Why Does The Mathematics Department Need Private Funds?

The department receives some funds through allocations from the university. Primarily these funds are used to support the teaching of classes. Currently the department has 31 regular faculty, approximately 32 graduate teaching associates, and 4 full-time staff positions. In addition the department employs from 4 to 8 lecturers each semester to teach lower division classes and employs from 25 to 35 students who work either in the office and at the MLRC. More than 97 percent of the allocation goes to salaries, wages and benefits. As the university has tried to stay competitive increases in state funding and tuition have gone to personnel costs and almost entirely to faculty and full-time staff. Consequently the maintenance portion of the budget has been essentially unchanged for 20 years. Further the funds for graduate teaching assistants were cut significantly in the 1990's and again in the early 2000's. The result has been larger classes and reduced support for faculty and graduate student research and travel to meetings. To be specific the department has $4,500 for travel. The cost to send one faculty member to the joint meetings (AMS-MAA-SIAM) in January was approximately $1,500. Other meetings are slightly less costly, but the reality is that allocated funds can only pay for five faculty  to go on trips to meetings.

The college provides some funds for travel on a competitive basis. A proposal must be written and a limit of $500 or $1000 is generally set on these awards. The department gets about two of these each year. For special projects and research some faculty are able to obtain funding from the state or federal government. The competition for grants is fierce so only a small number of our faculty have grants at any one time. In the last few years we have also been fortunate to have young faculty who receive start-up funds as part of their initial appointment. These funds must be spent during the first two years of a new faculty member's appointment. In another year we will likely have no faculty with start-up funds. What has helped us greatly is that we have some endowments. Three are chairs or professorships that provide funds for use by a faculty member. While these funds are designated for the professor to use, our faculty holding these positions have generously used the funds to support the travel of other faculty and to provide summer support for graduate students.

Here I have concentrated on one area where allocated funds are not at all sufficient. As you look through the list of needs you will see that increased funding is desperately needed to recruit high quality graduate and undergraduate students, to improve facilities, and to recruit additional faculty.