My Colleagues and Friends:

In November, I wrote to you about the growing turmoil in our national and international economy. Now it is clear to everyone that the crisis has continued unabated throughout the nation's financial infrastructure. It has impacted all of higher education as well.

Following months of monitoring and planning by the Executive Cabinet and discussions with members of the Board of Regents, I am writing a second letter to address what we intend to do throughout the rest of the academic year and in preparing the budget for the 2010 fiscal year (1 July 2009 to 30 June 2010).

I am pleased to report that the steps we have taken to ensure a balanced budget for the remainder of the fiscal year (through 30 June 2009) have been successful to date. Contingency funding and cost savings have allowed us to respond to declines in both endowment and enrollment. Looking forward, however, we recognize that there are significant challenges.

Over the last several years we have made serious investments in competitive compensation for our faculty, administrators and staff; in the development of the University's very successful core curriculum; in strategic infrastructure improvements; and in large increases in financial aid for students. At the same time, we have wanted to ensure that revenues — 90 percent of which are derived from tuition and related auxiliary expenses — support our ambitious dreams.

To that end, I wish to share with you some decisions we are making and options we are considering to get us through next year's budget:

• As president, I feel a keen responsibility for each person who works at the University. We are a community — and how we treat one another in difficult times, I believe, says a great deal about who we are. We intend to explore a number of different alternatives to minimize any job loss.
  
  In an attempt to maintain current jobs, we will suspend salary increases (for all non-union employees) for the 2010 fiscal year. This has been a very difficult decision to make but I assure you that, in our desire to avoid layoffs, it is a necessary one.
  
  
• We will also need to be highly vigilant in our hiring. I have therefore appointed a Hiring Review Committee to appraise all administrative and staff hiring requests. Father Paul Holmes, vice president and assistant to the president, Susan Basso, associate vice president for human resources, and Dr. Larry Robinson, vice provost, will review all such requests.
  
  We remain committed to the centrality of academics and we will have a separate process, under the provost, Dr. Gabriel Esteban, for faculty hiring. Requests for faculty hiring will be reviewed by the Provost's Office in consultation with appropriate academic leadership.
  
  Recommendations on hiring requests will be submitted to my office before hiring managers can move forward.
  
  
• Seeking input during this budget process over the coming weeks, I have constituted a working group to include the chair of the Faculty Senate, the dean of the College of Education and Human Services, the president of the Student Government Association and the Executive Cabinet. They will take stock of the University's financial situation and make recommendations for the 2010 budget that will ultimately be submitted to the Board of Regents for approval.
  
  
• It is essential that whatever operational cost savings may be needed to balance the budget will be based on our priorities and values as an academic institution. All the members of the University community, however, can look for strategic and effective ways to live within our means. I am already grateful for the sacrifices that have been made throughout the University, and I will be relying on our shared sense of responsibility as we put together a balanced budget for the coming fiscal year.
  
  
• As we look at an extensive list of maintenance projects, we have already determined to keep costs down by repairing, rather than replacing, aging equipment and by deferring, for at least another year, projects that have the least impact on our community.
  

The provost has optimistically pointed out that higher education is often "counter-cyclical" — that is, when an economic downturn adversely affects other sectors of the national economy, enrollment in higher education increases. In the face of fewer employment opportunities, an increased number of high school seniors decide to attend college and those already in the workforce often go back to school to burnish their credentials and gain new skills. I want to assure you that we will be making every effort to seize strategic opportunities for strengthening and enhancing our stature as a major Catholic university.

Years from now, I expect that we will look somewhat different than we do today. In many important ways, we already look astonishingly different than we did five, ten or fifteen years ago. I believe we have become a much stronger and more prominent academic institution. How we get "there" from "here" will require very careful, prudent steps — which we have already begun to take together.

I invite the University community to use the form on the right hand side of this page to offer suggestions about how we will move forward. Please offer ideas and recommendations about revenue enhancement and cost savings and I intend to visit the database on a regular basis over the coming months.

I promise to write to you again as we approach "crunch time" with the 2010 budget. Meanwhile, everyone in the impressive Seton Hall family is in my prayers.

Monsignor Robert Sheeran