Budget troubles force adjustments in benefits, cafe hours
Services in the DeVos Lobby may have been compromised by recent budget cuts.
As a result of financial challenges for the 2018-19 academic year, Calvin College is making cuts to spending, largely in faculty pay and benefits. A recent decrease in enrollment has created problems for the college, and as a result Calvin has adjusted its spending.
Sally Vander Ploeg, vice president of administration and finance, said, “This year we’ve made some adjustments throughout the summer because our enrollment was lower than the target that we were looking for in May. When the income goes down, the expenditures then have to go down as well.” Additional challenges include continuing to provide students with sufficient financial aid and balancing the budget so as to not be operating at a loss.
Because of this reduction in income through tuition, the financial services office has had to make adjustments in faculty and staff benefits and wage categories.
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“Probably between sixty and seventy percent of our expense lines in the budget are related to faculty and staff salary and benefits,” Vander Ploeg stated. “If we have changes in the income side, we try to make adjustments, and it’s sometimes hard to make those adjustments without impacting the benefits and the wages.” These adjustments affect a significant portion of the Calvin faculty and staff, but the financial services office made these adjustments in such a way as not to affect anyone’s cost of living, nor have there been any layoffs resulting from these changes.
However, staff are concerned that the cuts will affect the quality of their benefits and of the services offered at Calvin.. Patsy Westra, who works at the DeVos Grab-n-Go Café, has had her hours reduced this year from forty hours a week to thirty-five. “Once they cut a certain thing [in a business], then that will probably affect service,” said Westra. “Students come here for an education, but there’s also service: they need to eat, they need a place to live, they need a place to shop like the campus store—and the budget cuts will affect these services.”
Many who work and study in the DeVos Communications Building use the DeVos Café. They signed a petition expressing their desire to reestablish the Café’s hours back to last year’s hours. The Calvin Dining Services did respond by adjusting the Café’s hours. Students of the Calvin Academy for Lifelong Learning, clients of the Speech & Hearing Clinic, and visitors at the Prince Conference Center use the café even more frequently, as they come from off campus.
“Whoever is in charge of looking at those very important practical considerations [of changes to the budget], please realize how much that’s going to impact service,” said Westra.
Calvin’s income does not only come from tuition, however. Calvin also receives many donations for specific programs, projects and groups in the Calvin community. Professor Jolene Vos-Camy, vice-chair of faculty senate, spoke about fundraising and how it impacts the college’s budget.
“Fundraising supports the budget in that it can help fund professors’ work, for example. Donors can fund the construction of new buildings or renovations to buildings, or say, the work that’s going on at the Nature Preserve, which is funded by a donor,” she said. “That contributes to the financial soundness of the college.”
Regarding donations and fundraising, Vander Ploeg said,
“We have done very well on the donation and on the fundraising side of things. However, what we find is that many of those gifts come to the college, and they have a restriction associated with them from the donor.”
Several Calvin programs and centers have received significant gifts from donors this year, including Calvin LifeWork, the Kuyper Institute, the Ecosystem Preserve, the Calvin Institute for Christian Worship, and the Center for Faith and Writing. On top of these, Calvin has received gifts for student scholarships from donors who are invested in the students’ education here at Calvin. These donations, plus the careful adjustments made to the budget, make Calvin financially stronger.
“The president emphasized [in the faculty senate meeting] that we’ve done a lot of hard work in the last years to make the college financially sound and solid,” Professor Vos-Camy stated. “We’re more secure financially, even though we continue to face challenging times. We’re actually in better shape now than when the president arrived … we continue to have to be careful and creative, but overall, I continue to be optimistic.”
Opal Farwell • Sep 23, 2018 at 11:49 pm
My name is Opal Farwell. I am a Calvin alum who graduated from the Speech Language Pathology and Audiology Program at Calvin in 2016. I appreciate your taking the time to write this article for the Chimes and to conduct various staff interviews. I can speak on behalf of the Devos Café, for I spent countless hours there. The café at Devos is not merely about “service” though. The café supplies coffee and goods to meet the needs of students and professors, yes. But more than that, the café fosters community. It provides a safe place for students to go and sit together. It provides just one more person for students to be listened to, to be seen by, and to be heard (e.g., “how are you?”, “how was your weekend?”, “how did that exam go?”). The café brings a diverse group of people together (e.g., people from the community, on-campus workers, professors, and students, etc.). Reduction in hours lessons the time available for the community to build; the service becomes rushed and devoid of the gifts that come with it (e.g., encouragement, a smile, friendships, giving, etc.). As a former student, I know the stressors and pressures of the academic sphere. To have a place like the Devos café, run by a Patsy Westra, has great worth. I hope that that worth is not misplaced and/or forgotten. I hope that the café will continue to flourish in a way that displays God in his glory. Thanks -Opal Farwell