Base Budget Necessities

Fully Fund Employee Compensation

$15.16 Million

This request is to support the annual salary increases for CWU faculty and staff and close the gap with the state’s share from 70% to 100%. This request does not retroactively replace tuition funds for these purposes and is only for future increases to salaries, benefits, and central services. Since 91% of CWU students are Washingtonians, they pay the lowest rate of tuition, which is capped and has been allowed to increase by less than 3% for the past decade. Additionally, we are primarily an undergraduate institution, providing the bachelor’s degrees needed to meet the state’s workforce needs; 92% of our students are undergraduate.

Finally, aside from overwhelmingly serving in-state undergraduate students, the demographics of CWU students more closely resemble those of community colleges in the sense that 46% are first-generation and 42% are people of color.

This squeeze between limited tuition and under-funding by the state has created an ongoing budget deficit as these costs continue to climb. As a university with a teaching mission, compensation costs represent 85% of CWU’s annual budget. The only meaningful tool CWU has to bridge the gap is to reduce our workforce, which is down 13% since 2019. This directly deteriorates the quality of instruction and student services as important positions become vacant and closed.

A state investment to alleviate this issue for this purpose would breathe new life into the university and enable us to become more responsive to student needs. This would be a significant improvement over the current system, where any new investments made at the university level are usually funded on a one-time basis with unexpected one-time savings.

Enterprise Risk Management

$5.1 Million

This three-pronged package represents unavoidable costs associated with the viability and security of the university enterprise. We have been covering these costs out of one-time funds and salary savings, and we need them to be fully funded by the state.

1. Information security – Cybersecurity, disaster recovery, and business continuity all pose significant risks to the institution in the world we now live in. It is imperative that CWU enhances protections for our data to ensure the welfare of students, faculty, staff, and the enterprise.
2. Civil rights and Title IX compliance – Due to a shifting regulatory landscape for staff to navigate, combined with an increased workload involved with compliance, CWU was in a position of liability risk. A stand-alone Office of Civil Rights Compliance was created to employ specially trained staff to handle the casework and relieve the overwhelmed Human Resources Department of the responsibility.
3. Website renewal – Public higher education institutions are unlike other state government agencies in that we must compete for customers, aka students. The single most important tool for this purpose is a highly functional website. CWU’s new website is multilingual, ADA compliant, and secure from cyber threats, but we need ongoing funding to maintain the site.

This request is the first phase of moving toward risk management and compliance. A second phase is anticipated in the next biennium.

Degree Attainment

$2.08 Million

Due to budget constraints since the pandemic, CWU has shed nearly 20% of our faculty since 2019. This request is to infuse academics with eight tenure track faculty members and 25 graduate assistants to increase our instructional capabilities. The disciplines that will receive these new positions are in high-demand fields such as business, engineering, safety, construction, teacher preparation, and computer science. This is the first phase of a two-phase request.

Other Base Budget Necessities

• Preventative Maintenance Fund Shift ($2.42 million) will improve facility preservation.
• WFSE Contract ($1 million) for classified staff in WFSE unio n.
• PSE Contract ($550,000) for classified staff in PSE union.
• CWU Teamsters Contract ($162,000) for CWU police officers union.

Program and Student Success Initiatives

Healthcare Workforce Expansion

$1.57 Million

Due to healthcare workforce shortages, CWU is proposing two investments to increase the output of essential healthcare workers. The first investment will enhance the number of behavioral health counseling services by increasing the number of graduate students trained in the CWU Mental Health Counseling Program.

The second investment will increase the number of healthcare workers by adding training at clinical sites, developing new healthcare-related degree programs at CWU, and establishing a centralized body focused on evidence-based evaluation of healthcare needs. This is the first phase of an expected two-phase request.

Multicultural Student Success

$1.37 Million

To elevate CWU’s commitment to diversity, we seek funding to significantly enhance our outreach, recruitment, and retention initiatives by focusing on Latinx and Native American students. This investment will empower

CWU to not only achieve Hispanic Serving and Minority Serving Institution status; it will also provide holistic, culturally relevant, and sustaining support. This funding is crucial for advancing experiential learning opportunities and ensuring our students are equipped with the tools, resources, and support necessary to succeed in the classroom and beyond.

CWU Sustainability Solutions Center

$742,000

CWU proposes to create a Sustainability Solutions Center (SSC), which will equip students with enhanced knowledge, skill sets, and experiential learning opportunities that will prepare them for the green workforce and help address society’s most pressing environmental challenges, including climate change. The SSC will serve as an interdisciplinary and collaborative platform for students, faculty, and staff to advance research and integrated problem-solving that will address critical sustainability issues in the region.

Business and Community Services

$1.2 Million

CWU is seeking to meet the challenges of the region by helping economically distressed communities engage in strategic planning so they can secure external resources, identify opportunities, and increase economic development. By launching Business and Community Ser vices (BCS), CWU is replicating a proven model with more than 30 years of success at the University of Northern Iowa to support and scale infield engagement by experienced PhD and MBA experts toward a community-empowered pursuit of sustainable opportunities.

Communities that partner with BCS can expect to move toward solutions for healthcare, affordable housing, job opportunities, improved tax collections, and self-determined futures.

Occupational Safety and Health

$692,000

The occupational safety and health (OSH) field in Washington faces challenges such as a significant shortage of OSH professionals, a lack of diversity within the OSH workforce, and a lack of awareness about lucrative career opportunities. CWU is proposing to increase enrollment in our OSH degree programs by enhancing exposure and awareness by increasing our recruitment efforts to attract students from diverse backgrounds. CWU will promote the OSH profession through high school programs and academic credit for prior learning programs tailored to adult learners, and we will bolster enrollment to address awareness and diversity issues within the profession.

The funding for this unique program is being requested from the Accident Account and/or Medical Aid Account, not the state general fund.