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2008 Fall Financial Savings

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This page contains comments posted by members of the Cornell community pertaining to 2008 Fall Financial Savings.

Budget

Suggestion: When senior staff travels to NYC or elsewhere for BOT meetings, there is an awful lot of money spent on food and alcohol. I think we should adopt a per diem system for reimbursement, and apply it to food only—not alcohol. Since different cities/areas of the country are more expensive than others, there could be rates set by tier (set by geographic location or zip code). (NYS does this—they allow so much for a hotel in Albany, another amount for NYC, etc.) - Anonymous
Suggestion: I feel that there should be a moratorium placed on all unnecessary travel, in particular attendance at conventions, conferences, seminars, symposiums, etc. This would amount to a huge savings for the university in conference registration fees, airfare, hotel accomodations and subsistence, which can total $3000 or more per person per trip. - Anonymous

Conserve Energy

Suggestion: Ask staff to turn off their monitors when they go home. Many people leave them on and even if you need to remote connect you do not need your monitor. Many people have more than one monitor and if the second one is not in use turn it off. This will help financially, help global warming and extend the use of the monitor saving on the purchase of a new one. This may seem small but I really think it may make a big difference. - Linda
Suggestion: Cut back on the number of printers. So what if people have to walk a ways to get their print out. Power them down when you go home. This will cut down on the electricity used, the number of printers to be bought and give the staff exercise they need for their well being.
Also - stop moving staff just to group people together. If people can’t get up and walk to the person they want to talk to then they need more help than moving them can ever give them. It cost far to much to move staff everytime they work on a new project so they can be by their co-workers. Usually that co-worker is just a couple of offices away and maybe even a floor away. Even more exercise to keep them healther.
Give staff one type of coffee, one tea and let them buy the other kinds they want. In our group we have several teas, that has to cost extra. Ask staff to bring in a cup for their coffee or tea and save on buying cups. Good for the environment. - Linda
Suggestion: Although I am on Co-op this semester, I remember pulling long nights with engineering homework during the semester. On the walks back, I would see buildings with rooms and offices with their lights on. Although I understand that it may be part of the university’s insurance policy, I would recommend a cut back on this. Besides unnecessary electric use, there is also the HVAC systems that need monitoring. Particularly, I remember visiting a friend in the gothics and his room was extremely hot. I mean 85+ degrees in January or February. If proper maintenance (I think we a perfectly qualified maintenance and custodial staff) of these systems along with electric ones is implemented, combined with voluntary activity (voluntarily turning off the lights when you leave your office or room, turning down the heat and putting on an extra layer) wont necessarily make life terrible and miserable, but it will show a combined and wise effort to a crisis could make a difference. - Andri
Suggestion: Thank you for opening up the floor for recommendations. Mine is quite simple, but I’m sure, effective. Turn out all unneeded lights after hours. I would think that this would be a wise thing to do anyway. If anything else comes to mind, you will be the first to know.
Thanks again - Mike
Suggestion: Turn off the lights in buildings at night. Turn off computers in computer labs at night. - Amanda
Suggestion: I am Humphrey fellow at Cornell and have few suggestions for financial saving and sustainability.
1- I came from a country who suffers from electricity shortage. So we appreciate the value of electricity very much. Electricity cut can be one of the major resources saving to Cornell. From my observation, there is a lot of unnecessary lighting in the offices. Printers and monitors are left open 24 hrs a day. A firm announcement to all employees to turn off all unnecessary lighting and equipment after work is a mandatory would help much to save energy and the environment.
2- The other observation is the excessive cooling in summer and heating in winter in many buildings I went to. Our room is like an oven now, we have to open the window just to balance the heat, as there is no control on the heating system. The maintenance team responsible for heating systems can check and lower the heating level in all Cornell buildings, and that will save millions of dollars as we all know energy is one of the major consumption expenses in such a huge institution like Cornell. This will also help the environment and our health from being moved between very hot inside to very cold outside.
3- For long term sustainability, Cornell might invest in their natural resources to generate fund, like using the farms belong to Cornell in planting crops for mass production investing the students energy and skills, then sell the crops to the employees with decent prices, it would be more convenient for the employees to buy from Cornell store fresh food instead of going to other far stores.
4- Cornell has 27,000 students every year. If you encourage students in engineering and technical schools to create volunteer teams with supervision of the experts in public works, car, building and electrical maintenance as practice for them, that would save labor money for Cornell and give the student valuable experience in their professional life. -Khalida
Suggestion: I suggest using the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday to promote a campus wide power shut down (as much as is possible) as we already do at the end of December every year. - Sara
Suggestion: I think we could save a lot of money on electricity, and promote sustainability at the same time, simply by encouraging all staff to turn off computer monitors overnight and to turn off lights whenever they are not in use. - Margaret
Suggestion: There are still light switches in some buildings dating back to the energy crunch of the 70’s that have stickers reminding us to save energy by turning off the lights when not in use. I’ve been disappointed that we haven’t been encouraged by the university to do so as a regular measure, not just over winter break. I’m sure most of us turn off lights, fans, and appliances that are not in use in our own homes. Why not do it here?
The best thing about the simple act of turning lights off is that it costs NOTHING! - Ken
Suggestion: For many years, I have noticed that the powerful lights that illuminate the athletic fields (Schoelkopf stadium, upper alumni field, and Game Farm Road) in the evening often remain on for many hours after the athletes (football and soccer) have completed their practices. It seems a pity, and costly, to allow these massive lights continue to stay long after the need for their light has ended. Is there some way to improve turning out the lights on the athletic fields? - Tom
Suggestion: This really fits financial savings and sustainability. I am going to follow a theme that is in many suggestions already. it deals with savings on electricity. I would like to make two specific suggestions that I believe will complement and help the suggestions already given.
1) Turning off lights, computers, printers, etc. at nights and on weekends is a very good idea and we should do this, but to really gain the savings, the power needs to be turned off by unplugging the device or plugging into a power strip and turning that off. if an electronic device is turned off, but still plugged in, it still uses a significant amount of power “Electricity Leak”. There have been many studies done on this and the % of total electricity used by an electronic devise while turned off ranges from 30 to 70%.
2) I believe we could get many people involved and have some fun with this, if we make a visible campaign out of it. I am sure there are other ways of doing this, but one thought is to have a “I commit to turn off my electronic devises” campaign where the idea and effects are promoted and people can actually go to a site and signup to agree to do just this. A goal could be set to get ? number of people to sign up and stats (graphically) could be displayed to show progress. I have worked in two large devisions and know there are at least 3,000 pcs/lap tops supported between them. I would imagine the whole University is in the 10,000+ range. This could be covered as any other campaign in local publications and on the web.
The savings to the University would be very significant (Possibly Saving Jobs) and it fits perfectly with going green. It is a definite win/win situation.
One note: I know many people are directed to leave there computers on at night for backup and to receive updates. I believe we need to find a way around this. It is too costly to allow this to happen. We need to be creative and come up with better ideas. Maybe we do backups once a week on a Monday Night. Updates could kick off when we power up in the morning. This might take a few minutes, but people would adjust and do other things while the back up takes place - get coffee, plan work that does not require the computer, etc. - Bill
Suggestion: In addition to offering a shorter work week (e.g. 35 hours) an option, how about offering an 11-month contract for those who can make it work? Many of us have jobs that slow during the summer and winter breaks. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Aim: Reduce heating, lighting & electric costs at the veterinary school.
1. Set all desktops to automatically switch off between 10pm and 7am unless they are in use. This could be campus wide.
2. Set more lights on automatic timers so that they are off overnight.
3. Fix the air conditioning system so that several areas are not “air conditioned” in the winter. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Water was reported to be running continously in men’s restroom sink at Schoellkopf Field during the football game on Saturday, November 8, 2008.
This could save money and resources if repaired or adjusted to shut off. - Belinda
Suggestion: We are asked to log out of our computers at the end of each day, but keep them on overnight and throughout the weekend, so that updates can be made. This seems like incredible waste of electricity, especially since I would be more than willing to leave my computer on whenever updates are needed (perhaps twice a month), rather than every evening. - Anonymous
Suggestion: The university should require all departments to review use, maintenance, and operating costs of freezers and refrigerators used to store research materials. Many are out-dated and inefficient and may represent a large energy drain on campus. In addition, some may be under-utilized and can be consolidated or eliminated. - Katie
Suggestion: Turn off Schoelkoff lights in the middle of the night. These beacons are bright from across the valley, on west hill. - Anonymous
Suggestion: This topic fits well with all categories above. We’re hearing more and more about the amount of electrical drain / cost of computers, etc even while they are turned off. The latest I saw on the news was a 40% electrical cost even when turned off. At home I have purchased a few power strips and we now have all computers, televisions, etc. on strips that are turned off when we leave for the day and retire for the evening. There are likely more advanced solutions - ie., one switch on the wall that turns off particular items throughout an area that could not only result in a savings for Cornell on the utility bill, but would help with sustainability and climate neutrality as well. - Diane
Suggestion: For users of Macs: Under system preferences:hardware:energy saver:schedule the user can automatically schedule her computer to shutdown at a given time every day (and can even schedule it to boot up right before she comes in, if she so desires.) - Anonymous
Suggestion: I am a research technician in the Animal Science Department in Morrison Hall, in the College of Ag and Life Science. My concern is the waste of money for unnecessarily running fume hoods in laboratories which are actually never used as fume hoods. The laboratory I work in (288) has 4 large (very loud) hoods. I/we have a need for only one to be operational. There is currently a State-funded project underway in the building, to revamp the hoods. When I found out about this project, I contacted the Department of Environmental Health and Safety, to let them know that I only need one of the hoods to be operational. To repair all 4 is a waste of funds. They informed me that it’s too late, the project is underway, and the only recourse is to shut and place a lock on the hood after it’s been redone, and only then could the loud fans be turned off. The space is valuable for bench research, so we do not want to give up the square footage in the laboratory. I asked if 3 of the hoods could be removed, so we could put in regular cabinets, tables or benches, but they told me that since it is a State-owned building, the State would need to remove them, and they won’t spend the money for demolition. They also told me it costs the College $12,000/year to run each hood. This is a ‘catch-22’, that if solved, could save the college $36,000 per year. - Anonymous
Suggestion: PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE encourage instructors to TURN OFF LIGHTS and CLOSE WINDOWS in their classrooms when they are done, especially if no one is in there afterwards. Every time I walk up and down the corridors, I turn off lights in empty classrooms. I was planning to ask for a $$$ subsidy to my salary for the money saved by doing this, but under the present circumstances I’ll just contribute it as an energy and money saving idea. - Philip
Suggestion: As a manager of an off campus facility, we could use a fund that supports purchase of energy efficient appliances and increasing energy efficiency of buildings that are heated all winter. Presently, we buy the cheapest appliance without regard for energy use since we don’t directly pay for electricity or heat. Over the years this has led to lack of insulation, cheapest light bulbs available, no storm windows, no gaskets on exterior doors, old leaky refrigerators, interior doors used on the exterior, electric heaters and on and on. If there was money available to enhance our meager finances, we would much rather go green. As it is, we waste relatively large amounts of energy simply because our dept account never sees the energy bill - it just disappears into “Cornell”. Our facility isn’t very large compared to campus so it always drops between the cracks. Some assistance purchasing efficient vehicles would be great too - most of ours have 100K + miles on them. Hopefully, some day the University will put some money where it’s mouth is. Thanks for this opportunity! - Anonymous
Suggestion: This applies to Sustainability, Efficiency, AND Financial Savings…
I’ve always been amazed when I see the annual announcement about conserving energy over the winter holidays. According to the e-mail from Univ-Alert, the campus saves “up to $100,000 over each 10-day holiday period”. Surely we could try cutting back throughout the rest of the year as well!
I’m always shutting off unneeded lights, turning off my monitor when I leave my office, etc. Let’s spread the word that such measures are not only for the holiday break. - Keith
Suggestions: Here at the Geneva Greenhouses we recently installed a simple light sensor that turns off all greenhouse grow lights when the sun reaches a certain intensity during the day and turns them back on if it clouds up. We have calculated that this simple improvement will help us save between $22, 000.00 and $29,000.00 per year on our electric bill depending on the current cost of electricity. A few hundred dollar investment that will yield thousands in savings. I’d be willing to bet this could be duplicated at greenhouses on the Ithaca campus. - David
Suggestion: Motion activated light sensors in the older bathrooms at East Hill Plaza.
Also, Publications & Marketing design studio needs roof insulation. None was installed to save money when the new layout was created. The heat goes right out the roof and in the summer the heat radiates down and taxes the air conditioning. - Deena
Suggestion: We have a copy room on the 3rd floor that has motion-activated lights that comes on when someone enters the room. Problem is, the motion sensor is set so that even persons walking past the door cause the lights to come on. Re-setting that sensor would save a lot of energy, as the 3rd floor is the library reading room and circulation area, and has a lot of traffic. - Patricia
Suggestion: Has anyone suggested that the lights on the football playing fields be turned off when not in use?
I’ve actually driven through campus - at 3 or 4am and noted that all those field lights have been left on.
By enforcing that the last responsible person off the field (be it coaches or athletic department staff) turn off those blazing lights, would save two-fold - both on energy resources but also $$ going down the drain on these wasted resources. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Better efficiency of monitoring of heat and air-conditioning in buildings. I work in Kennedy Hall which has windows that can be opened. We should set the thermostat higher in the summer and open windows especially when classes are not in session. Generally this building is kept very cool in the summer, to the point of being uncomfortable. Employees and faculty could utilize fans if they found the temperature too warm instead of people walking around with sweaters on in July due to the air-conditioning! The same would go for the winter months - keeping at steady rate instead of constant up and down of the temperature control in the building. - Anonymous
Suggestion: My suggestion is to turn off every other hall light in Clark Hall and other campus buildings after 7:00 pm, when most people are no longer in the building, until 7:00 am, when most return to work. That should save on electricity costs. - Mark
Suggestion: I would suggest that Cornell consider reducing the average daytime classroom temperature (e.g. 68 degrees) to 60 degrees during the evenings, say from 9 pm to 6 am. It will probably take one to two hours for a building to cool down in the evenings and to warm up in the mornings. This eight degree differential for nine hours per day (and all day on Sunday?) could generate significant savings in the cost of heating oil and/or natural gas. The same type of modifications during the periods when buildings aren’t in use could apply to electricity usage for lighting during the evenings and air-conditioning in the summertime. There is no question that room heating temperatures must be maintained at levels in the daytime and early evenings so that students and faculty can be comfortable and focus on their work in classrooms, dining halls, libraries, etc. And clearly, comfortable heating levels must be maintained in the dormitories at all times.
Cornell may have already installed this type of modification to its energy usage. There are programming devices which can do this for boilers, air-conditioning systems and electrical lighting. If such devices are already in place, they should be checked/tested on a regular basis to ensure that the systems are, in fact, working properly. In addition, if there are certain areas, floors in older buildings, for example, that are not being used or are lightly used, perhaps these floors could be zoned for lower constant winter temperatures. The activities on such “lower usage” floors could be relocated to other “high usage” floors within the building with normal, comfortable heating levels. - Richard
Suggestion: This actually relates to financial savings, sustainability and efficiency…..I spoke about this at the CFPN earlier in the week…..we need to help young people change lifestyle a bit through educating them about fuel usage --- which, of course, impacts cost. If we turned the heat down to a range of 68–70 and ran a campaign that taught young people to wear sweaters, long pants, socks…etc……we would be solving several problems…….I often have young people complaining that their room is cold — and when we go online, the room temp is 71 or 72….when we go to the room, to confirm the reading, the temp is 71 or 72 — and the student is wearing shorts and a t-shirt. I don’t want to sound too “old-fashioned” but I think we all need to think the way our parents and grandparents had to think during WWII when there were rations on certain commodities……for us, it’s utility use (instead of sugar…) Lowering the temp to 68–70 - and expecting young people to wear seasonally appropriate clothing could result in huge savings. Thanks, Donna
Suggestion: Reduce the heat in campus buildings to 65 degrees.
Install programmable thermostats in buildings so the heat can be cut back to 58 overnight and on the weekends.
I think most faculty, staff and students would be happy to wear layers in the winter. We can save Cornell jobs AND help save the environment! - Anonymous
Suggestion: Just a suggestion about the electrical energy consumption campus-wide. If there is a way that we could designate an hour everyday throughout the week to conserving power, (i.e. shutting off unimportant electrical equipment) in every way and in every spot on campus, it would help to conserve a lot of energy.
Furthermore, an institution of more stringent rules about turning off electrical equipment (via surge suppressors, etc.) at the end of the working day would help to ensure that this energy drive is monetarily tangible relatively soon.
Even fun incentives could be generated out it for certain campus areas to rally participation. (For example: if assuming that the energy is quantitative: “The lab that conserves the most energy during the month of____ wins a prize.”)
Just some thoughts, may sound silly to some as I am not well versed in energy matters, but I thought I would put it out there. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I am an alum-‘65, retiree of the plant breeding dept. and work part time for the cornell campus police as an auxillary officer. Part of my job at night is to travel around campus offering blue lite escort service and checking buildings for unlocked doors, windows, outside light bulb replacement, hazardous unsafe conditions, etc. and generally being seen about campus for security reasons. Traveling about campus there are buildings with offices, restrooms and classrooms with lights left on and nobody around. I would suggest a placard with a catchy phrase or cartoon be placed on every door asking people to turn off lights, computers etc. Also custodial folks could be given friendly reminder stickers as they go about their early morning duties and find lights left on. I am sure this has been suggested before but being around campus at night I see this is real. Example -Monday night all Grumman squash court lights were on and no one was in the locked building! - Bruce
Suggestion: Please consider using motion sensor indoor lighting in as many areas of the campus as possible. My laboratory works very hard at trying to be energy conscious and often times we work with the light off during the day. We try to shut off unnecessary hallway and common room lighting also. I believe that if we could implement these sensors in bathrooms, storage rooms and other areas that are not highly traveled, we could save a great deal of money and be energy conscious. It’s frustrating that our building is “lit up like a Christmas tree” when I arrive at 8am or earlier. I am sure our building is not the only one. Thank you! - Jacquelyn
Suggestion: I just came to campus at 6 am on Dec. 26 and was astounded to see the new Life Sciences Technology Building brightly lit on all floors and in most of the windows. In contrast, the next door Corson Mudd Hall building was almost entirely dark with only the doorway and center hallway lit.
There are several buildings on campus that are very brightly lit at night and during the holiday break. (Uris library is another one) Turn out all these lights! and save a lot of energy and money. - Robin
Suggestion: Burn cardboard and/or paper for a portion of the fuel in the heating plant.
Because of the economy, recyclable prices are down (NYT, Dec 7,2008 Business section). Mixed paper is at $20/ton vs coal at ? $70/ton.
Explore the possibility of burning paper and cardboard waste from campus as a portion of the fuel. Even a small percentage may save money. And, maybe buy or “accept” additional paper waste from the city or county — the savings may offset the city/county’s cost of disposal.
The savings for this suggestion would be in sustainability, efficiency and finances. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I’ve noticed that the lights at the football stadium are on most if not all nights, and sometimes even during the day. I don’t know the reason for having them on so much - it seems like there could be a cost savings by turning them off. - Anonymous
Suggestion: The second floor of the Space Sciences Building has motion sensing switches on timers that turn off the hall lights when no one is around.
Implementing such a system campus-wide (cutting lights to emergency level when area is unoccupied) could result in considerable savings in electrical use, without compromising safety.
Hallway lights could be turned off during the day in buildings that receive adequate sunlight on days like today.
Best of luck dealing with these difficult times. - Rick
Suggestion: I believe the University could save significant amounts of money by making sure that lights, a/c units, etc. are shut off around campus. I work in McGraw Hall, and nearly all the lights in the classrooms are left on, frequently overnight. The same is true of a/c units and fans. This is also the case in White Hall next door. Either sensors should be installed to turn off lights and a/c units, etc., or a person should be hired to go around late at night to check that lights are off. I believe this would save quite a bit of money, and it would certainly conserve energy. - Vicki
Suggestion: Ways to save money is to not have Cornell owned cars and trucks be runs with no one inside of them and just sitting there running wasting gas and give off green house gas.
The other way is to have staff go to a rotating 3 or 4 day work week.
Thanks for your time to read this message. - Anonymous
Suggestion: In my own home, I have put all electronics on power strips and I now shut them down fully and turn off the power when not in use.
I have seen a drastic drop in my electric use since I began doing that, and I have a small house with only a few electronic devices.
I realize that a lot of scientific equipment in laboratories cannot be shut down like that. But if all our computers, printers, scanners, copiers, shredders, TVs, etc were not drawing power 15+ hours a day, there would certainly be a significant savings there.
In addition, set the heat several (up to five!) degrees cooler in winter (we live in new york — we all have sweaters we can put on) and don’t set the AC so low in the summer (there should be no reason I need a sweater in my office in August, yet I frequently do!). When I first began working for Cornell, my office was in an older building with no AC. Somehow, our work got done! Turn off the AC and let people open the freaking windows! - Anonymous
Suggestion: Why, if we’re trying to cut expenses, are the six bright lights on the top of the stadium, still on at 2:30 AM this Thursday morning (2/12) following a lacrosse event last night. (Both CUP and EMCS report they have no access to these lights.) - John
Suggestion: Today is especially cold and raw. I need to voice again my concern about the lack of insulation in the Design Studio at Publications & Marketing. (EHP) Our remodeling was done as cheaply as possible, but without the insulation, we freeze on extremely cold and hot days. This has to be costing a lot of money in heating and air conditioning. - Deena
Suggestion: Eliminate the community coffee pots. Sometimes they are on unattended all day and into the night. You come in smelling the acrid smell of a pot that is burned down to a crust and ready to break any minute. Besides the energy savings, the cost of cups and supplies adds up.
If a person wants coffee..go to 1 of the many eating places we have on campus and buy it.
Also, get rid of all the personal coffee pots in the offices. They are energy hogs. Most of them, at least have automatic shutoffs on them. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Turn off the lights on Schoellkopf field over night. I frequently see them lighting up the night sky and even at 6:00am. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Surely more lights could be turned off at night. I can see the Cornell campus from my home in Newfield and at night it’s lit up like a Christmas tree. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I work in Kennedy Hall and generally as soon as the weather is remotely nice, the air conditioning is turned on in the building and it is very cool. Right now it is 70 degrees outside and it is so cold on the 3rd Floor that I have had to open my window to try to get some warmth into my office.
This building has windows in it that open. I think that the air conditioning could be turned up and windows utilized if people were uncomfortable with the temperature and use a fan if necessary. It seems that we use so much energy in the offices and keeping them freezing cold is a waste. Our heat is turned down in the winter; how about turning up the air conditioning setting for the summer. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I work in Biotech all year round, and find that because of the heating and cooling my wardrobe is the opposite of what it should be for the season. Especially right now in the summer. Our building is so cold that most people here have to wear extra layers, or go outside just to warm up enough to feel their fingers again. It is the same for Weill Hall. Could we not make the AC run all the time to such a low temperature? - Nick
Suggestion: Reduce the amount of cold air into the air conditioning system so we can reduce the amount of the energy to heat the building. - Beth
Suggestion: It was Monday morning about 7:30. I was on my bus ride in to work. In the sports field adjacent to the new Weill bldg., there were students at a sports practice. Football, I think. To my shock and chagrin, I saw that all of the outdoor field lights were ablaze. At 7:30 in the morning! While, I can’t say that it was sunny, it certainly wasn’t dark.
How can we justify this expense when we are asking people to go without raises, some are being laid off, or having their hours cut. Sports activities are EXTRA-curricular, and should be subject to serious scrutiny. I realize students pay their tuition and expect certain services, but lighting a sports field during the day? I think this is a bit extravagant. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Seems the ‘street’ lamps lining Ho Plaza are on 24/7, this seems wasteful and unnecessary. - Elizabeth
Suggestion: Lowering the temperature of campus buildings in the winter, even just a couple degrees, would realize a great savings. At my house, we set the thermostat at 56F during the night, and 58–60F during the day. At first, it may seem cold, but people will quickly learn to dress for the season, and their bodies will adapt as well.
Heating systems should be viewed as a way to take some of the chill out of the winter air. Trying to provide consistent year-round temperatures is neither sustainable nor economical! I don’t realistically expect campus buildings to go as low as 60F, but 65–68F seems reasonable for a start. (I’m reading 71F in my office right now, and it’s 27F outside.) - Keith

