Earlier this month, Chancellor Henry Yang announced the reactivation of the Coordinating Committee on Budget Strategy, under the co-chairmanship of Gene Lucas, executive vice chancellor, and Joel Michaelsen, chair of the UCSB Academic Senate.

“The financial challenges now facing the State of California are very serious, and they will be with us for some time,” Yang said in a message to the campus. UCSB, like its sister campuses, must develop “plans to cope with diminished resources for the foreseeable future.”

The new budget strategy committee, which has some different members but the same leadership as one established in February 2003, is charged with balancing the present and expected funding reductions with protecting campus gains made in academic quality and student access. To Lucas and Michaelsen, the task looks familiar.

“Last time around we had three years of budget reductions,” Lucas recalled. They began with a mid-year cut in 2002-03, and ran through 2004-05 when the compact with the governor halted the hemorrhage of state funding. At that point, “we worked out a strategy to take the last cut over an ensuing three-year period” (2004-05 through 2006-07), said Lucas.

The chancellor’s message welcomed campus community members’ suggestions.