Energy costs result in cuts

Rising energy costs have forced the University to cut spending by $3.7 million this year and are complicating energy conservation efforts, University Provost Christopher Eisgruber said at a faculty meeting Monday.

The meeting also included memorial resolutions for recently deceased professors Jeremiah Finch, Frederick Mote and George Reynolds GS '43.

Eisgruber said the budget situation was even more strained last year, when soaring energy prices and salaries for a larger-than-expected pool of new faculty members prompted $4 million cuts in spending elsewhere. He said the situation is "not much different" this year.

"Energy costs continue to escalate," he said. "Every time we think we've gotten our arms around them, we find we haven't done so."

This year's deficits were offset in part by a five percent increase in tuition, approved by the Board of Trustees last January, which went into effect this fall. Additionally, in a January report, the Priorities Committee — which deliberates on each year's operating budget — recommended decreasing energy consumption and filling vacant housing units. Any remaining gap would be covered by "reducing transfers from the operating budget to the renovations budget," the report said.

Eisgruber noted the University has been "a leader of energy conservation programs" in the recent past, citing the implementation of geothermal heating methods in the Lawrence Apartments. But he said the unpredictability of fuel costs has put a damper on such conservation efforts, as new programs become more difficult to fund.

"The size of those changes [in energy costs] is going to create major constraints in what we can do," he said.

Nevertheless, President Tilghman said during the meeting that the University continues to weigh environmental concerns when making its spending decisions. She added that administrators recently have been focusing on the effects of campus construction projects, such as Whitman College.

"We've been careful in new building projects to hire architects whose philosophy is a green philosophy," she said.

Eisgruber also assured faculty members that the University's future financial prospects remain solid. He said that longterm financial projects — such as PRINCO, a program to ensure the University's investments are used ethically — are progressing smoothly.

"I've been describing it as short-term financial pressures against a background of longterm financial health," he said.

Earlier in the meeting, faculty members read and approved resolutions to memorialize Finch, Mote and Reynolds, all of whom passed away earlier this year. After each resolution, Tilghman called for a moment of silence.

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English professor Thomas Roche spoke about Finch, an emeritus English professor and former Dean of the College who died in August at age 95.

Roche remembered Finch as a "genial and witty man" who "provided his colleagues with many insights into the vagaries of the English department." He praised Finch's efforts to create rhetoric and writing options for English concentrators, and recalled his description of a fellow professor as "the only person I know who could strut while sitting in a chair."

East Asian Studies and history professor Martin Collcutt memorialized Mote, an emeritus East Asian Studies professor who died in February at age 82.

Colcutt recalled Mote's passion for his field and "the infectiousness of his personal magnetism." He noted a "reclusive side" to Mote's character, saying that "the bamboo grove he planted outside his Princeton home ... was a tangible expression of the tension between creative expression and withdrawal," but emphasized that Mote was "never out of touch with friends."

Emeritus physics professor Pierre Piroué spoke about emeritus physics professor George Reynolds, who died in April at age 87.

Piroué remembered Reynolds's dedication to the cutting-edge research he conducted in the fields of cosmic rays, high energy particle physics and biophysics.

"He was inspired by the adage that a good university researcher should write either the first or last paper on any subject," he said.

But he added that Reynolds's greatest love was for the sea — so much so that he enlisted in the Navy when his peers were heading to the National Laboratory in Los Alamos. He even convinced Navy officials to waive an eyesight requirement that had previously disqualified him.

"Once [Mote] enlisted, he awaited orders," Piroué recalled. "They came, and told him to head immediately to Los Alamos."