Construction

Suggestion: The plan to suspend hiring and construction is a good one and I like to see Cornell prioritizing rather than constantly going under construction. Yet such projects such as updating Olin Library’s fire alarms and installing sprinklers should not be suspended as the safety of Cornell’s staff and students should not have a price tag, especially when it comes to standard safety preventions such as fires. Also how is it that Olin Library doesn’t have a sprinkler system and outdated fire alarms? Isn’t there regulations on that? - Alison
Suggestion: Construction projects can be completed up to 30% faster and for 10–20% less cost by customizing both the project delivery system and payment structure to match the needs of the project. -Jason
Suggestion: As Co-Chair of the Asian/Asian American Center Committee with Dean Hubbell, I am disappointed to hear that the Center’s construction might be stalled again. We have only planned to have about 1,400 square feet of space, which requires very little money, time, and renovation in the context of the greater university. In addition, fund raising for the Center is ready to start any time, with such a large backing from Asian/Asian American alumni. It is imperative for the project to come into fruition as soon as possible; it can fulfill many services much needed in the Asian/Asian American community, as well as in the larger minority and the general campus populations. As you and other administrators have reviewed in our committee proposal some months ago, we intend to establish mental health services, mentorship, tutoring, child care, and many other programming initiatives that have been discontinued or never been started before. The Center also aims to have an international focus, since there is a substantial international student population under the Asian/Asian American category. With the university’s long-due promise to open such a hub, the priority recommendation of the Task Force Report published in 2004, and the great potential of the Center to serve all members of the community, the rest of the members of the committee and I truly hope that the establishment of the Center happen as soon as possible. - Caroline
Suggestion: My suggestion is relevant to all three areas, sustainability, efficiency, and financial savings: The proposed addition to AAP, given the name Milstein Hall, is unsustainable, inefficiency, and a waste of at least $50 million of Cornell’s money. The well-deserved and necessary additions to program space for AAP can be accomplished in a much more sustainable, efficient and cost-effective manner by renovations of the existing Rand and Sibley Halls and an inventive and well-designed working addition to AAP in the northern third of the Sibley parking lot space. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Wind-closet vestibules to every building entrance.
I just walked to the post market in ILR today. They have a single door from the outside that opens directly into an inhabited workspace- a busy one at that. This has to be a significant energy loss in heating and cooling seasons. Moreover, this space was just recently rehabbed. It seems unbelievable that a “gasket-entry” is not a requirement on new construction or rehabilitation of space.
Other similar openings that springs readily to mind- the Arts Quad entrance to Green Dragon Cafe of Sibley Hall.
My office is in Baker chemistry lab. The ground level entrance on the north side between baker and ST Olin is not a double door vestibule either, but at least it only opens on a hallway, not occupied space. - Lars
Suggestion: The best thing CU can do to save money is to cancel the $60 million Milstein project. A new building, confined to the parking lot, and without the expensive, environmentally damaging and unneeded three-tier parking lot could be built for far less money, and show far more respect for the environment and historical setting. Or for even less, Sibley, Rand, and the Foundry could be renovated. CU has several lovely and efficient rehabilitations to its credit—in White Hall, Sage Hall, and Lincoln. With student and faculty numbers barely growing, what can be the justification for such a huge increase in building? And particularly, when the University is pledged to reduce individual vehicle traffic and encourage other forms of transportation, how can we justify yet another huge parking lot on central campus (when a new one is under construction on FH Drive, a couple of blocks from Rand)? We seem to have far more parking spaces on central campus than peer institutions, and more concrete and energy-consuming building materials like that needed for Milstein’s protruding glass boxes take us backward in an era of great concern about climate change. The natural beauty of this area is a major asset; it should not be destroyed by bizarre and obtrusive buildings and huge new parking lots.
On a much more minor scale, we should undertake to install motion-sensitive lights in all buildings. In my own building, White, every classroom has a different combination of switches and buttons that few can figure out. As a result, all the lights are on all the time. I go up many nights and turn off classroom lights. They make the building unduly hot all year. Excessive lighting is observable in most buildings at Cornell, both inside and outside, in places where safety does not require so much light, and after buildings are closed. Excessive heat is another problem that might be addressed by building engineering.
Finally, for a relatively tiny cost, bike racks could be build under EXISTING eves (e.g., at Uris Hall, at the Johnson Museum, and in the spacious covered stairway behind the Mann Library administration section (facing Beebe Lake). In our climate, we can only encourage biking with COVERED parking. Of course, bike paths and ramps beside stairways would also help encourage people to leave their cars behind for short trips. With these inexpensive additions, we might well save money on parking lots, even as we fight climate change. - Anonymous
Suggestion: With deep understanding and appreciation for Cornell’s financial situation, I’m still prompted to ask about construction for the expansion of the Johnson Museum. It was our understanding when we committed $620,000 for a Japanese garden within the expansion that the needed funds had been raised, minus about $1 million. That amount or more might be saved by constructing the addition now when bids are coming in much lower than anticipated - at least in Silicon Valley. - Becky
Suggestion: Although the Central Avenue Parking Garage (CAPG) appears to be attached to and to have been “approved” as part of the Milstein Hall project, it should be evaluated on its own. When this is done, I believe the possibility of saving money will be apparent.
— The DEIS itself suggested that providing the College additional academic space for multidisciplinary interaction is much more necessary that the CAPG.
— The “loss of 35 spaces” is not crucial: “The campus parking system as a whole has enough flexibility to absorb this small loss in this location.” (sec.2.9.3B)
— CAPG is not proposed as “parking under a new building”, which is one of the criteria used in Cornell’s Campus Master Plan. There is time enough to consider it if and when there is serious future interest to construct additional academic buildings behind West Sibley and Tjaden.(sec.4.2.1)
— Both globally and locally we are trying to decrease automobiles use. This is reflected in the Comprehensive plans for both Cornell and Tompkins County.
— Given the present financial meltdown, to which Cornell has responded by freezing certain activities and undertaking an organization-wide review, including apparently shrinking its employee base, removing CAPG from the capital project list seems a sensible way to husband financial resources at this time. - D.S.

