During the annual State of the University address delivered Oct. 5, Southeast president Carlos Vargas focused the majority of his remarks on how Southeast is working to find $1.7 million to balance this year’s budget.

Vargas also highlighted a slight increase to student retention rates and revealed Sonia Rucker would replace Deborah Below as dean of students.

Photo by Katelyn Mary Skaggs

Since his first day as president, increasing student retention has been one of Vargas’ main goals.

Vargas reported that freshman and sophomore retention has risen 1.1 percent, bringing retention to 75.1 percent overall.

Vargas’ ultimate goal is to achieve 80 percent retention and and hopes that cutting the university studies 9 credit upper-level course requirement will assist in achieving that goal.

__Budget__

In January Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens released his budget cut plan which cut Southeast’s base funding $3.43 million cut and the Cybersecurity Training Program $101,044. Since then Southeast has been working to balance the budget and prepare for future cuts which seem inevitable.

While speaking about the budget Vargas made it clear Southeast is not in a hiring freeze, something many Southeast community members believed was happening. According to Vargas, Southeast is on a four-month hiring delay not a hiring freeze.

Last spring, university officials were informed they would lose $6.6 million in state funding after projected state revenue growth did not meet the expectations for the 2017 state budget. In May, the Board of Regents approved a 2.8 percent increase to tuition and fees assessed to students for the 2017-2018 academic year to offset the lost funding, along with expense reductions and revenue increases recommended by a Budget Review Committee that was organized earlier in the academic year.

Early in September provost Karl Kunkel provided two proposals for restructuring due to budget cuts.

Since then the proposals have been going through the process of academic restructuring.

“These moves are being proposed to be more effective in what we are doing and serve department that have commonalities, overlapping themes,” Vargas said.

According to Vargas, it is a simple administrative move and will not affect any degree programs.

If anyone has any suggestions concurring the budget they were asked to email budgetforum@semo.edu.