The Yale Corporation met last weekend for the second time this academic year to assess alternatives for closing the University’s $300 million budget gap.
Budget concerns dominated discussion, University President Richard Levin said, as they have at every gathering of the University’s highest governing body since the beginning of the recession. Levin called the meetings “fruitful and productive” but said no final conclusions were reached; administrators will announce a finalized plan in late January, he said.
“Our major focus is to find as many targeted specific actions as we can to raise revenue or cut costs so we can keep across-the-board cuts as low as possible,” Levin said.
The buildings and grounds committee met to review a 10-year report on campus planning and concluded that Yale has “adhered quite well” to the guidelines it set for itself a year ago, Levin said.
Although the review results were favorable, it is hard not to notice the effect of the recession on capital and construction projects, Levin said. Almost all campus construction has been frozen.
“It used to be we had so many projects in the pipeline that it overcrowded the agenda,” he said. “This weekend’s meeting was much more focused on reporting on projects that are nearing completion, like Morse College and the Health Plan building.”
The Corporation also heard a series of presentations on undergraduate science teaching from astronomy and physics professor Charles Bailyn, Dean of Science Education William Segraves and chemistry professor Scott Strobel.
Others who spoke to the Corporation this weekend were Vice President for Finance and Business Operations Shauna King, who gave a presentation on the budget, and Law School Dean Robert Post, who addressed the Corporation for the first time since he took over last summer after his predecessor, Harold Hongju Koh, took his new job as chief legal adviser to the State Department.