Expenses and Purchasing

Suggestion: It is good that the University is taking a hard look at construction cost and putting a hold on those cost where we can. Not knowing the full extent of the financial impact to the University, it’s hard to say what we need to do when, but should we also be looking at purchases in general? Possibly this will be taken care of through College and Departmental adjustments to Budgets. One thought though would be to monitor the high dollar purchases (Which I assume are in the ten-thousand to millions range) on a University basis. Are there items that can/should be held off? Are the individual units doing what is needed in this area? I do not know the system capabilities to look at this on a University level, but if it does not exist, it might be worth looking at.
This is a somewhat obvious/simplistic idea, but they sometimes go unnoticed. - Bill
Suggestion: If we (Departments, Office of Budgets, PDC and Supply Management Services) could coordinate our efforts and have more transparency into what departments as a whole plan on procuring, hard and soft savings would be realized. Supply Management could then aggregate the spend in categories and take a holistic approach to bidding, negotiations and contracts that would benefit the entire institution.
Certainly this requires a mindset shift from being very decentralized to a more center-led approach. As an incentive departments that are willing to join the “coalition” would receive 50% of actual savings realized for additional “real” needs.
There are more details that could be added such as minimum spend amounts, key targeted categories, etc. - Daniel
Suggestion: I would like to suggest that staff travel be reviewed. If folks are planning trips to visit alumni, for staff development programs, faculty visit to other institutions, foundations, corporations, government offices and the like that every consideration be given to maximize this travel.
If we have faculty traveling to a city, can we possibly have them speak to a local group of alumni when they are in the area? Staff should maximize their time in a city, schedule as many visits as possible, while in that city as well as reaching out to other staff to determine if they could use support in that city. We may want to look at how we staff our events. Perhaps staff support should be limited to those necessary to support activities and events and at all costs avoid overstaffing of events.
May I suggest that staff travel be planned in advance to take advantage of the best airfares are available. Use local staff whenever possible (why fly someone in for a program when you can take advantage of the regional office personnel resources).
Finally and this will probably be met with the most discourse, any frequent flyer miles earned on business travel should be used for future business travel. This alone could save the University thousands of dollars. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Lunch meetings, out of town conferences, delivered spring water, high end computers/laptops used just for email/word documents, expensive office chairs, multiple printers/copiers so that one doesn’t have to walk far, cell phones including web access plans, PDA’s, digital phones instead of standard phone, procurement cards that are too easy to use for just about anything…… - Anonymous
Suggestion: Cornell should be held accountable for unwise purchasing decisions.
Last year I lived in a residence hall where Campus Life would have charged me $300 had I damaged the desk chair they provided to me. This chair had uneven legs and would creak menacingly whenever I sat in it (and I am almost underweight). Even worse, I cut myself on a loose shard of metal coming from the joint of the chair.
This year my residence hall has installed hand dryers. They might save trees, but I do not use them because they are so deafeningly noisy.Instead I walk over to the kitchen and use the paper towels there instead. As a result, I leave a trail of water on the bathroom floor, making it a slipping hazard.
I have also noticed that the beautiful (and expensive) stone tiles in front of Bailey Hall are horrible during the winter because it becomes slippery so quickly (even in rain). The insurance and salting on the plaza must cost a lot because it is so dangerous.
These unwise purchasing decisions reflect inefficiencies that the University could easily avoid if its administrators took time and thought to shop around. - Anonymous
Suggestions: I like a drink with the best of them, however, in a time of conservation, alcohol reimbursement during travel status should also be “paused”.
Food needs for meetings and events should meet discretionary guidelines. - Lynne
Suggestion: When I am running around campus for meetings and whatnot, I see a variety of paper shredding services working for offices removing secured scrap. That is certainly costing someone a lot of money. Why can’t we employ ONE campus-wide service and negotiate a cheaper rate with the vendor for a blanket contract? Might I also recommend that we open the contract up for annual bidding to keep the cost as low as possible. - Aaron
Suggestion: Cornell needs to do a better job of leveraging its enormous spending power. In order to do this the university needs to re-examine its purchasing practices and either enforce the use of preferred suppliers where applicable or provide a strong incentive to do so.
In addition, Cornell needs to streamline the procurement process by making its systems user friendly and provide the proper functionality. e-SHOP was an attempt to do this but it has been largely a failure because it is not user friendly. Had Cornell spent a little more money upfront to “get it right” I think it would have been hugely successful. This seems to be a trend across the university when developing and implementing new systems. They are rolled out without the user friendliness and functionality that is essential to make them a success. In the end, we spend a lot of money on the system and people don’t use the system and it cost the university more money over the long run. - Robert
Suggestion: Establish policy/best business practices on foreign national payments to halt grossing up practices.
Units/BSC often gross up payments to foreign nationals and foreign entities to ensure they receive the total payment agreed. Grossing up occurs as Cornell is required by IRS to withhold tax on certain types of payments to foreign nationals. Cornell pays more than they should. The payee often benefits as they can file paperwork with the IRS to receive a refund of taxes withheld.
This practice costs Cornell money that could be used elsewhere. - Anonymous
Suggestion: With the precipitous drop in gas prices, I suggest that the University reduce the mileage reimbursement rate. The current $.585 cents per mile reimbursement is the IRS allowed maximum. When gas prices we last at current prices (4th quarter of ‘06, 1st quarter of ‘07), the reimbursement rate was $.485/mile. The IRS is likely to drop the reimbursement rate with the next revision; why not be proactive and beat them to the punch.
Should gas prices increase again, the University can reset the reimbursement rate to the IRS max., but there is no reason to be there now. - Jed
Suggestion: My suggestion would be to make sure all the catering dollars that goes out of Cornell should first be spent in house before we book with outside caterers.
We should be able to accommodate our internal customers whether it is the Statler or Cornell Catering. This would mean, meet the expectations of the departments when entertaining and making changes to current procedures to tailor to the needs of the different occasions.
The departments should also be flexible with dates and times to make this happen until we see light at the end of the tunnel. - Mohan
Suggestion: In order to increase our purchasing leverage, Cornell should work with other universities to form a purchasing consortium. By combining the purchasing power of many universities, the consortium could negotiate better pricing with major vendors resulting in cost savings for all the universities in the consortium. - Robert
Suggestion: Make greater use of state contract pricing where applicable. Cornell can utilize NYS contract pricing and benefit from the state’s purchasing power. Is Cornell utilizing this to its fullest potential? - Robert
Suggestion: Quite a lot of money is spent by the university on travel. Sometimes these trips are unavoidable, as when the traveler is observing a large installation or seeing lots of people. Sometimes people travel for a single event in one place. These trips can often be substituted by a videoconference.
You might think everyone knows this, but I was recently contacted by someone making up a grant budget and asked what our price was for a videoconference. I told her that at my facility, the Language Resource Center at Noyes Lodge, videoconference services are free for university functions. So I think many people are unaware that there are 83 such facilities on campus and there is no need for hourly charges for university functions.
Part of the confusion comes from the history of videoconference. Until about 8 years ago, most videoconferences involved rented phone lines, incurring hourly costs of around $100/hour in many cases. Now that almost all VC is done through IP, there are no hourly costs. Even NUBB costs are minimal for this purpose.
Our own facility is perfect for events like job interviews or external PhD committee members.
I don’t know of any official policy encouraging VC instead of travel, where appropriate. Maybe that would be a good idea. - Dick
Suggestion: Do away with campus mail services and rely on the USPS to deliver mail. Use budgetary pressure to encourage folks to send items electronically. I’d wager that we are paying more than 41 cents an ounce for Campus Mail delivery. - Aaron
Suggestions: Mandatory use by units of Cornell Services. Examples would be the use of Cornell Catering, and Statler Hotel for all social events (Christmas parties, staff meetings etc.).
Units that can get better deals from outside vendors can submit the lower quotes to the Cornell Service. The service will then charge the unit that lower price for the same quoted service. The difference from that outside vendor’s quote to actual cost for Cornell’s service provider will be made up by general budget so that the service provider is not penalized.
This process keeps money within Cornell as a whole and ensures job stability within the service areas. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Eliminate food at meetings. The norm of the culture here appears to be that it is almost expected that food be provided at meetings. This is unnecessary and really has no business support. Often it seems meetings are called just to have food paid for. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Cornell has the tendency of paying for service agreements in advance. There is a significant $ amount that is being spent on service agreements paid in advance.
There are several reasons to stop doing this:
1. Cash flow, coming from the industry and having some understanding of when and why firms go bankruptcy. I think, these days, Cornell should start acting in a more business oriented matter regarding those kind of commitments.
2. Accuracy of year to date financial reports, working in a service-oriented unit makes it crucial to know at each month what our revenue vs expenses YTD. Paying in advance for services creates a discrepency for year to date actuals as expenses are recorded at the day of payments.
3. Managing our service providers when issues arise. We do not have any leverage on our vendors since we pay upfront.
In the bigger picture, assuming Cornell is financially managing available funds, we could receive interest by creating a positive cash flow. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I’m sure the committee has had some discussion about this issue, but if not, I feel strongly that this matter should be addressed. It seems that a lot of money is spent on events and other purchases that are not related to Cornell’s missions of teaching, research and outreach. Money is spent on food for staff meetings, for example, which is not a necessary expense. It seems prudent to put finer restrictions on department spending for things that involve only staff members.
One might say that such restrictions will reduce morale, but from a business perspective, unnecessary expenses hurt more than just a staff member’s feelings. It would serve the greater good if staff members are asked to make a few sacrifices in these difficult times. - Anonymous
Suggestions: Our disposal of surplus items does not seem to be very effective in recovering fair market value. Perhaps by utilizing ebay to sell surplus goods we could reach a wider audience and realize a greater return. - Robert
Suggestion: Eliminate cost recovery of CIT services (NUBB, Server Farm, etc). It takes a surprising amount of staff time to calculate usage, generate bills, etc. Yes, cost recovery creates incentives for fiscally responsible behavior, but at a substantial cost to push imaginary money around the university. Cost recovery is also a disincentive to meeting the universities workforce planning goals which could reduce costs by centralizing IT. The necessary incentives for fiscally responsible behavior can be generated in other ways (like strong leadership and accountability). - Anonymous
Suggestion: The University has a fantastic water filtration system, has great tasting water - I’ve always wondered why various departments spent money on importing bottled water from outside vendors? - Pete
Suggestion: I suggest in addition to reducing catered meetings we come up with alternatives such as group salads. Also, where catering does occur, we should give Cornell Catering all of our business for 2009 and let Catering know that we will give them an opportunity to impress us and earn our business in the future. - Alan
Suggestion: Limit travel reimbursements to actual expenses documented by receipts. Per diem reimbursement often exceed actual costs incurred. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Limit travel reimbursements to actual expenses documented by receipts. Per diem reimbursement often exceed actual costs incurrred. - Anonymous
Suggestion: It seems strange to me that at a place like Cornell, we are still paying for long distance phone service. In this day, digital phone services everywhere offer free long distance, yet I still have to use a long distance phone code to dial from my office. I do try to use my cell phone as much as possible, since they offer free long distance, but not everyone has a cell phone. Is it possible to explore other phone service options that include long distance? - Joseph
Suggestion: There is a possibility of improving both our Purchasing and Inventory Control to reduce overall cost of material purchased and possibly space.
Since I do not work in Central Purchasing, I do not know all of the practices we have in place, so these ideas are based on my previous experience in Materials management.
Cornell in and of itself is a small city, so what is purchased and inventoried covers a very wide range of products and commodities. We also work in a very decentralized format. Both of these items allow for many challenges, but also many opportunities at the same time.
We need to take this information and realize there is no one answer for everything, but that we need to make decisions based on certain criteria.
My recommendation would be to look at annual expenses for items (in many cases it will be looking at accounts) in a descending order and review them under the following parameters.
What can/should be centralized for purchasing? Factors to take into account are purchasing gains in economy of scale, reduced redundancies in processes, reduced use of supplies and reduced administration. On the opposite side, we need to be sure the Customers needs (The departments throughout campus) are being met in a timely and accurate fashion.
What can/should be centralized for inventory? Factors for this include reduced shipping cost, improved control/accuracy of inventory and reduced inventory overall. On the opposite side, we again need to be sure that the Customers needs are met, take into account distribution cost and be very careful that inventories are reduced and not increased.
What level do we centralize at? There are 3 main levels that I believe make sense:
Within A Department
Within A College or Division
At the University Level
I also think there are some possibilities of looking at basic purchasing/inventory logic - Vendor Managed Inventory, Just In Time, A-B-C Inventory Control and others and how these might be applied in this environment.
One last area is systems - From my limited experience, we look at some systems centrally (Mainly in procurement), but there may be other systems that should be supported and/or considered at the University Level. One of the main areas would be scanning - it improves processing speed and accuracy. It would make sense if we look at this on a higher level to coordinate efforts across campus and maximize the benefit gained. If several different departments are purchasing different systems, does that make sense? If two departments have similar operations and one is buying a system, wouldn’t it make sense to have the other department on board to benefit from it? - Bill
Suggestion: Following up on Tom Romantic’s suggestion as quoted in the 12/08/2008 Chronicle:
A campus-specific marketplace was established about three years ago called the Cornell Asset Transfer System (CATS); however, it isn’t widely known and, so, appears to be under-used. The url is: http://cats.dfa.cornell.edu/cats/main.do
To extract a snippet from the Chronicle’s 2/06/2006 article on the System:
”…(CATS)…is not a general marketplace for buying or selling personal goods [although there’s a personal vehicle listed now, among the current 19 postings]; it’s only intended for staff and faculty to sell university assets within the university. Within the university, though, almost anything applies: from computers and fume hoods to farm equipment and toner cartridges.”
It would be great
1) if a central database of computer/printer inventory could be established that departments could access—either through the CATS site or separately; and if
2) Financial Affairs could do an e-mail promotional blitz informing the campus of the CATS site and its purpose. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Consider selling products on e-bay instead of preferred vendors. Westchester County (NY) government does this. - Daisy
Suggestion: Don’t take trips to Iran, don’t send the student assembly to Qatar. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Stop buying desktop inkjet printers. Most office staff and probably many faculty members can be connected to a network printer. Not having a printer on desktops will have multiple benefits:
1. Save money on purchasing equipment and supplies (ink cartridges, paper)
2. Employees will think twice before printing out email or other material if they have to get up and walk to pick it up. This is more sustainable (fewer trees sacrificed for paper) and also healthy for employees! - Anonymous
Suggestion: At Cornell Abroad, beginning this past July we took a hard look at our use of office resources (paper, toner, faxing) and brainstormed as to how we could reduce not only the rising cost of these supplies but also how to reduce our carbon footprint.
The first area we looked at was communication expense - As of this time we have all but eliminated the use of our fax machine - anything that could be faxed can be scanned and emailed instead.
Student acceptances, housing forms, etc that once were copied for our files and then mailed or faxed to overseas centers are now scanned, emailed, and stored electronically in our secure server space. Thereby reducing space requirement, phone usage, and international postage expense. By our increased scanning/emailing system we have reduced our phone/fax usage charges by 18.5% for the first quarter of 2008.
Most of our financial transactions and records are now stored on our secure server as well. As Finance Manager I’ve reduced my consumption of paper and related expense by over 35% so far this year by not copying pay req’s and jems entries for our files. Copies of transactions are scanned and filed by account code instead.
Beginning in February with our new application cycle and on-line application database we will no longer make copies of all out-going applications for our Centres abroad - they will be scanned and sent electronically to our overseas sites for processing. For items that need to be mailed because they are unable to be scanned (transcripts for example) - mailings will be accumulated and sent out once a week or biweekly depending on the situation.
We estimate that by not making file copies of our UK, France, and Seville, Spain applications alone will reduce our overall consumption of xerox paper by 15% - and reduce our mailing costs by potentially between 15% and 25% over the course of the spring term.
I admit it wasn’t easy in the beginning to get people to move to “electronic” versions of documents, and I still have some non-believers in the office. But, when you evaluate the added value that you are receiving from not making a hard copy of a document - reduction in supply expense, reduction in communication costs, and also reduced space requirements (because file cabinets don’t fill up as quickly) the savings is substantial and not just by cost savings.
The reduction of expendable supplies is the easiest area to reduce university waste and costs. If all departments aimed to reduce their overall consumption of paper by 20 to 30% it could certainly go a long way to solving multiple issues that the university and the environment are facing.
I realize that other people have probably already suggested this as an effective and easy cost cutting measure. However, it is one that we’ve already instituted and can attest to the savings realized already this year with promise to save even more in 2009 and beyond.
Kathy
Suggestion: The Cornell purchasing and accounting systems should make it easier for departments to deposit manufacturer rebates back into University accounts. I have tried for five months, so far without success, to have a $40 rebate credited to the University account it was purchased from. The policies regarding rebates should be clarified and procedures need to be modified to overcome the attitude of “it’s not worth the trouble” that I have encountered. Any funds returned to the University, no matter how small, should be worth the trouble. - Anonymous
Suggestion: In reviewing department charges I discovered the Statler Club bills departments annually $260 for dues. A department has to pay the dues in order to directly charge their departmental account for any meal expenses incurred. It is my understanding that the direct billing is the only benefit the department receives. The total dollars received by the Statler Hotel for FY 2008–2009 dues payments were at least $37,657.
The Hotel accounting staff told me the money is put into a Faculty Club fund.
I believe the automatic Hotel dues billing should be eliminated and departments should be enabled to put their meals on a department charge without having to pay dues to do so. This will be a significant savings for many departments. - Lynne
Suggestion: Our department buys a coffee service. This could be cut. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I believe that there would be a huge savings financially and labor if Slope Day were canceled. - Anonymous
Suggestion: We have great [tap] water in NYS. Why persist in ordering water from companies like Chemung and Poland Spring? It would be cheaper to ask that faculty, staff, and students use the plethora of water fountains available on campus. - Theodore
Suggestion: Cut all unnecessary travel. There are a lot of staff (especially directors) that abuse travel and attend 4 - 6 conferences a year. Quite often these conferences are not directly work related they are attended because it’s in a nice warm sunny vacation spot! - Melissa
Suggestion: Procurement - Just in my unit alone we place orders for supplies like paper/toner etc. when we need them - there are five units within my group and we all do the same thing - not sure we all use the same vendors - it seems that a pooling of orders across campus perhaps via a website and then an order placed once a week and delivered by approved vendors to the appropriate sites would provide cost savings as our orders would be larger and a vendor is likely to appreciate the efficiency and quantity order thereby providing a discount and delivery. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I would like to have a list of all the people who do purchasing in their areas. We could use this listserve to share resources, such as cartridges/toners that we no longer have use for or an abundance of some other supply. Ideas, suggestions and needs could be shared. Why buy something that is sitting unused and in the way in another office? - Marilou
Suggestion: Recently Cornell started mailing everybody’s paychecks to them. Couldn’t we save a lot if we just went back to the old way of picking them up at work, instead of using the money for postage? - Mindy
Suggestion: I do the purchasing for DNS. My pcard limit is $500 which requires me to put in a lot of web reqs. I would be more efficient if my limit was higher. It would save time, and the extra work done by other people to process these request. In today’s economy $500 doesn’t purchase much. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Cornell dining uses a lot of Tuna Fish for salad etc. I Cornell dining to replace 30% or more of Tuna with rehydrated Textured Vegetable Protein(TVP) made from either soy flour or soy concentrate….Of course the same rehydrated TVP can be used to replace 30% or more of ground beef, ground lamb or as a base for any number of dishes ie Chili.
As far as I know Cornell Dining is NOT using TVP…Check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textured_vegetable_protein - Anonymous
Suggestion: Today as I drove by the fleet garage on Dryden Road, I was astonished at the number of brand new vehicles waiting for deployment into the fleet. Is it necessary to purchase brand new vehicles for the fleet? Wouldn’t it be more financially advantageous to use the vehicles currently in the fleet for a longer time period or higher mileage? - Laurie
Suggestion: Chemung Spring Water. Some CU departments purchase this to provide to their employees. What???? I drink tap water at home.
Staff can bring their own or drink the tap water. For two departments in SAS this costs approx $45–60 a month. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Since 9/11 Cornell has annually spent thousands (tens of thousands??) of dollars to erect “Jersey” bumpers around Schoellkopf Stadium as a security measure to protect against suicide bombers. We can no longer afford this well-intentioned but very expensive measure, particularly given that the chances of CU being attacked by suicide bombers is infinitesimally small. Putting up and taking down those ugly concrete barricades adds no value to Cornell or our students, in fact in adds hassle, makes people more paranoid, and detracts from the beauty of campus. Save big bucks while doing us all a favor! - Anonymous
Suggestion: Why not standardize printers offering several for different uses and initiate a campus repair service? It seems that a great deal of budget money is spent on printer repairs and consumables. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I am very surprised that Travel is not even listed as a category for suggestions. Air travel must surely be one of the greatest expenditures for the university. Not just in the cost of the tickets, but in the personnel time needed to arrive early at airposts, and layovers, etc. As I am sure you know, it is difficult to get to and from Ithaca on commercial airlines, even with three carriers.
We have a consolidated bus service, why not consolidated air service that makes regularly scheduled trips to places we all travel the most. NYC/Boston/Washington DC/LA/Chicago/San Francisco/Miami?
Perhaps we could share ownership /leasing/charter of a plane with Ithaca College/TC-3/Wells/ or other non-profit and/or governmental entities?
It could also contribute greatly to the collaboration of colleagues, not to mention the quality of life. - Rebecca
Suggestion: A cap on the amount that Cornell will pay for dinners with outside speakers could save some money, at least if other units behave as mine does. We recently spent over $400 on dinner with a visiting speaker, for 4 people. While we certainly don’t want to take visitors to Burger King, one can get a reasonable meal in this town for less than $100 per person. Perhaps a cap on what CU will pay, and if we want to spend more then the remainder comes from the diners? - Anonymous
Suggestion: Consider dropping the swim test requirement and mandatory Physical Education classes. The PE classes should still be offered as electives as an important fun, stress-reduction part of a balanced life but demand for them may change resulting in operating efficiencies and lower costs. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I noticed yet another new secure document shredding business at Cornell today. This is a new one that I hadn’t noticed before. It was a shiny new expensive looking truck. How many document shredding businesses are there at Cornell? Does anyone know? There seem to be quite a few. Is there a preferred vendor? How much are we spending on this service? Could it be done in-house? - Aaron
Suggestion: We have many color laser printers that have high costs.
- initial purchase
- color toner/fuser
- maintenance.
In industry, we used high quality HP laserjets but monochrome (black).
We had color printing available but on an exception basis.
At Cornell, if we standardized on a few high quality models, some for normal office printing, some for high volume and then by exception color, possibly one per building. We could possibly save initial and ongoing expenses. - Ned
Suggestion: Put an “Easypass” in all fleet vehicles. The transaction cost of processing receipts (many for just a few dollars, or less) for tolls on the NYS thruway must be enormous. Using an electronic (i.e. Easypass) system would allow transportation managers to bill departments/programs automatically, based on who had the vehicle signed out on the day the charge was incurred, without shuffling all of those (little) slips of paper. I was at another SUNY institution that implemented this type of system several years ago, and it worked marvelously. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I recently turned in receipts for reimbursement for a research presentation in Oregon state that required both flying to Portland and driving approximately 150 miles (one way) to the conference site. To save money, I borrowed a car from family in Portland (rather than renting a vehicle). (I was at the conference site for 4 days, so renting would have been much more expensive than mileage reimbursement.) I was told by a staff member in Accounting, when I attempted to get reimbursed for mileage on the vehicle, that I could not be reimbursed for mileage since the vehicle was not my own.
If this is correct (that mileage can only be reimbursed for vehicles owned by the person being reimbursed), then this policy is highly wasteful of University resources as it encourages people to rent vehicles when they otherwise might be able to borrow them. It would seem that altering this policy would result in cost savings to the University. If somebody has misinterpreted this policy or otherwise misinformed me of it, please advise. - Joshua
Suggestion: The University should not pay for Holiday parties. Our building has a Holiday party every year that is a dish to pass event and does cost the University any money at all. We have been doing this for more than a decade, so it is popular! The food is great! - Anonymous
Suggestion: I have worked at Cornell for 28 years and have not seen any good way to sell or auction off good used office supplies and or equipment campus wide that is available in one central place. It seems each department just deems it junk and/or throws it out or scraps it. I have seen stock items set on a shelf for years and then when the item was no longer needed it was scrapped for $10. I would have paid $200-$300 for it, but was told it had to go to the scrap yard because the dept. couldn’t afford to put it up for sale.
At least putting it on a list for other departments to use first, and then sell it if no interest would make more sense. Perhaps the list should be monitored by the Purchasing dept. to avoid buying the same item that is being thrown away elsewhere. It seems to me having a central place with a simple form to sell or release the items would stream line the sales or disbursement of unused equipment/supplies and make it easy for departments to get rid of their unwanted materials. This would also cut down on storage costs.
If something like this already exists then more of an effort needs to be made to make people aware of its website, etc. A campus-wide email reminder would be great. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I propose that Cornell mandate use of federal per diems for meals while traveling. I believe the use of per diems across the board offers several advantages over the receipt method as follows:
- Reduced administrative processing time for travel reimbursements. A lot of time and effort is spent collecting and organizing individual receipts for meals and incidentals. The receipts need to be reviewed in detail to identify what was purchased including alcohol. The alcohol has to be charged to a separate object code. In addition, a lot of time is spent chasing down receipts, documenting why a receipt is missing, sending warning letters to travelers, etc. Let’s face it, travelers will always lose receipts and therefore there will always be additional administrative effort as long as we allow the receipt method.
- Potential cost savings. The per diem rates are established by city to be reflective of reasonable meal costs. While it is true that some people using the receipt method spend less than the per diem, most of the travel I have seen have much higher costs for receipted meals versus per diem.
- Good stewardship. The per diem rates are what the public pays when federal employees travel on taxpayer money. If we adopt the same policy we are demonstrating good stewardship of university funds which includes taxpayer dollars.
- Fairness. We all know that different departments have different budgets. Some are rich and some are poor. Some spend excessive amounts on food while traveling while others eat at McDonalds to pinch pennies. We keep talking about being a single university and that we need to look at ourselves holistically as a single university regardless of funding source. Adopting per diems would bring uniformity, fairness, and transparency. - Robert
Suggestion: Eliminate local food purchases for meetings with employee only attendance. AA&D saved $82K by cutting back on food purchases for meetings (see Cornell Chronicle article October 23rd). Imagine the savings to be had across the university if this was not allowed. - Pam
Suggestion: Organizational changes typically result in the printing of new business cards. These are obsolete for all but a few positions. Restrict business card purchases (and the subsequent redesigns) to those positions. - Pam

