollment challenges at Buffalo State College, including a December 2021 message in which I announced that we would work together toward a multiyear plan to steady our enrollment picture and secure a financially stable and sustainable future at Buffalo State.

In April and May, we gathered for a series of listening sessions to discuss some of the factors that have contributed to our enrollment and financial challenges, and many of you shared outstanding solutions and ideas to improve our campus that are reflected in the plan I am sharing with you today. From suggestions about how to increase retention and improve the student advising experience, to discussions about new academic programs and recruitment tactics, to creative ideas about how to leverage our campus facilities to create new and sustained revenue streams—I was encouraged by the collective enthusiasm and can-do mindset that will contribute to our future success.

At last month’s College Senate meeting, Vice President Laura Barnum outlined our anticipated financial picture for next year and moving forward. While the New York State budget process did accelerate the closing of the TAP gap, likely resulting in roughly $3 million annually in new tuition revenue for Buffalo State, we are planning for a recurring structural deficit of about $12 million. While CARES COVID relief funding, along with our institutional reserve fund, has helped us weather a difficult storm over the past two years, those safety nets will help us bridge the gap between our revenue and expenses for just one more year. To that end, today I am announcing an aggressive four-year plan to ensure that we fulfill the mission and strategic priorities of campus and stabilize our financial footing. The plan, which runs from 2022–2023 to 2025–2026, aims to fully align our revenue and expenses by fall 2026 through a series of seven priorities and key performance indicators, including increasing overall enrollment by 15 percent, increasing fundraising and advocacy efforts, and strategic workforce planning and development. The work will be difficult; however, I am optimistic that by working together, we will secure Buffalo State’s future and thrive.

The Environment
For the last several years, we have followed the demographic trends that have revealed smaller numbers of high school graduates within the Northeast. The heightened level of competition for a shrinking pool of students necessitated changes to our recruitment plan, our communication with prospective students, and the level of support that is needed to bring in similar numbers of first-year students. While the number of entering first-year students has decreased some, we have seen the number of transfer students plummet during the same period. Community colleges within our catchment area have revealed declines in enrollment within the last 10 years resulting in as much as a 50 percent drop in overall enrollment. This situation has been inflamed by retention struggles that have required significant shifts in the supportive efforts and structures to help students succeed. This has been the pattern across SUNY and throughout many higher education institutions for the last decade. And then in spring 2020, our campus and our world absorbed the impact of a global pandemic.

The immediate consequences of the pandemic were significant. Moving classes online, sending residential students home to complete their semester, refunding tuition, and providing virtual support became the mountain we climbed. Students finally returned to campus with guidance to maintain a healthy environment that included mask mandates, social distancing, and vaccination requirements. These changes escalated an already difficult situation, and students, faculty, staff, and administrators maneuvered a new environment, with new rules, unclear and frequently changing guidance, and concerns for their own health as well as their families’.

Today, two and half years after the start of the pandemic, we must strategize how to handle the old issues of enrollment challenges while recognizing the varied pressures of our new environment. The following plan has been developed to codify our current position and to guide the campus to new levels of success and future sustainability. The problems and constraints we experience are not unique to Buffalo State, but in order to move through our current situation, we must embrace the need for creative solutions, flexibility in thought and action, hard choices, and the willingness to work together to meet our mission as an urban-engaged campus that seeks to embrace our JEDI philosophy and transform the lives of every student that enters our doors.

Priorities, Goals, and Progress to Date

1. Priority: Increase enrollment with a focus on undergraduate retention and increasing our share of varied student sub-populations (transfer, out of state, international, and nontraditional students) and graduate populations. (Completed in collaboration with Academic Affairs to modify or develop attractive program offerings to address current student interests).

• Goal: Increase overall student population by 15 percent by fall 2026 (as compared with fall 2021).
• Responsible agents: Vice President for Enrollment Management Bowen in collaboration with Provost Mayrose.
• Progress: Earlier this month, Intercollegiate Athletics announced the addition of three new sports—acrobatics and tumbling, women’s wrestling, and men’s volleyball—that should eventually bring more than 100 new student-athletes to campus. Additionally, via the Strategic Resource Planning Process, we have increased our marketing and advertising budget in each of the past two years.

2. Priority: Increase community-directed programs (workforce programs, continuing education, special short-term programs).

• Goal: Increase the revenue from these programs by 20 percent by 2026.
• Responsible agents: Provost Mayrose with lead Kristin Fields, director of continuing and professional studies.
• Progress: Net revenue from programs such as dual credit, work-based learning, and workforce development have increased significantly since summer 2020. For instance, dual-credit enrollment has more than doubled from 117 students in 2020 to 284 in 2021.

3. Priority: Increase collaborations with partner agencies, organizations, and outside entities to promote the use of campus facilities to meet the needs of partners while offering a steady source of revenue for the college.

