Trading College of Engineering budget for deanship would be bad for FAMU

John Thrasher would not have agreed to let FAMU become the tenure home for the next College of Engineering (COE) dean without negotiating something big for Florida State University. If Elmira Mangum is preparing to give up the COE’s core operating budget in exchange for the chance to hire the new dean, then that would be a bad deal for FAMU.

Back in 1987, FAMU President Frederick S. Humphries and FSU President Bernie Sliger signed an agreement that said that FAMU would permanently manage the operations budget for the College of Engineering.

But according to a joint statement from FAMU and FSU released on June 1: “the tenure home for the next dean will rotate to FAMU.” The joint press release did not specify whether the decision to “rotate” the next dean’s tenure home means that FAMU and FSU are set to switch the roles established by the 1987 agreement.

FSU already receives a separate engineering appropriation that was a total $5 million in 2014. If FSU becomes the new fiscal agent/budget manager for the COE, then it will also receive the $12.9 million appropriation for basic COE operations this year. That means FSU would manage at least $17.9 million for the college in 2015-2016 and FAMU would manage $0.

That would be a great deal for FSU but a terrible one for FAMU. Humphries was smart to make sure that FAMU received the COE budget because it guides what the dean can do. The budget decisions mandate which departments get new faculty members, when personnel receive raises, the areas of research that will be emphasized, and which building maintenance needs are addressed first.

Humphries also agreed to support Innovation Park as the permanent location of the COE as part of the 1987 agreement. FSU probably decided to focus on getting the choice of the building site in order to try and shape the COE in the model of the colleges on the FSU main campus. These things also helped to push back against the threat that FSU would be seen as a secondary player that was simply attached to an “HBCU” College of Engineering.  

But the budget is now more important to FSU because it wants to shape COE expenditure decisions around its goal of making it into the American Association of Universities.

Back in 2008, FSU President T.K. Wetherell complained about the differences in the “mixture” of students that FAMU and FSU wanted. The comments came months after some of his legislative buddies had tried to help him take the core engineering budget away from FAMU.

“They’re looking for a different mixture for their students and we’re looking for a different mixture,” Wetherell said.

T.K’s comments about FAMU and FSU’s different goals for the “mixture” of engineering students were a reflection of one of the biggest bones of contention within the COE. FAMU, as the fiscal agent/budget manager, has refused to dignify elitist “ranking games.” FAMU wants to educate as many minority students as possible. But the ranking game that FSU wants to play rewards universities that reject the most applications, often at the expense of minority students.

The FAMU Board of Trustees has not taken a vote to approve a change to the 1987 agreement. But that might not matter. Both chambers of the Florida Legislature voted to move the $12.9M core operating budget for the COE from the FAMU general revenue line item to a new budget entity entitled: “FAMU/FSU College of Engineering.”

This creates a chance to promote an interpretation that the Joint College Governance Council will be in charge of the budget. The Joint College Governance Council is formed in a way that could let FSU and the BOG chancellor simply vote together in order to make sure that FSU gets its way on all the big decisions. That could become another way for FSU to take the fiscal agent/budget manager job away from FAMU.

Note: This post contains corrections made on October 19, 2015.