Financial Aid

Suggestion: Every student applying for financial aid should be required to participate in work-study. It is not fair for some low-income students to bear this burden and others only slightly lower on the economic ladder to avoid it completely. Spread the wealth among the middle/lower classes a little—the inequality among students desperately requiring financial aid is staggering, especially as far as loans are concerned. There will probably even be money left over to save jobs.
Replace grants with just a *little* bit of work-study and cut loans for the struggling middle class. Leftover money=showtime. - Dan
Suggestion: Eliminate the benefit of paying tuition for employee’s children. - Anonymous

Funding

Suggestion: Your long term strategies to strengthen the university’s financial health should include a funding reserve of some type that makes the university less susceptible to economic fluctuations. This reserve should be pegged and enforced at some measurable metric.
Here’s hypothetical scenario. The reserve target would be pegged at 10% of operating expenses and be invested in the LTIP. In years when the reserve market balance is below 10% of operating expenses, the funds would reinvest income to principal. In years when the reserve market balance is above 10% of operating expenses, the funds would pay out to general purpose.
The corpus of the reserve could only be invaded and used to meet budget obligations in an emergency situation with special approval of the board of trustees. The reserve could not be invaded to meet year-to-year fluctuations in programmatic initiatives. The balance of the reserve and any reinvestment or payout would be reported to the board of trustees periodically in order to provide a control and oversight that the reserve is being overseen properly and not used for programmatic initiatives. - Aaron
Suggestion: I suggest reducing Cornell’s retirement contributions until the financial crisis is over. I personally would prefer not to reduce the contribution by 100% but 50 to 75% would be a significant savings and possibly save some people their jobs. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Perhaps the University should undertake a comprehensive review of the management of it’s endowment.
Is such a review already underway? - William
Suggestion: Simplify graduate research support. Far too many campus resources are devoted to moving money around for students who are fully supported and generate no revenue for the University. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I’m a PhD student in the Dept of Food Science. I also have health insurance through my fiancee’s place of work (the reasons why I don’t prefer Cornell’s is because it doesn’t cover treatments I need for a medical condition, which is another issue). I am also on TA funding.
The way my funding was set up it was impossible to cancel health insurance through Cornell (and save CU the money for my health insurance), even though I had no plans to use it and could prove that I had my own. I don’t know if there’s other students in similar positions to me, but it seems foolish to have paid for my insurance for a year. I did talk to both the graduate school and SHIP representatives and they said that there was nothing they could do. - Michael

