Reviewers' Notebook: Budget

From CSWiki

Since Grinnell is a relatively small school, most individual academic departments contain only a handful of faculty. Thus, most large-budget areas are handled through the Dean's Office or other college-wide unit. Academic departments generally handle only modest day-to-day budgets.

For example, faculty salaries come under the Dean's budget, with recommendations for merit increases coming from an all-college, Faculty Budget Committee (a subcommittee of the faculty-elected Executive Council). Room furnishings (acquisition and maintenance) come through a centralized budget under Facilities Management. Computer equipment (hardware and software) for offices, labs, and classrooms is purchased and maintained by Information Techology Services (ITS). Major acquisitions for academic equipment fall under the Dean's budget, and the Dean provides modest funds to each department for an outside speaker.

Departments control budgets that typically include supplies, telephone, copying, student labor (e.g., for student lab assistants and graders), films/videos, food (e.g., refreshments at talks, the fall/spring picnics), and modest miscellaneous materials.

Since the Department of Computer Science is quite new, the department does not have a long-standing, designated endowment fund. For example, there are no endowed funds for the best graduating student(s), for speakers, for special projects, etc.

For privacy issues, budget details are not given in this CS Wiki. They are, however, in the hardcopy version of the reviewers' notebook.