• Goal: Increase the revenue from these collaborations by 50 percent by 2026.
• Responsible agents: VPFM Barnum with lead Michael Lewis, senior director of administrative operations, in collaboration with Sarah Reid, campus planner; Brian Wittmer, interim director of capital design and construction; and others as needed.
• Progress: As announced in March, we are finalizing plans to welcome the Buffalo Public Schools back to campus in fall 2023, when Leonardo da Vinci High School moves into Buckham Hall. This will create dual enrollment opportunities and establish a new steady source of revenue for our campus. Events Management is hosting a number of conferences on campus this summer, while Intercollegiate Athletics has developed a number of new connections in the community leading to increased rentals of Coyer Field and our indoor athletic facilities.

4. Priority: Continue successful fundraising activities for programmatic needs of the college and cultivate additional supporters that fund program needs.

• Goal: Increase programmatic funds by 100 percent by 2026.
• Responsible agents: Vice President for Institutional Advancement Finnerty in collaboration with others as needed.
• Progress: Our 25th annual Bengala broke a fundraising record with nearly $500,000 raised to support the Muriel A. Howard Honors Program. A recent $2.1 million gift to our Speech-Language Pathology Department is another example of the good work already underway.

5. Priority: Continue current workplace efficiency plans and develop collaborations that use integrated services and technological solutions between campus units or with other SUNY campuses.

• Goal: Develop and implement at least two campus shared services that create savings by 2026.
• Responsible agents: Cabinet members in collaboration with their divisional leadership.
• Progress: Buffalo State is working with fellow SUNY comprehensive campuses in Western New York to look at opportunities to improve efficiencies and shared services related to human resources, payroll, and benefits. Additionally, similar to the SUNY WestCam (Western New York campuses) legal partnership, Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests will soon be managed through a collaboration between multiple WNY campuses. Furthermore, the college’s Sponsored Programs Operations Office is providing services to two other SUNY campuses.

6. Priority: Focus significant attention on advocacy goals with the state of New York to improve the college’s overall financial standing.

• Goal:

a. Vigorously advocate funding for negotiated salary increases (success would result in a $2 million to $3 million increase for campus).

b. Vigorously advocate targeted state tax support for Buffalo State due to its special urban-engaged mission and diversity of the student body (advocate a targeted amount of $5 million).

c. Advocate adjustments in state funding to account for inflation.

d. Advocate a tuition rate increase.

• Responsible agents: President with lead William Benfanti, associate vice president for institutional advancement.
• Progress: The 2022–2023 NYS Budget Process provided a down payment toward these goals by closing the TAP gap, resulting in approximately $3 million in new revenue for the campus.

7. Priority: Strategically continue workforce planning across the college to address the budget deficit while maintaining the essential components for our educational enterprise and adhering to compliance requirements. Workforce planning will be grounded in appropriate metrics, benchmarks, and the campus budgeting processes.

• Goal: Reduce campus expenses strategically across campus.

a. Institute a permanent reduction of 5 percent across all OTPS for the 2022–2023 budget cycle.

• By fall 2026, reduce workforce by 10 percent—including but likely not limited to retirements, attrition, and re-imagining of roles—resulting in a reduction of $7 million, and closely monitor the results. Just as we did during our budget rebalancing efforts from 2017 to 2020, where we reduced our expenditures by $7 million, these workforce planning decisions will continue to be managed at the divisional/VP level. During the pandemic, in response to SUNY and NYS Division of Budget spending constraints, each VP developed its workforce planning and development plans. These efforts will continue as we look to make an additional $7 million reduction in personnel expenditures as part of this financial sustainability plan.
• Responsible agents: All cabinet members led by VPFM Barnum with collaboration of James Thor, AVP for financial operations and comptroller; Jamie Warnes, interim AVP for human resource management; and Yves Gachette, director of institutional research.
• Progress: The college reduced expenditures by $7 million between 2017 and 2020 as part of the budget rebalancing efforts. Thanks in part to the spending constraints put in place in May 2020, we have reduced our salary expenditures by $3 million fiscally in each of the past two years. Our provost and vice presidents are carefully scrutinizing their workforce plans to consider if the $3 million savings can be realized on a permanent basis toward the $7 million salary reduction target. Using metrics and benchmarking, the college will evaluate current workforce staffing levels and set annual targets as part our annual Strategic Resource Planning Process.

(Note: A failure to meet the goals outlined in priorities 1–6 will result in the need to further reduce our expenses and workforce.)

In September, we will launch a website to track our progress toward these initiatives. Although our journeys to reach our goals may not be uniform, we will be transparent about our progress, updating the website regularly.

For 150 years, Buffalo State College has been a beacon of hope for social progress and a better life for our students and our community. As we work together to meet the challenges of today, let us not forget the importance of that work and the transformative impact we have on the lives of our students every day. While times may be tough please remember that, like our students, we are resilient. We will meet this challenge, and we will successfully position Buffalo State for the next 150 years.