General

Suggestion: I think there is a great waste of energy on campus, and it is not a particularly “green” campus. I would suggest that everyone be conscious to turn off computers, lights, etc. when leaving for the day or for long breaks in the day. In the building where I work in the summer it is absolutely freezing…we do not need the air conditioning up so high (this has been a contention of mine for as long as I’ve worked here, it’s freezing 12 months per year which causes employees to use individual space heaters, another high energy consumption!). The lights in my building are on 24/7. Even though there are some night workers, it’s not that we can’t all learn to flip a switch and where these switches are located.
While I have a forum to sqawk, I also think there is a night-marish amount of paper/plastic waste in the dining areas…I remember when there use to be ceramic plates and stainless-steel cutlery rather than paper and plastic…is this cost effective? It sure isn’t ecological. (while I’m on it, how about more recycle bins for bottles and cans? There are none in my particular building that I know of). There is also a great waste of paper, over printing of posters, etc. More e-advertising will help to solve that…even e-newsletters, etc. will save thousands in printing and mailing costs.
Thanks - Durga
Suggestion: Build economies of scale by consolidating production and public-facing services (marketing, branding) across campus. Implement a “lean” model for the publication of university-generated content (broadly defined and across all media) that would involve the central administration of production functions. Eliminate paper-based publication across all units. Future investments should be directed toward electronic only delivery of university IP. - Terry
Suggestion: At the college of veterinary medicine, I constantly see wasting of energy after hours and during the weekends with the many lights and computers kept on 24/7. Temperature could also be adjusted in areas not used after hours. Correcting this would not only save money to the college/university but help the environment.
Department chairs should review faculty supporting staff responsibilities and needs. Faculty may be able to share human resources avoiding discrepancies between faculty with supporting staff with minimal work to do vs. faculty in need to hire more staff. - Ricardo
Suggestion: Evaluate the Facilities Management, the Transportation and Mail Services Department, the Campus Life department, and other departments that provide services to the academic departments at Cornell to try and eliminate unnecessary expenses. Many of the services provided by these departments could be provided by outside contractors. Having contractors bid on services to the University would help lower operating costs. Switching to contractors would also help eliminate bloated costs that have resulted from the bureaucracy of Cornell, and become a drain of the academic departments that have been forced to pay for these University provided services. - James
Suggestion: This suggestion falls in two categories: financial savings and sustainability:
Could we as a Cornell community live with campus mail delivery on Monday, Wednesday and Friday only?
This reduction of two days would save fuel and staff time, assuming the delivery drivers could assist with other duties or needs of the university on their non-delivery days. Thank you for the opportunity to send comments. We are encouraging our staff to take a closer look at all the work they do each day to see how we can conserve to assist our colleagues across campus. - Diane
Suggestion: Institute an in-town meals and event catering policy to curb abuses and cut costs. - Aaron
Suggestion: Eliminate all paid consultants. - Aaron
Suggestion: Consider installing motion sensors on the lights in rooms such as rest rooms, conference areas, library meeting rooms and others that are not in continuous use.
Turn off computer monitors each night when shutting down computers; it is not necessary to leave the monitors on, although a small savings.
Lower the heat thermostats in rooms and buildings to 58 after 9 pm in all non residential or buildings that are in use 24 hours. Similarly in the summer months keep A/C at higher levels in the evening hours.
Post all internal communications on line including newsletters, papers (Daily Sun, Chronicle) let’s try to be the “paperless” office we were expected to be by now.
Consider more mass transportation trips between Cornell and NYC; encourage car pooling for business travel by posting a business car share web site for this purpose. - Janet
Suggestion: If the University is concerned with raising funds, it can simply encourage instructors to require the newest edition of every text. This way the Cornell Store (which is owned by the University) will not have the burden of buyback and can charge full price on every (brand new) book.
(Of course, if the goal is to help students survive, encouraging the opposite will save students money by providing buyback cash and used-book discounts, while giving the Cornell Store a 25 percent profit with each turn). - Anonymous
Suggestion: Some Employees within the Cornell organization have multiple offices in different locations. This should be reviewed and eliminated where possible. This would translate into saving in dual office expenses such as phone lines, data lines, office supplies, utility usage, etc. In addition, this would allow for building usage to be evaluated potentially creating additional savings - (may eliminate some lease space). - Anonymous
Suggestion: If a building has water fountains, there is no need for the Culligan man. - Anonymous
Suggestions: 1. Eliminate alcoholic beverages from allowable expenses for departmental lunches and dinners. The friends of Bill will thank us.
2. When having an event catered, supply your own water bottles and beverages at less than 25 cents per unit instead of $1.50. Cater more events yourself, keeping to basic cheese, crackers, and such.
3. Eliminate smoking on all university property. In addition to cleaner air to breathe, we will all be healthier, reducing health care costs. - Bruce
Suggestion: 1. Cut from the administration, not from faculty or staff. Memorizing the number of vice provosts and assistant this and thats is harder than memorizing the periodic table of elements. are they all needed?
2. Shave top salaries. Again, the administration is a good target, but don’t be afraid to do so among faculty… if the ivy league and some other top research institutions could all agree on some sort of faculty wage suppression, you wouldn’t need to worry about poaching. Of course, that’s a very unstable equilibrium to be in, as a game theorist might point out. Still worth thinking about.
3. Put students to work. This is a good compromise: freeze all tuition increases (in 2008 dollars, so don’t even keep pace with inflation). Then, require all undergraduates to put in 20 hours a week of work. Paid or unpaid, it’d always be cheaper than a full employee with benefits. This would probably also lead to fewer people taking too many classes, which would lower class size… everybody wins!
4. Get some really good lawyers together and figure out how to divert funds from things like the hotel and the museum to bread and better, core departments. There’s no reason you should have an understaffed economics or history or english department when you’re building a winery, a new shiny facade to the hotel school, and an addition to the museum. That’s just stupid.
5. Hire (yes, hire) more people specifically to help undergraduates and graduates garner financial support from private foundations. If every Cornell student aggressively applied for all the random scholarships out there, you’d find a lot of ways to keep tuition paid without anyone in Ithaca actually doing the paying.
6. Remember the University’s core mission, and never let financial pressure lead to cheap tricks in admissions. Cornell has a responsibility to new york state and the nation, and there are a lot of smart but disenfranchaised students in your own backyard. It’s tempting to fill the colleges with rich prep schoolers and foreigners exempt from certain financial aid. but this is irresponsible, and it certainly doesn’t jive with “any person…any study” nor Cornell’s land grant mission. - Munier
Suggestion: Cornell Dining. With a few exceptions (Statler, Sage) the food on campus is of mediocre quality and costs have risen significantly in the three years I have been here. Cornell should do what other campuses do with their food service- outsource it. By either bringing in private companies to take over the Cornell Dining program or renting out spaces on campus to individual chains, we will create efficiencies naturally through competition as well as more accountability. The University will be able to charge lucrative rent fees for prime, (recession-immune) locations on Campus. For example, a Starbucks in Olin Library instead of the cafe currently could easily produce more revenue which the University should be able to tap into. Cornell Dining clearly takes advantage of there status as the main food provider on campus but it fails to understand that changes in food selection and quality could dramatically increase revenues. This may seem like a small area to start but it is an easy way to quickly reduce Cornell’s administrative costs, give students better food, and if done correctly, should easily be able to save the university money. - Adam
Suggestion: I am a Cornell graduate and temporary employee who was actively seeking permanent employment status at Cornell until the hiring freeze has caused me to reevaluate my goals.
First, I notice on my walks to the office from the Vet School parking area that there are a lot of annual plantings that are torn up at the end of season. Some areas are replaced with mums. You may consider other landscaping options; I believe there is a lot of room to work with here for cost containment. Second, please consider a University wide request to reduce spending for food and beverages at meetings. How about brown bagging it for some meetings, or, at least shop around for more competitive prices than what Wegmans charges for one of it’s sandwich platters.
Thank you for the opportunity to share my opinion. - Anonymous
Suggestion: While as a student, I could not be more pleased with President Skorton’s commitment to keeping our current financial aid policies in place, I am curious as to what the administrators think about cutting some of the salaries and bonuses of our top administrators. I think it would be a strong message to send to the community if say, President Skorton took only the salary of a full professor or the Provost and other high up administrators. This would be a great sign of solidarity in these tough times. More importantly, what sort of message does it send to the Cornell community if jobs are laid off and faculty cut but the President still takes home more than a half million dollars in a year? - Anonymous
Suggestion: In his most recent addresses to the trustees and staff, President Skorton talked about evaluating our organizational structure and determining what areas might benefit from more centralization. In these tough economic times he is to be applauded for his bold statement about an area where few others have ventured. There are undoubtedly savings in terms of duplicate staff, procurement (especially procurement!), and reducing waste at the University. President Skorton noted that this must be approached cautiously (he seems well aware of the danger of too much centralized bureaucracy) and while this type of review may come about due to our economic times, it can only make us stronger in the future. Along these lines, another commentor wrote about a person who would manage resources about to be discarded across the university - this is an excellent idea but will only work as people buy in to the “re-use” culture - that something doesn’t have to be brand new - even in a new building or remodeled space. - Emily
Suggestion: Hello, I am a senior in the Economics department at Cornell. I have several suggestions to help Cornell with the current crisis.
First, make more things available online and reduce various admin positions. Use student employment more aggressively rather than full-time employees. Reduce the amount of paperwork. One example would be to reduce pamphlets and advertisements sent to PSAT test takers. Most people already know about Cornell and I am of the opinion that people don’t really choose their school based on these brochures. The content can be brought online and advertised through Google or Facebook, which will target the right audience.
Second, try to get gifts from technology vendors like Dell, Lenovo, HP, Samsung, Microsoft, or IBM for our IT needs. Cornell needs more campus computing power. Perhaps offering them exclusivity or advertising in some of Cornell’s most lucrative locations (Campus Store, Willard Straight Hall, even perhaps posters in Duffield atrium). Cornell needs to offer these companies something in order to get their money.
Also, emerging market companies who are not used to donating large sums may be willing to reach deals with Cornell if the university can offer access to our students not only for their consumption but also for recruitment, research, etc.
Third, increase tuition and increase receipts from tuition through accepting more international students. International students tend to pay higher tuition and use less financial aid. I think this is financially smart and increases our diversity. Diversity isn’t just about gender or race in the US, as Cornell tries to be a global university it should aim to have a more multinational student base anyway.
Fourth, create programs abroad through help from governments. I commend Cornell’s Doha medical program. Launching something in Asia, perhaps in conjunction with the CAPS major but also involving the professional schools can be in the long run a good investment for Cornell in terms of brand recognition, human capital, and donations.
Finally, be open to more advertisements and sponsorship memos on our own webpage, orientation materials, and throughout campus events. While we should definitely should not make our campus look like a billboard advertisement, including flyers for some major firms in an orientation packet can bring in incredible amounts of revenue. Mobile phone operators and gadget makers probably will be good targets as many students buy their first cell phone in college and even those who have one already tend to move up. Many students also buy laptops and MP3 players as they come into college. All of these vendors are sources of money that Cornell should tap, especially since Cornell is a relatively large undergraduate population. - Joshua
Suggestion: Offer employees the option of taking 1–2 weeks of unpaid vacation as long as their supervisor approves etc… I know that I would probably consider taking a week of unpaid vacation during the summer.
Investigate the possibility of making more positions 10 or 11-month positions…even if it is temporary. I know there are a few people within our college that have little to do during the summer.
Investigate if there is a savings behind the notion of “summer” hours. A number of institutions close on Fridays for 6 or 8 weeks during the summer. Is there a cost savings here?
Obviously people are anxious and one of the comments that I hear quite a bit is that a way to save money is to have administrators cut their salaries. In order to keep morale up and be a good steward of the employees you need to make sure that the pain is shared by all ranks. - Beth
Suggestion: What if Cornell offered 1 week unpaid leave of absence for staff by request. I am thinking if 50 employees requested this, it could add up to one FTE salary thus saving a layoff. I am guessing that there are some staff who would jump at the option to have one additional week off - even if unpaid. Of course, there would have to be criteria arranged for something like this to occur. Just a thought. - Anonymous
Suggestion: The University trustees should be the first to demonstrate fiscal prudence. How much does it cost to hold four trustee meetings per year? The trustees should be required to perform a review of the necessity to hold 4 meetings per year and the rationale for the costs associated with those meetings (who does / should pay travel, lodging, meal, and event costs).
Next, the University budget office should be asked to rationalize the $1.3M surplus in the 2008–2009 operating budget for the Ithaca campus. This seems wasteful as the money is diverted into the existing operating reserves of $333M.
Additional financial disclosure by the University and the trustees will help in financial savings. - Jonathan
Suggestion: If we printed colored brochures in black and white and did an entire campaign on this it would save money for a short period of time and might even be more effective with the constituents. I know many advertising posters and such are in full color. There is a huge price difference when items are printed even in one color vs. full color. - Tisha
Suggestion: Thank you for allowing us to make suggestions.
I have two areas that might be potential cost savings ideas. One is the extravagance of some gatherings given by departments for “special occasions”. I think that the money spent on these should be limited across the board so that it is uniform. There seems to be a wide array of differences from having coffee and cookies, to a catered event for instance, when an employee is moving on to another position or leaving the university.
I believe it is important to recognize employees but there needs to be limits in set or if there are already limits in place they should be followed.
The other comment I have is in relation to too many supervisors supervising in one area. Take a look at the layers of supervisors over employees in some departments. I’m sure some of them could better serve the university in another capacity. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Host informational events and seminars online and broadcast, rather than using a physical space in a building to cut the cost of preparation, cleaning, and maintenance. Eliminate free promotional items, such as food, beverages, and give-away’s, during informational and public meetings, such as the benefit fair, the employee day, the items that are given away at various events and offices. Also limit the number of printed publications during those events, and consider sending them out electronically. - Kaz
Suggestion: There has been a lot of talk recently about the tremendous natural gas reserves in the Marcellus Shale formation. Does Cornell own land within the Marcellus Shale region? If so, I would suggest that Cornell review its property holdings that are within the Marcellus Shale region to see if gas leasing rights could provide income to Cornell. - Robert
Suggestion: The events are great, but cancelling the Employee Celebration Events (Football and Dinner, Basketball and Dinner) would surely realize some cost savings. Also cancelling Bring a Child to Work Day. - Anonymous
Suggestion: If the university adopted a smoke-free policy, savings could be realized in health insurance costs. Smoking is also related to increase employee absenteeism. Much research has been gathered in this area. Another potential saving to a smoke-free campus could be the cost of labor for grounds and building care crews picking up cigarette butts and butt containers that mar the beauty of this campus. The following is a brief statement from ACS website.
”Tobacco causes 30% of all cancer deaths. A recent Center for Disease Control study (April 2002) reports that smoking related illness costs the nation more than $157 billion annually. Of all smokers, one in three will die prematurely from tobacco use.” - Anonymous
Suggestion: Save money on redundant administrative heads and staff by combining similar units. for example:
1) Combine Food Science, Horticulture, Entomology and Plant Pathology departments at Geneva with duplicate departments in Ithaca.
Better yet,
2) Roll up plethora of small plant science departments (Plant Biology, Plant Breeding and Genetics, Plant Pathology (both of them), Horticulture (both of them), Crop and Soil Sciences) into one. They have but a handful of undergraduates among them and burn considerable resources administering themselves separately.
3) Development sociology (CALS) and Sociology (ARTS)
4) Applied Economics and Management (CALS) and Labor Economics (ILR) with Economics (ARTS)
And when departments from two colleges combine, just have one chair, not two. Or three. See EAS history to see why. - Dan
Suggestion: 1) I often see full size buses traveling on campus with only a couple of people on them, sometimes none. Can Cornell go to using smaller buses, to realize a savings in gas consumption?
2) I receive numerous e-mails through the day, with the need to print them. Most staff use a 5 or even sometimes 6 line ending address. When printing e-mails, often there are two pages of just names and addresses repeated, as e-mails are forwarded and replied to many times. If everyone within Cornell only signed their e-mail with their name and maybe a phone number (two lines), it would save a lot of paper.
3) If Cornell would go to a 4-day class schedule, the savings would be significant.
4) I believe Cornell would save significantly also by offering a 4 day work week/ 10 hr. days, to those who can take advantage of it. - Pat
Suggestion: Why not hold a contest to see what department was able to achieve the largest cost savings within a certain time period? The prize does not have to be big and can actually just be recognition in Pawprint. But their winning suggestions could easily be used by others. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I suggest the university consider providing 5% retirement above salary and match dollar for dollar to 10%. This would encourage all of us to reflect on saving for retirement. We do not save enough for retirement and this would encourage participation and savings.
Having suggested this before I know there is concern for those at the lower end of the salary bands. One could consider 7% under a certain salary level and matching for the remaining 3%.
Cornell has a very generous retirement package and frankly I would rather have health insurance at retirement and been made to match retirement than to have to find insurance when I retire. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Cancel slope day. Lot of departments pay overtime or subject professional staff to extra hours to support this activity. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Financial Savings & Sustainability Suggestions:
A) Evaluate the implementation of an annual, mandatory two week, unpaid furlough for all University faculty and staff with annualized Cornell earnings of $60,000 or more. Implementing mandatory employee furloughs on a temporary basis, with need determined by monitoring the nation’s economy, could result in substantial financial savings and/or the potential salvaging of a number of current employees’ jobs who might otherwise be faced with near term dismissal in response to the currently severe economic down turn.
B) Consider analyzing the annual total cost of tent rentals from outside vendors at Cornell with the goal of reducing the frequency of their mushrooming campus use, costs, and associated recurring campus lawn and walkway repair costs. If their use can not be better controlled and reduced, it might be feasible for Cornell to own some of these, and furnish this service at a lower cost (avoiding much of the rental costs and adverse environmental impacts of long truck hauling distances), and/or set up a negotiated annual contract with one or two large vendors at reduced University rental rates.
C) The health and sustainability of our Cornell community members— as well as the saving of millions of dollars annually in University costs— could be realized if the University adopts a phased-in, totally “tobacco smoke free campus” policy. A policy of this kind would also likely enhance student recruitment (and gain broad parental favor), as enlightened students want to an educational experience in a supportive healthy environment, and almost universally, prefer to graduate addiction free. This policy has been implemented successfully at other institutions modeling national sustainability leadership, including our neighboring Wells College. Implementation would yield major cost savings in a number of areas to include (but not limited to): University group health insurance rates, employee sick leave benefits, lost employee productivity, and facilities maintenance costs (including custodial & grounds grounds labor, equipment and materials to clean up litter and maintain drainage utilities). Cornell would also benefit from reduced campus litter accumulation (as one of every three cigarette butts are improperly discarded in our environment). - Dennis
Suggestion: Some of my suggestions are based on what has been done in the French public offices lately: in many workplaces, traditional phone has been replaced by free phone on the Internet (Skype). Skype and similar tools also allows more videoconferences and long-distance meetings. I am surprised to see so many people in the Cornell Bus who are going to NY just for one meeting: this should become the exception. Also, even at the highest level (such as the Inspection des Finances), they have reduced the number of administrative assistants/secretaries quite drastically (in this case, ONE super-skilled administrative manager is left for the whole service). Obviously, nowadays, even high-ranking civil servants and academics do their e-mails, manage their schedule, make reservations with a click, etc.
Cornell ought to hire people with double appointments: a good example of this is the Library curators (that is, the elite of librarians, in place such as the Division of Rare Books and Manuscripts), who from now on ought to have PhDs and linguistic skills, and get an adjunct faculty position within one or two departments — To give you but one example, I am myself the curator of the French, German, and Dutch collections in RMC, and at the same time an adjunct professor within the Dpt of Comp. Lit, and I teach one to two classes a week, based on our collections and databases. I am also the acting director of the French Studies Program (where my “assistant” is a PhD- student). Similar complementarities exist between the Johnson Museum and the Art History Department, etc.
Of course, such changes would be met with resistance by old-fashioned bureaucrats (especially those obsessed with their “status” and “professional identity”), but in the end substantial cost cuts can be realized there. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I just reviewed the new university training and tracking tool. This looks great and being able to easily see course offerings is wonderful too. I was dismayed to hear that Weill is using another system.
I would hope a link could be created that would allow nursing, physicians and counselors at Gannett to take course offerings for free that Weill has access to.
We must maintain competency and requirements for licensure and certifications which is very costly. Since Ithaca and New York are supposed to be more of one campus sharing these types of tools would be helpful and save money. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Dear President Skorton,
Actually my thoughts are for all categories of sustainability, efficiency as well as financial savings.
The realism in why there seems to be a spiral downward in these three areas is the fact that greed and selfishness prevails within organizations the world over.
My suggestion, and not because of any biased leaning but in well documented fact, is that more Jehovah’s Witnesses should be hired for jobs on Campus. Why do I say this? Well, it has been written in publications how Jehovah’s Witnesses are one of the foremost religious people preferred for jobs because they are honest and hard-working. Despite the fact that they are disliked for their beliefs, their work ethics are held in high esteem. It is against their religion to lie or steal or divulge confidential matters.
On the other hand, we have nepotism and favoritism permeating many departments today. Some of these individuals are unscrupulous in their morals and ethics. Many staff members can attest to this as well. Articles that “walk off Campus” because of “eyes blind to badness” is a problem that effects the economics of industries and Universities he world over. Unless these things are monitored and dealt with, things will only get worse.
Well these are my thoughts and suggestions. I wish you well in your endeavors to better Cornell University and all those who are employed by this great place to work. - Anonymous
Suggestion: At a UC I attended, we had significant budget challenges. One solution was to have the staff empty their trash. Buildings were cleaned only infrequently (typically once a week). Rugs were discouraged since they require more cleaning. Grounds were not maintained as nicely. None of these had a significant impact on the mission of the University. - Anonymous
Suggestion: As a single parent of a current freshman student with sleeping difficulties, and despite the financial burden that a single room selection entails, it has been a necessary choice. Next year, I understand that such a selection cannot be assured, as my son will be part of a lottery system. Since many freshmen often enter Cornell requesting a double room, and getting a single, it could behoove the university to provide single rooms solely to those who will pay for them. Although we are not in a position to “afford” the excess cost for a single room, the choice was assisted by loan, and was worth it for my son, who applies cost containment strategies to other choices to allow for this “luxury/necessity.” By reserving the single rooms for those who specifically request them and will pay for them, it seems to me would be a “win-win” for everyone. I am suggesting that the freshmen, then the sophomores, then juniors, then seniors (in that order) would be allowed the rooms by expressed request and associated billing until the rooms become unavailable. If there is a problem with a “first-come, first-serve” fairness issue, perhaps the students should then provide a reason for their requests and/or be expected to sign up by a certain date, taking into account first-come, first-serve. In this way the freshmen who are currently housed in single rooms would have their first choice of double room, etc. (I have spoken to a number of them when we toured the campus last April).
The University would pick up another $910 per student now housed in single rooms who actually chose doubles. Furthermore, in fairness, the students who want/need them bad enough to pay for them should have the first shot at available rooms. This may also apply to program houses for the upperclassmen. Those rooms should go to those who are willing to pay for them until that group is exhausted. - Anonymous
Suggestion: This “problem” is very minor in the scheme of things, but surely the “fix” is easy as well, and perhaps it would be easy to look for and find similar sort of problems.
I have noticed over the years that the buildings of CU have been made more and more controllable, which is a very good thing.
In the newest buildings on the campus block - those new cheap dormitories below Libe Slope - in Flora Rose House in particularly, I noticed that at least one of the staircases there cannot be controlled by someone who doesn’t have some special access to a thermostat or something - Which is all very good, as it should be - except it is unrealistically warm. The stairs is on the outside edge of the building envelop thus making heat loss a waste, the heat is by electrical resistance (I think, but maybe not) and not only is it unnecessarily warm, it is warmer than much the rest of the building, in my opinion, warmer than is comfortable.
If the excessive warmth is countered by the opening of windows, the energy loss is only limited by how much heat the heat register can supply.
I called this building(s) cheap. Why? Simply it is not up to the standards of all other newly constructed campus buildings, almost all of which I have been in. This “lack of quality”, in design, selection of parts and materials, though to a much lesser degree (if at all) execution, is so readily apparent; you don’t even have to be actually living there, but I can’t help but believe that if you are there a lot, or forced to be there much of the time, this cheapness is all too apparent - the transmission of sounds, for example. I understand there is the issue of cost effectiveness, design life, speed in which something needed to go up, and maybe it will be considered an experiment of sorts, from which to learn. Perhaps faculty architects could be queried as to suggestions next time around (free advice?). Obviously it is livable, but maybe the cheapness rubs off on the young students who feel it gives them license to be an expense (to the authorities) in other ways, though such inconsiderate ways, such as not cleaning up after oneself, indeed making a big mess, being wasteful, sort of legitimizes the behavior to one another - sort of like broken windows. - Anonymous
Suggestion: An innovative way to improve all three categories of sustainability, efficiency and financial savings would be to make changes to changing the scheduling of classes.
The winter intersession break should occur during December and not January. If Fall exams ended the day before Thanksgiving (offset by beginning earlier in August) and Spring semester classes started immediately after New Years (offset by ending earlier in April), this would mean faculty, students and staff would not need to purchase two separate holiday tickets to go home. They would leave for Thanksgiving and return in January instead, with half the traveling costs (and carbon emissions, etc) and keeping the length of the school year the same. The winter intersession classes would instead take place from after Thanksgiving to right before Christmas.
I trust you will understand the positives of this suggestion, and the immediate costs will quickly be overcome if this idea is implemented speedily.
Thank you for your consideration. - Jon
Suggestion: The incredibly ugly purple sculpture in the middle of the otherwise empty, bucolic field out past North Campus could be sold for scrap steel. - Anonymous
Suggestion: These suggestions I’m sure have already been suggested and would come under the two categories which often go hand-in-hand, sustainability and financial savings.
1. Computers - turn them off at night unless they are performing a necessary function, and that does not mean being backed up.
2. Lights - turn off lights, particularly at night in non-occupied rooms.
3. Paper waste - use less paper. At times paper notifications are necessary but may be produced in a smaller, less paper consumptive format, even if it is to provide reference to something online. - Cynthia
Suggestions: Request all employees who do not use remote access, to turn off computers for weekends and holidays.
I hate to say this, but if Cornell contributed 1% less toward retirement, the savings would be significant and CU’s contribution would still be generous.
Extend lunch from 42 to 45 minutes, reducing the work week by 15 minutes.
Allow non-exempt employees the choice of leaving at 4:00 on Fridays without pay. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Shift the academic calendar to capitalize on seasonal weather - begin first semester the last week of July ending at Thanksgiving in November. Close the campus December through January (reducing absenteeism due to winter illnesses…). Begin second semester the first week of February, ending the last week of May.
Shifting to a 4 day week could further reduce time needed for semesters to be completed/facilities to be opened and manned. This would be an easier adjustment to make during spring/summer work periods than during fall/winter work periods and would reduce need for supplemental lighting tremendously. No need for daylight savings time there, less SAD on the job. Work/class hours could be shifted to run from 7 AM to 12 PM, and then 1 PM to 6 PM.
If all workers were moved to salary-based pay systems their annual salaries could be distributed uniformly over the course of the year, whether actively working or apart from formal university function. The change in schedule would create more opportunities for professional development, travel, family time, and rejuvenation, making all more productive and engaged in the process… - Cathy
Suggestion: There have been a number of suggestions to reduce the work week. I would like to see a policy of staff sabbaticals. Not necessarily the traditional faculty sabbatical. We could have two types for the staff.
1. A period of time off; three months, six months or 12 months without pay, to explore personal projects of any type.
2. A traditional sabbatical with some level of pay to pursue work related research or learning with a similar time frame; three, six or 12 months.
Obviously there will be a need to fill the staff members positions. This could be handled with temporary staff that would in most cases be hired at a lower pay rate.
The benefit to the university would be a cost savings and a more refreshed, energized staff with new ideas. - Robert
Suggestion: I would suggest that the University close 12/22, 12/23 and 12/24 and staff would either use vacation or personal time for those days. So many people take that time off as it is that the savings in payroll and electricity would be huge. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Some institutions pro-rate health insurance premiums by employee income. Perhaps we could consider the same here. Higher-income staff could pay a higher percentage of the cost. Since health insurance is a big and constantly growing expense, the savings could potentially be significant if considered over a period of years.
A general call should be put out for voluntary reductions in hours. There are perhaps staff who are looking for phased retirement or would otherwise like to cut back (and could afford to do so). The university might be able to “incentivize” this with (for instance) a one-time bonus or contribution to an employee’s retirement account in exchange for lower costs in future years.
Perhaps the tuition benefit needs to be re-examined. It’s great that CU pays employees to help defray costs of educating their kids, but I’m not sure the university can continue to subsidize other institutions while facing its own financial problems.
Continue the hiring “pause” beyond March 31, but only for administrative positions. There is more to be saved there and less of an immediate impact on front-line services. Such positions should be examined very carefully going forward to ensure their true necessity. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I work in Willard Straight Hall. We have a great maintenance staff here. Unfortunately, my understanding is that if we need any work done - i.e. picture hung in our office, wall painted, bookshelf assembled, etc. - then we need to submit a ticket and PAY someone from PDC/shops to do this work for us. I’ve heard that our maintenance staff has actually had grievances filed against them for performing extremely minor tasks. Like any other building on campus, WSH’s operating expense is not very big. Does it really make sense to have to ‘hire’ and pay another department to perform these tasks when we have very capable staff available? In understand and respect the university’s commitment to working with trade shops and unions, but perhaps it’s time to renegotiate. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I would like to offer these suggestions to reduce costs in all areas to save the University money:
Complete shut down of all office equipment every day, no sleep modes.
Limit Per Diem Meal reimbursement for travel to 75% of allowance.
No reimbursement for purchase of alcohol, unless class related.
Limit tip reimbursement to 15%.
Salary and wage freeze for 2 years. If we are laying people off, those of us who still have jobs can sacrifice this much.
Reduce or eliminate department funding for office perks such as coffee, bottled water service, paper plates, plastic ware, etc.
Reduce mileage reimbursement to 40 cents per mile. Encourage use of fleet vehicles.
Minimize use of security lighting in unoccupied buildings and offices.
Increase use of electronic storage to reduce paper, printer, file storage and ink costs. Example, don’t keep hard copies. Scan and store to computer file or disk. They are faster to access and require much less storage space.
Restrict purchase of office supplies and equipment to university preferred vendors to ensure best purchase price.
Thank you. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Ditch the “star” system, at least for the humanities. Many of the professors receiving “star” salaries are not even that well known in the field, they simply have marketed themselves well to the University. The “stars” tend to be extraordinarily difficult to work with, not show up to class, and are generally not that productive and not pushing the boundaries of the field. The extraordinary privileging of some people over others, usually not due to exceptional merit but due to an old-style patronage system that values friendship over the quality of work, also creates deep resentments and dysfunction. I would also point out that this “star” system works much better for men than for women, and that the vast majority of endowed chairs at this University are held by men. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Examine all subscriptions and memberships campus wide. Leverage these wherever possible to eliminate duplications.
Create one central location for publications (that lend themselves) so users can view them in PDF form (assuming copyright laws allow this…or pricing for this purpose can be negotiated with the vendor) rather than having multiple copies of paper forms delivered across campus. This will allow the university to save money in subscriptions, as well as having to recycle the used paper. For example: many BSC’s may subscribe to publications such as “Keep up to Date on: “[payroll, A/P, etc…]. If one department (such as DFA) got the material and could post it on a web site for all BSC’s to refer to, we could eliminate the duplicate subscription fees as well as the extra paper copies that float around after all users finished reading the document. We also might share information that otherwise might not be seen (in the event that one BSC isn’t currently subscribing).
As far as memberships go, make sure that the university isn’t paying for members that are no longer here or who might not be designated as key players any longer. - Lisa
Suggestion: I have a couple of ideas:
1. Close the university the week of Dec. 22…we could lower the heat in all of the buildings, eliminate or dramatically reduce water usage, reduce electricity usage, and reduce the need for many services on campus.
2. Create a stratified pricing structure for services that are provided both to the university and to those outside the university so that university clients are charged a lower, “university rate” and external clients are provided a higher rate. This could apply to catering, COE, SRI, and many other units that are self-supporting. It would encourage Cornell offices to “buy Cornell” and could also lead to increased income from higher costs to external clients.
3. Install variable flushers on toilets…one direction for liquid waste and one direction for solid waste…like what is in Martha Van.
4. Encourage staff to turn off monitors and printers when not in use, especially over night.
5. Centralize Campus Life offices as much as possible into a non-residence hall space so that when students are not here, we do not need to heat the buildings in order to accommodate the offices. OR if we cannot do that, install separate water heaters and HVAC units for offices so the entire building’s utilities don’t need to be on when only a few offices are open and there are no residents in the building. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Eliminate the 2 days of study before final exams and shorten the final exam period to 1-week, similar to what they do at most universities. For example, if exams had started on this past Monday (Dec.8th) and ended on Saturday (Dec.13th), the students would have vacated the dorm by Sunday Dec. 14th instead of Dec. 20th.
Likewise, by shortening the exam period to 1-week in the spring, the students can report back to school 1 week later in January, greatly reducing costs. We would then have a 6-week break instead of the 4-week break as planned for this academic year.
Again, this is not a novel idea. I realize that it breaks with Cornell tradition, but it is protocol at most universities. In times of financial constraints, tradition, such as the 2-day study period, is expendable. It is certainly a better alternative than eliminating programs or laying off people! - Bill
Suggestion: As many on here have pointed out, the UC system has had to work on efficiencies for years. I would recommend that Skorton meets with Birgeneau at UC Berkeley and other State University leaders to share knowledge and strategies.
A few cost saving suggestions in the area of Academics:
1) early retirement and hiring younger and less paid junior faculty: this will improve on our academic excellency, student to faculty ratios.
2) Consolidation of departments and programs (Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Sociology and Rural Sociology)
3) Teaching assistantships should be assigned based on merit and potential, not distributed all students indiscriminately
4) I fully agree with the comment on “star” faculty in arts and sciences. Their “excellence” is questionable, and they often cost much more than their salaries, as they come with spousal hires. Academic excellency and fame don’t always go together.
Suggestions not related to academics:
1) The university must re-evaluate the role of PDC on campus, and the cost savings that could be achieved by creating competition with outside contractors
2) cornell dining needs competition; it would lead to better food and prices
3) catering should be limited. Potlucks are more fun
Thanks for the opportunity to share our thoughts. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Dear President Skorton:
We came up with this idea over breakfast this morning. Many faculty at Cornell spend a lot of time giving talks all over the US and world. Most of these talks are never delivered to a Cornell audience. Our idea is establish a website (a wiki) where every faculty person who has given a talk over the last year outside Cornell lists the title, where it was delivered, along with a short abstract. Departments organizing colloquia etc could then first look at this website to find talks relevant to their own field. It is a common experience that faculty often give talks of great relevance away from Cornell but never actually get to give that talk on their home turf. Also Cornell is so vast that there are talks given in many fields that are extremely relevant to others but no one realizes it. If we stipulated one year say 09–10 when Cornell was going to put the emphasis on “getting to know ourselves better”, depts could be encouraged in that year to first hear Cornell colleagues talk rather than those from outside Cornell. This would benefit Cornell in two ways. It would mean that we as a community would get the benefit of our own colleagues’ research more (lead to new collaborations even) and also it would potentially make big savings on travel and hotel budgets used for bringing people into Cornell. Obviously in the long run a major research university like Cornell depends upon faculty moving around giving talks etc outside Cornell but if we put the emphasis on “home” talks for a year or even two I don’t think any permanent damage would result.
It’s an idea! - Anonymous
Suggestion: Go digital with all campus publications. There is no need for paper copies of the Cornell Chronicle, alumni magazines, various departmental newsletters, etc. etc.
Cut back on the ornamental plantings each season. Attractive shrubs or perennials can look just as nice as the thousands of bulbs and annuals that get planted.
Create surcharges for single-sided printing or copying on campus equipment.
Increase the compaction ratios on large waste containers at loading docks to reduce the number of hauls.
As they leave service, don’t replace printers, copiers and other office equipment in some departments — let ‘em share with neighboring offices. It increases cross-faculty interaction which can lead to greater innovation, morale etc. (Campbell and Campbell, 1982), may make people think twice about the necessity of a hard copy, and saves on equipment costs and the associated utilities. (My department has a top-notch printer and a full-sized copier for just two faculty and one admin. asst. It’s convenient but insane.) - Anonymous
Suggestion: I think that the elimination of ARAMARK Dining Services would be a great help campus wide. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Eliminate consultants
Offer early retirement incentives
Hold back this years SIP
Savings through job attrition
Do not fill open positions unless truly necessary and if so, fill from within where possible - Anonymous
Suggestion: Just some thoughts. Reduce or eliminate consultant use on campus. The resulting workload increase in IT anyway could be picked up by current staff who are generally endowed, working more hours to cover consultant loss would have no financial impact. Eliminate any SIP for 08–09. Offer early retirement packages where appropriate. Reduce utility costs (lights, turn off monitors when not being used, heaters, etc.). Freeze new hardware purchases until more fiscally sound. Reduce printing costs (staff directory, annual reports etc). Reduce or eliminate travel for conferences and training. All lunch meetings are brown bag. - Anonymous
Suggestion: At the flu shot clinics on campus, instead of immunizing faculty/staff for free, consider charging them the standard office-visit co-pay amount. Having clinics across campus is already an appreciated benefit, as they make it very easy and convenient for people to get immunized. I would happily pay to Cornell what I would normally pay to my physician for this shot. Payment would allow Cornell to recoup at least part of the cost of the vaccine. Since widespread immunization is important to the health of all on campus, the charge should be waived without challenge for anyone who said it would be a deterrent to their getting the shot. - Anonymous
Suggestion

- Turn off all lights in campus buildings at night. I’m thinking especially of Olin and the arts quad.
- Charge students a substantial fee for use of disposable dishware at campus eating halls, and/or provide discounts to students who bring their own.
- Lower heat in campus buildings at night
- Turn off computers in labs and in libraries when these aren’t in use (i.e. during vacation, at night, or after a lengthy period during which they aren’t used); even “asleep,” these consume electricity. The claim that turning a computer on and off will damage it is groundless.
- Insulate windows in campus buildings. I can’t speak for the rest of campus, but on the first floor of Goldwin-Smith Hall, many windows are so poorly fitted to their frames that even when “closed,” they’re still slightly open. So, too, the university could, at not great expense, insulate (even with felt, etc) the interior of windows at least in the study/research rooms in Olin. These are very leaky, and there’s no reason why the university should want to avoid using low-cost heat-retention measures like tape and felt insulation; whether or not these look dignified, renovation plans are already on the books and in the meantime we could very easily take this small space to conserve money and energy.
- Suggest that classroom, conference-room and office doors remain closed unless there’s a pressing need for them to be kept open.
- Lower the heat at dormitories; I’ve heard complaints from a number of students that their dorms are overheated in the winter and overcooled in the summer.
- Abolish paper towels from bathrooms; these need not be replaced with blow-driers. - Anonymous

Suggestion: I think cornell should get out of or drastically curtail its involvement with NCAA athletics. This is primarily an academic/research institution.
The majority of students do not have the time to even go out for teams. The team membership is drawn largely from majors that permit students to spend a significant amount of their time on this non-academic pursuit. A significant number of some of the high profile teams have alcohol or other drug issues - and since these students are considered “student leaders”, others follow.
A Cornell researcher several years ago publishes a study showing that Athletics is a money-losing proposition. Even when a team wins a national title, donations will only increase enough to put Athletics into the black for a brief time.
I also think that the resources devoted to ~1400 students could be better spent improving the club and intramural and single athlete experience. These resources could be used in combating the nationwide epidemic of obesity by helping to move our students to lifetime-sustainable habits of proper exercise, good nutrition and stress reduction.
Additionally Athletics occupies significant and valuable real estate. Buildings could be re-tasked or removed as university priorities suggest. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Have President Skorton pay for his own house cleaning. - Anonymous
Suggestion: In response to your recent letter concerning Cornell’s financial status and future I have the following comments. First, I believe that the University’s decision to keep the growth in undergraduate tuition at a modest level is a good one. Delaying major capital outlays to the extent possible is also a good move.
While it is bound to create some turmoil, I believe a curriculum review would be a prudent step. Notwithstanding Ezra Cornell’s famous quote about “any study,” I do believe there are courses that could easily be pruned from the tree of knowledge without damaging the University’s most important core purposes. For example, non-traditional courses of study like those under Lesbian, Bisexual, and Gay Studies could be sacrificed with no significant impact on Cornell as a whole. I think a thorough examination of each department’s offerings is likely to reveal other courses that are either poorly attended or of marginal academic merit.
The bottom line is that there are fundamental elements of the Cornell curriculum that are critical and others that are less so. In an era of significant resource constraints, it does not make sense to put the entire enterprise at risk to preserve every conceivable area of study.
With eternal faith in the American spirit that always manages to move forward, I wish you the best in these difficult times. - Stephen
Suggestion: Cornell recently introduced a new full-color publication, Ezra. Why in a time of cutting back is there a new (expensive to print) publication?
Much of the information seems redundant. It is in the Cornell Chronicle, Chronicle Online, and the Alumni magazine.
Perhaps Ezra could be made available online only, and save thousands for the university in printing costs. Or, is Ezra even necessary? Why spend the money to produce this document when the stories are already out there in other publications? - Anonymous
Suggestion: I recently passed my 20 year service anniversary with Cornell. Soon thereafter I received a catalog with a selection of items to choose from to commemorate this event. I respectfully suggest that this practice be discontinued and the funds expended be put to better use. It felt rather demeaning to be offered a pro-forma catalog of trinkets by a university of Cornell’s stature and I felt a bit like a victim of a cheap HR gimmick. I understand the necessity to economize on staff appreciation expenses, but I think a letter signed personally by you would be more meaningful and would cost even less. - Anne
Suggestion: The janitors in many buildings line the wastebaskets, even in offices, with a plastic bag which is replaced daily. I think that if it is not full, weekly would be fine. Or skip the bag. For me, there is only a few tissues in it most days. I took mine away and use the waste basket in the lab. There is no reason why food waste should be put into office waste baskets, and would not be if it sat there all week. A designated container can be available. - Carol
Suggestion: End intercollegiate athletic competition. All of it. (I see that the University of Northern Iowa, scarcely an athletic power, has eliminated baseball and will thereby save $400,000.) We’ve heard too often now that crisis makes opportunity, but the phrase is as true as it is boring. Since intercollegiate athletics is in principle corrupting (as the long and mostly sad history of the NCAA so amply demonstrates) and universities should not, in any event, be in the business of presenting entertainments unrelated to any conceivable educational purpose, now is the time to get rid of these contests and save money - before, I might add, Sen. Grassley wonders about their appropriateness for indirect taxpayer subsidy. - Donald
Suggestion: Stop producing the printed Cornell directory, or at least print thousands fewer and make it opt-in.
Switch to VOIP and save at least $15/month per staff phone. Or, cut out campus phone service to those with Cornell-issued blackberries and phones - I really don’t need two, and Verizon service works just fine. Any mass-messages that go out are usually about the phone service being unavailable; others go out over email or can be texted. - Jennifer
Suggestion: Borrowing $500 million is not the way to go. We must all stop going into debt and learn to live within our means, even Cornell! The argument that other universities are also borrowing is not convincing. Following the herd is what got us into this mess. The interest on the bonds will devastate many of Cornell’s programs for years to come. How long do you think it will take the endowment to come back assuming that it grows at 5% - 10% per year? It’s sad that financial aid is being cut. Continuing to promote a diverse student body with students from a broad range of economic and social backgrounds is the way to build a stronger, more viable university. - John
Suggestion: Swim test requirement-
This takes lots of staff planning, execution and follow up of those who do not complete this up to and including graduation weekend.
Students make appointments at Gannett to try to figure out how to get out it. This includes allergy verification and mental health visits. Taking slots sick students could utilize. Phone calls are fielded from parents, letters come in from home doctors and on and on.
Students claim it is a disability and utilize Student Disability Services to make it a true disability.
All in all it costs lots of time and effort for something which I wonder is truly part of our academic mission. I have heard all kinds of stories about why we have the swim test. Financially is it really something we should continue or is this a good juncture to leave it behind? - Nianne
Suggestion: Ban smoking on campus. Health insurance costs will go down. Worker efficiency will go up as there are less smoke breaks. Custodial costs will go down as they don’t have to pick up butts outside of buildings. Maintenance budgets will go down as those foul smelling plastic butt containers outside of buildings don’t need to be purchased.
Good for health, good for the budget. Pretty simple! - Anonymous
Suggestion: If you look at the current structure of career services at Cornell, it is extremely inefficient (both financially and operationally) due to the fact that there is one university central career center in addition to 7 additional career centers, each housed within respective colleges. The fact is this creates a very confusing and overlapping structure for both customer audiences (recruiters and students) which leads to personal frustration, difficult communication, and a poor professional image to outside recruiters. If this were a business company in the real world, this would be one of the easiest and most common sense functions to make more efficient and in turn be able to cut unnecessary costs. Don’t listen to the excuses the managers of these centers will give you - they are just going to be overly protective of their “turf.” An examination of the current structure would lead not only to reduced costs but also higher quality of service. - Joseph
Suggestion: This is not my original idea. I think it is a great one, in its simplicity. It was submitted by a kitchen worker at a resort where my sister is employed (the idea won an award): In the dining halls, rather than have people scrape food off plates with silverware which can accidentally end up in the trash can, have them use a rubber spatula. Two savings result: (1) A spatula scrapes food off thoroughly which means the plates are cleaned more efficiently. (2) The savings in silverware quickly adds up. Tip: Attach the spatula to each trash can with a string so it won’t accidentally end up in the trash. - Barbara
Suggestion: Workforce Planning began the effort….we need to take the next step and “centralize” all services - not just within the college/unit but across campus. Currently, we have several Financial Service Centers (in addition to the University’s Administrative Service Center) with multiple “directors,” and transaction specialists. I cannot believe combining some of these centers vs. each unit/college having its own, could conceivably eliminate some positions and consolidate on efficiencies. Doing something similar with IT, HR, etc., also makes a great deal of sense as well. Cornell has far too many “directors,” and nonacademic Associate Deans and to few “Indians,” - and I use this term with the utmost respect! Once again, within individual colleges or units, areas could be combined! We have one group of administrative assistants who assist all faculty. On the administrative side, it’s almost a 1:1 ratio. For every administrator, we have at least one administrative assistant. Pooling our resources might may allow us to do more with less. Unless Cornell drastically reduces its personnel costs, programs and the excellent Cornell education will be compromised. We need to ensure we have funding for programs and academics. Since joining Cornell, I have seen more growth in administrative areas - some offices going from 2 to 3 people to 10+. Oddly enough, if you look at Admissions, for example - we have a great staff with the latest technology, but we increased the numbers (bodies) in that area over three-fold. We receive circa 2500 to 3000 applications each year and admit between 250 and 270. Those stats have been fairly constant for many, many years and to reiterate, we were accomplishing this with considerably fewer people and less technology. This is only one area within our framework. We need to look at all of the administrative areas because it is not only Admissions that saw a significant increase in staff, but all the other areas as well. Also, there is duplication of efforts in many offices. Consolidation is key. - Anonymous
Suggestion: The university should eliminate the freshman book-reading project that began with Jared Diamond’s excellent book “Guns, Germs, and Steel” almost 10 years ago. Although that book in particular would have opened the eyes of most incoming students to some new and thought-provoking ideas, recent selections have been much more literary and significantly less informative. Most students tell me that they never read the book sent to them and thought that it was a silly idea.
To have a truly educated student body, with a baseline common educational experience, it makes more sense to require a course on evolution for ALL students, be they engineers, Russian lit majors, or biologists. It is truly embarrassing when tenured full profs in the humanities and social sciences exhibit excruciatingly little knowledge of basic evolutionary concepts during comment sessions for public lectures. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Cornell needs to adopt the evolutionarily stable strategy evidenced by metazoan organisms (that is the most efficient model as demonstrated via evolutionary sorting over time) of centralizing most aspects of its administration, purchasing and so on. The distributed model of purchasing and administration of units is the most inefficient model there is. No real organisms, and no successful business (or for that matter, most universities) do not take this approach. The reason is that redundancy is costly.
For instance. If the university were to bid out single contracts for things that all departments use, such as photocopiers, and office paper- we would likely save huge amounts of money, rather than having every department / unit buying these items ad hoc. In the two buildings in which i work, there are dozens of photocopiers scattered about, from different suppliers. Every department and in fact individual researchers must purchase their ow office paper. This is absurd. Due to its decentralized purchasing, you probably cannot even estimate the number of different vendors supplying paper to campus- but my guess is that CU could save tens to 100s of thousands of dollars a year by pooling this demand and bidding it out.
Another example is software licenses. I have never been at an institution where each person must buy individual software licenses for so many products. Besides the fact that one cannot even accomplish this feat using a single order form with CIT (each requires a separate form that i must populate with all the relevant information, year after year), how many people are required to keep track of this morass of paperwork and so on.
Professional software such as MatLab, Arcview, JMP SAS system, and so on are infrastructural needs of researchers, just like lab space and electricity. Cornell should negotiate universal license agreements then make the software freely available to whomever needs it. As it is, one cannot obtain necessary software if you have no grant funds- so that means your ability to continue to function is greatly diminished.
Another efficiency issue is web page support. Every professional researcher mounts a web page with publications PDFs, research descriptions and so on At Cornell, we must pay for the privilege of doing so, and there is no clear mechanism for doing this. Again, at other universities i have worked, every professional staff person is allocated a free block of web space for the purpose of presenting one’s work to the world. Why is Cornell so far behind the curve on such a straightforward thing? - Anonymous
Suggestion: The North Campus dorm parking lot is only about 20% full. The Tower Road parking on both upper and lower levels is only about 60% full. Now that the lot across from the Dairy Bar is for visitors only (go figure!) it’s only about 10% full at any given time. Why not plan to cut WAY back on snow removal from those sites this winter? No sense in clearing snow from space that is never used. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share ideas about reducing our operating costs.
1. Retirement/Service Gift Brochure
I recently received a Retirement/Service Gift Brochure to select a gift for 20 years of service. Thank You! I got a great Cornell watch!! The brochure had my name inscribed on the front. I suggest no longer printing a name on the front and/or doing this solely online.
2. Recycling Office Furniture and Supplies
I suspect many offices have chairs, desks, tables, bulletin boards and other miscellaneous items stored because they’re not used anymore. They waste storage space while people are purchasing new items to support their offices. It would be great if we had a website listing what items are available for other departments to take. Departments contact each other directly to get the item. It reduces expenditures, frees up storage space and recycles at the same time!
I look forward to all the changes coming ahead! - Mary Ellen
Suggestion: 1. Make more staff positions term appointments instead of 12 months. I know there could be more in my office alone.
2. Do away with a lot of the “lunch meetings” especially for those that have an office or access to a conference room.
3. Do away with some of the big holiday parties that some units get.
4. It’s a waste of paper to send a payroll advice that states “no deposit this time” as that can be viewed on-line. - Nancy
Suggestion: I am wondering if it wouldn’t be beneficial for the university to close the Dryden dairy facility or reduce the size to to save money. It seems like a “white elephant” in these times of financial reductions. I understand that most of the activity there is milking cows and harvesting crops and I don’t see where this benefits the university as a whole.
If the salaries were taken in to consideration and the overall operational costs, it might be a huge savings. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Once again we are in the midst of the final week of classes after a 4 œ day Thanksgiving break. Incredibly, the University schedules an additional 3-day break after the conclusion of classes in preparation for finals.Ager a 4 œ day break just a week earlier, the students hardly need an additional 3 days off to prepare.
If the 3-day study break were eliminated, exams this year (2009) could commence on Monday, December 7th and conclude on Friday/Saturday, December 11/12th. The students could then go home on December 12/13th, thereby saving the University an additional week of boarding the students. A significant amount of money could be saved by not having to feed the students and heat the dorms-not to mention the savings on $ and energy on less showers. Let’s be prudent and eliminate this vestige from the past and launch into final exams the week after classes are over. Almost all universities currently use this model - let’s step into the 21st century and save some $ at the same time. - Bill

Human Resources

Suggestion: This is a suggestion my co-worker came up with a while ago and I thought I would share it with you since she hasn’t had the time. I may not be expressing it in exact detail, so please feel free to contact me for her contact information.
She believes that there should be insurance coverage to cover empty-nesters once their children leave home and are no longer covered. As I understand it, even though a couple may not have any more qualifying dependents they are still enrolled in the family plan. My co-worker thought that perhaps there should be insurance just for couples cutting down on the expense. Again, I’m single and have never had to worry about the family plan, but thought I’d offer her two cents. - Anonymous
Suggestion: How about no raises in June 2009? I know this is only a few percent, but it would go a long way toward reducing the number of people we may have to lay off. Most of us would rather have no raise than no job at all. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I, for one, would be willing to forego any salary increase in 2009. Faced with the choice of freezing their salary for a year versus losing their job, I think many, if not most, Cornell employees would choose the freeze. - Anonymous
Suggestion: The university should take a tougher stand on nepotism in the workplace. Rather than hiring a friend or relative and having to go through the time and expense of training that person to do the job, openly (and honestly) hire individuals who already have the established credentials and skill set. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Streamline the Worker’s Compensation reimbursement procedure, so it is no longer necessary for departments to submit payroll data to HR in order to receive reimbursement. This should occur when an employee’s WC case has been closed, without departmental action.
Alternatively, consider not charging the employee’s salary and F/Bs to the department at all during the W.C. period.
This should be consider in the Efficiency Catagory as well as Financial Savings. - Anonymous
Suggestion: As a staff member, I enjoy Cornell’s 10% contribution to my retirement account. But this amount seems well over private sector standards. Lowering Cornell’s contribution to 5% would save a lot while still providing a valuable benefit to staff members. - Anonymous
Suggestion: From another employee: While discussing Cornell’s efforts to safeguard its strength during these hard economic times, one of my co-workers mentioned a news report she’d seen regarding two major corporations that have taken an interesting step in an effort to sustain the companies’ vitality and perhaps avoid the unpleasant option of lay-offs. They have moved to freeze for a set period of time company contributions to employee 401k retirement accounts. We think this might be something for Cornell to consider.
Although some would most likely consider this an unacceptable consequence of budget cuts, those people might then consider the alternatives (layoffs; more federal unemployment payouts, etc.) more unacceptable! I do think such action should be for a defined period, and of course I have no idea about the numbers here. Still, I would think that even a short period could save Cornell a considerable pocket of money — and it would seemingly be relatively “painless” for individual employees in long, short, and real-time terms.
I realize that as a result of budget cuts there are changes to the University’s business infrastructure that make lay-offs inevitable. I suspect, too, that the University’s actions are limited by law and of course there is the bargaining unit — but if this suggestion could be implemented/negotiated it seems it could help.
The trustees’ dedication and effort to safeguard the strength of the university is very much appreciated. As a Cornell employee I am concerned, and understand first hand the hardship of being laid off. In my own experience, I was fortunate enough to have it occur when the economy was stronger than it is today. I am certainly not a financial expert or an economist and I know there are several factors involved in analyzing and administering a budget plan. This is simply an idea taken from a news report that my co-worker and I thought would be interesting to bring to the attention of the powers to be at our own employer, but at the same time we do understand its limitations. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I also suggest reducing Cornell’s retirement contributions until the financial crisis is over. Reducing the contribution by 50% to 75% could save the university $15 - $23 million dollars a year. This type of savings could help avoid some layoffs. - Anonymous
Suggestion: In light of the fact that everybody’s parents are getting older and more in need of help, encourage non-professional staff to feel comfortable taking some days as needed **as leave without pay** as a normal occurrence.
Five days of family health care leave per year for this group of staff don’t do very much in some situations which may arise. Suggest five more as needed.
People need to be able to feel that they can help out family when it is important without being worried about that their jobs are in jeopardy, or that they must take vacation time.
This policy will save the university money. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Perhaps it has been brought up, but can there be a way people can trade in excess vacation & sick leave- and convert these into saved jobs for people or put the dollar equivalent back in the budget somehow?
If everyone donated 2 days, that would save a lot of jobs, I would think. - Craig
Suggestion: I currently have an on-campus job and I put my time into COLTS. I just noticed that in the way that COLTS adds my hours together, I’m getting paid for time that I didn’t work.
I usually work on Mondays and Fridays from 12:15–5, this is 4.75 hours. I also work on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11:15–2:30, this is 3.25 hours. So, I work 4.75×2+3.25×2=16 hours per week. However, COLTS rounds up the number of hours that I work each day, on that day. So, it registers that I work 4.8 hours on Mondays and Fridays, and 3.3 hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays—or I work 4.8×2+3.3×2=16.2 hours per week. This means that I’m getting paid for 0.2 hours that I didn’t actually work for. I make about $9.00/hr, so this means I get paid $1.80 for working non-existent hours. Say, I work for about 30 weeks per year, this translates to about $54.00 per year. That’s $216.00 for my college career. I’m not sure how many students use COLTS, but this could potentially add up to a good amount of money being paid for hours not being worked.
If COLTS waited until the end of the pay period to round the number of hours worked, then everyone would be getting paid for the hours that they actually worked.
Just some food for thought. - Rebecca
Suggestion: Instead of having two pay schedules for the exempt and non-exempt employees, just use one pay schedule for all employees. - Kaz

Increasing Revenue

Suggestion: Start charging for lost or replacement Cornell ID’s. Numerous other colleges and universities including my Alma Mater currently implement a charge and it was seen as an appropriate policy. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Move some Campus Life programs to a pay-as-you-go model.
Of the programs funded by the student-staffed Community Center Funding Board (CCFB), the majority are events made up to be fun and pitched in a way that they satisfy nebulous “Residential programs values.” Some of them are worth while—why not a trip to the U.N.? But let’s have students pay for these things themselves, and shave a little off tuition. The objection I heard when I was on the board was that then students who are short on cash are denied these opportunities. Cornell could respond in one of two ways: increasing the expected financial cost to students by, say, $50 to cover this sort of thing, or by acknowledging that it’s alright to not do something because you can’t afford it.
I recall there being at least two other acronymed funding boards like this one, sometimes even staffed by the same students, with names like “Residential Programs Funding Board” or something similar. However, similar wastes of money also occur in the programming budget allocated to each house. The disbursement system is actually designed to allow a weak program to be funded, as multiple redundant sources of funding each chose independently how much money to give to a program (I was told while on the CCFB that this was to encourage event organizers).
Yes, it’s a tiny slice of the pie, but while, say, $5000 savings doesn’t look good when spread over all of us Cornellians, it would mean a great deal to any one person affected by other budget cuts. - Jason
Suggestion: Sell bonds to Cornell employees. If it can be set up as a tax deferred retirement account it would be very successful in both raising cash, reducing costs and retaining jobs - all from the same plan. I would be happy to put a major percentage of my salary into CU bonds instead of other choices in my 401k. - Mark

Information and Technology

Suggestion: Two things:
1) The university should consider purchasing refurbished computers directly from Dell or Apple. Refurbished equipment is often brand new equipment that has been returned to a store or the vendor without its original packaging. Savings are generally 20–30%. This might not be desirable in every situation, but certainly in computer labs, or for low level uses, this could achieve substantial savings.
2) Based on my general observations, people tend to over buy computers when using University funds. For home use, people try to economize and spend less $500-$1000, but Cornell generally spends $1500-$3000+ per machine. By paying more attention to purchasing what individuals really need as opposed to what they want, we could save a big chunk of change. - Scott
Suggestion: Utilize existing free software and open standards over proprietary options whenever possible. The university’s overall approach at least to central software solutions seems entrenched in assumptions that technical knowledge and responsibility should be outsourced as much as possible and that closed-source, proprietary tools are therefore more easily supportable because their business model always offers comprehensive support contracts.
I believe these assumptions are flawed and the university is consequently wasting significant financial resources on proprietary and in-house solutions when free software offers comparable functionality, superior customization potential and interoperability, arguably better security and robustness, and often significantly less risk than perceived.
As the perception of risk seems to be the largest impediment to wider use and support of free software solutions, I want to emphasize some basic facts: First, some major vendors, especially Microsoft, have large and expensive campaigns dedicated to (1) marketing the strengths of their products (2) raising fear, uncertainty, and doubt about competitors. Second, free software has no marketing budget so you have ignore commercial hype and actively investigate to properly appreciate the benefits. Third, in many cases free software has excellent support in the form of online mailing lists, fora, and responsive development teams that are eager for feedback. Fourth, many free software products are sustained and maintained by for profit corporations that offer commercial support contracts of high quality. Fifth, while retention of technical responsibility includes more in-house risk consider, outsourcing the responsibility does not put the university in a better position to deal with problems that arise, and it prevents the university from focusing its resource on a directly accountable, responsive staff that can better customize the software to local needs.
In my experience I have found free alternatives equal or even better than proprietary ones for numerous common applications, including:

Proprietary	Free alternative
Desktop Software
Windows/MacOS	Linux, GNOME/KDE
Microsoft Office	OpenOffice.org and Neooffice
Photoshop	GIMP
InDesign	Scribus
Server Software
Internet Information Server	Apache
Lyris	SYMPA
Exchange	OpenGroupWare.org and/or Postfix/Exim/Courier
Coldfusion	Ruby on Rails, PHP, or Django (Python)
Oracle, MS SQL, Filemaker	MySQL, Postgresql
Windows File Server, Apple File Protocol	Andrew Filesystem
CU Web Auth*	CoSign

The new release is free, but why bother maintaining and developing such a program when a better one is already out there and supported by a large community?
I would be happy to share my experience with such applications, and would look forward to central IT policies that encourage/support adoption of Linux and associated suites of free software tools among more workgroups at Cornell. - Ari

Suggestion: The recent announcement by CIT of NotifyLink Enterprise Server for syncing Oracle Calendar with Blackberry, Windows Mobile 5/6, Palm OS, and iPhone makes me wonder why we are investing a reported 2 million dollars in an Exchange Server. I know that there are already some uses of Exchange on campus, but this hardly justifies spending this amount of money on a technology that does not seem necessary. - Bob
Suggestion: I think there should be a feasibility study in regards to the phasing out of landline desk phones on campus (and all the satellite locations such as East Hill Plaza, etc.) How much does the university spend on this service which goes largely unused as more and more people migrate to cell phones? I know I use my cell phone most of the time and hardly ever touch my desk phone. My cell phone is personally paid and serves as my home use phone as well.
Perhaps if the university phased out desk phones a small allowance could be made to employees to cover cell phone use for business purposes. If this allowance were less than the per phone amount paid for the legacy phone system, the university would save money in the end. If employees wanted extra services like data, they could pay for extras themselves. In another scenario, Cornell could provide a “base” portable phone to employees (at a cost under current desk phone costs) and allow the employee to upgrade at personal expense. Perhaps a large corporate contract with Verizon (or whomever) could be negotiated where the per-phone cost would dwarf how much is being spent on the landline legacy system.
It’s just a thought. Perhaps the landline system is more cost effective and the feasibility of what I describe above is impossible at this time. But I’d be curious nonetheless to see the comparison. - Aaron
Suggestion: My suggestion addresses both sustainability and financial savings. In my unit we had started utilizing “Thin Client” computer for our financial transaction specialists when replacing our traditional desktop computers. Thin Clients utilize a server to provide processing power and therefore cost far less to purchase ($199 - $299 per thin client vs $1000+ for a traditional desktop) have longer warranties (5 yrs vs 3 years) last longer (5–7yrs vs 3yrs) and use less power (15 watts vs 300 watts). While Thin Clients are clearly not suitable for all computing needs they can be effectively utilized for many areas across campus (they work great for people processing transactions in Business Service Centers).
The viability of Thin Client computing should be investigated and implemented where appropriate. At the very least the idea should be marketed and promoted so people can make informed decisions.
This is not my original idea but is something that has been promoted to a limited degree in Facilities Services and when I recently replaced some of my staff’s computers I did so with Thin Clients. - Robert
Suggestion: I’d like to see a program whereby employees can voluntarily give up their landline desk phones in exchange for a credit on their mobile phone bill. Mobile technology has developed so rapidly that many of us already use our mobile phones as de facto business lines, yet Cornell has been slow to reap the savings this makes possible through the elimination of duplicative landlines.
I make and receive fewer than five calls a month using my landline, yet I hear it costs Cornell somewhere north of $80 a month to keep. I’d rather see Cornell offset my cell phone bill by a reasonable amount (say $25, with an expectation that I use it for work as needed) and cancel my landline. I suspect others would also buy into a voluntary program of this kind. The net savings multiplied across campus could be huge. - Bryce
Suggestion: A Checklist for Wringing Out IT Costs
Businesses of all sizes can tap innovative ways to cut IT budgets in a down economy.
By Michael Doan, Senior Associate Editor, The Kiplinger Letter
November 14, 2008
Can you pare IT expenses without compromising productivity? You bet, and here’s how:
Switch to Internet phone systems. InternetGIRLfriday.com of Framingham, Mass., changed from an in-house system to Internet phone and fax lines, saving $1,200 to $1,500 per year. The firm, which provides administrative help to small businesses, now has its entire phone operation handled by RingCentral — a hosted business telephone service. Yellow Brick, a financial company based in King of Prussia, Pa., ditched its internal telephone network in favor of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) for use in its executive offices and call center. As a result, the firm no longer has to shell out for IT consultants to install and maintain its telephone system.
Use online software. Ditching its mail server and using Google’s Gmail will cut Powerfeedback’s estimated annual costs by $25,000 to $40,000. The Easton, Pa., business consulting firm also makes use of Google Apps rather than Microsoft Office by paying $50 per user per year to Google for spreadsheets, word processing, shared calendars and instant messaging. InternetGIRLfriday,com uses Zoho’s free customer relationship management software, trimming $1,200 a year. And Lightstreams Glass Tile of Mountain View, Calif., which manufactures glass tiles for high-end homes and offices, built its own free Web site on Microsoft Office Live Small Business, saving $30,000 a year. Lightstreams did not have to rely on a Web designer to build the site or on IT staff to update it.
Cut back on data storage. Ares Management, a Los Angeles investment firm, saved a whopping $70,000 by moving 25% of the company’s infrequently accessed data to less costly lower-speed drives using Compellent’s storage area network. The process is called automated tiered storage, and it permits businesses to prioritize information they need most at their fingertips. Cameron Consultation of Swampscott, Mass., which helps children with autism, reduced its costs by switching from manual backups to Symantec’s online data backup system.
Consolidate servers. Gaston County, N.C., figures it saved several thousands of dollars by running multiple programs on servers once reserved for just one. The method — called virtualization — reduces storage space and energy costs by having accounting, human resources, sales and other departments share server space. NetworkIP, a telecom company in Longview, Texas, cut IT staff costs dramatically through virtualization. Ken McGee, vice president and research fellow of Gartner Group, an industry consulting firm, also sees this trend accelerating in recession. “Many growing companies just slammed in servers and now they have paid the price, maxing out their air-conditioning and electricity,” he says.
Renegotiate deals with software and other IT companies. “Vendors are going to be more flexible in their financing,” says Ashvin Vellody, senior vice president for research of Yankee Group, a research firm. “Maybe they’ll do an installation free or upgrade at a lower cost or help migrate to new servers.” Businesses can also save by renewing contracts early with vendors eager to reduce prices to maintain sales.
More cost saving tips: Outsource the computer help desk and other functions performed by an IT staff. Have a corporatewide policy for buying cell phones, not leaving it to workers to bill the company (the company may be able to get a lower price for higher volume). Have videoconferences rather than paying for travel to conventions and company meetings. Unload unused domain names, which cost up to $100 a year to renew. Use open-source software such as Linux products, which do not have to operate on costly Windows operating systems.
But note a couple of IT expenses you may have to budget more for: Wireless phones and broadband service. “The need for broadband and wireless won’t go away,” says the Yankee Group’s Vellody. “We don’t see mobile phones being affected.”
And data encryption. States want businesses to do a better job guarding consumers’ personal data. Michigan, California, Washington, Connecticut and others are headed down the path trod by Massachusetts and Nevada, which require companies that store personal information on laptops and send it over unsecured networks to take specific steps to prevent identity theft. A small firm in Massachusetts, for example, would need firewall and encryption software, with setup costs of up to $3,000 plus maintenance expenses of up to $500 a month.
Requirements reach beyond state lines, applying not only to businesses with operations in the state, but also to those that serve customers there. Down the road, as more states jump on the bandwagon, firms that do business across state lines may be forced to comply with a dozen different security regimes.
Jonathan N. Crawford contributed to this story.
Source:http://www.kiplinger.com/businessresource/forecast/archive/wringing_out_it_costs_081114.html
Allen
Suggestion: There is a great article in this week’s BusinessWeek about companies migrating to free IT options such as Google Apps or OpenOffice in order to trim costs. Some of the costs savings cited in the article were substantial. - Aaron
Suggestion: 1) Look to different vendors for computer bundle purchases. We recently purchased HP’s and saved 20k over the Dell bundle price for the same hardware configurations.
2) Consider converting some print materials to the Web using a content management system and templates. Items that are printed on a regular basis, like the Forum, could easily be reproduced and published via the Web. Once templates are developed future issues can be published by changing images and content to give each issue it’s own unique look and feel. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Replace many land-line phones with an internet based service or rely solely on cell phones where they are in use by facilities and other on-call people. Perhaps CIT is already looking into this. I know that this is done at other colleges to save students money. I think it could work for faculty and staff as well. Current phones lines run over $20 to over $30 with handsets. Factoring in long distance charges could make costs significantly higher. Internet phone service would be significantly less. - William
Suggestion: Negotiate better with Oracle Inc. CIT just bought a large contract with Oracle, against the recommendation of many reporting people brought in to advise. I know in my comments at the evaluation I specifically noted “be careful negotiating with Oracle, read every word of the final contract before signing”, due to problems I had with Oracle before I came to Cornell. Last week we found out that the terms of the contract are much worse than in contracts negotiated with companies (Brio specifically) bought by Oracle, and will cost Cornell significantly more than at least one of the contracts it subsumes. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Rather than provide students with an email account (even through Google or another provider) set up a forwarding service to their already established accounts. If there is a cost to the transition perhaps it could be mitigated in a few years after this initial agreement runs through its term. The Chronicle of Higher Education just ran an article by Jeffrey Young about this approach that is being instituted at Boston College. The premise relied on two factors: 1. Virtually every student comes to campus with well established email addresses and often have the institution’s email forwarded anyway and 2. Much information about the on-going academic, administrative, and programmatic notices could be done through websites. Obviously, not everything could be handled this way, however it might be worth considering. - Philip
Suggestion: The Dell Certification program saves a computer technician valuable time as they do not have to call up Dell and plead their case for a replacement part under warranty. If one was certified, they could easily go to the Dell website, fill in the information and cut down on the time spent on the phone and the phone charges incurred. Also, a certified Dell individual can have a 25 or 50 dollar kickback paid back to their department from Dell for work performed that does not include replacing field equipment such as mice and keyboards. We normally do this work ourselves so why not get some payment for it. My suggestion is that each department, organization or units supporting IT at Cornell have at least one Dell Certified individual to take advantage of the 25 or 50 payment made by Dell for doing the work. This type of savings could then be used for training and skill enhancement opportunities in the future eliminating this type of allocation in IT budgets. - Brian
Suggestion: Invest highly in IT security (training, personnel, resources, etc.) as future responses to security incidents containing private data breeches can easily cost the University thousands of dollars. For instance, if one computer is compromised and it contains 1000 instances of Social Security Numbers, the new security policy will require the University to pay for credit monitoring (75 dollars???) per person totaling 75000 dollars. These types of costs can be limited if there were enough resources to assist in the location and removal of private data. - Brian
Suggestion: Recycling of Computer & Network Equipment. The net-admin list serve acts as one source of units offering, searching and receiving needed equipment that is no longer needed by other units. There are also other sources that exist, but they are not centrally located and not known to everyone. I suggest that “e-recycling” have procedures in place that makes units responsible for offering up their unused, obsolete or unwanted computer and network equipment before it is sent to the recyclers or donation. For instance, if I want to get rid of 4 Dell Optiplex GX400 systems, I would first have to advertise it somewhere for 30 days (offering it to another Cornell unit) before I could dispose of it any other way. This would have a tremendous cost savings to it if implemented correctly as it would reduce the number of future purchases for needed equipment. - Brian
Suggestion: After reading the president’s end of year letter I would like to suggest a way of cutting costs. A lot of software requires purchasing of a license. In addition, a lot of software produced by Microsoft contain bugs and are inefficient. Not all open source software is good but in many cases it provides an opportunity. The software can be customized and can create a real point for innovation within a community such as Cornell. However, beyond this my point is simple, open source software like Linux is free. No license fee, fewer bugs, easier to run and you can adapt it to your needs. - Anonymous
Suggestion: My suggestion to save money in both the short and long term administration of Cornell is to adopt campus-wide policies that require the use of free and open source software whenever feasible. You can start with Open Office as far as most offices are concerned and each department will also find its own more specialized applications in the open source world. - Fernando
Suggestion: Substitute OpenOffice for MS office on all university computers. It’s free software and it provides basically everything MS office does. - Carl
Suggestion: I would recommend re-evaluating software purchases. Open source while it sounds good in concept will never be accepted by our users that have been trained in their favorite programs. Currently, we have a good number of applications that are keyed allowing us to install the program on multiple machines with one license. Yes we pay slightly more for non-concurrent user license but for certain programs you may only need to pay for one license and have it installed on five machines. Take computer labs for example a class may need one software license on the 30 computers in one lab but if you have four labs and students need access to do there homework you wouldn’t need to buy 90 additional licenses. What happens if we centralized this, how many licenses would we need for software that some people only rarely use. Compared to how many purchased? Then we could look at usage statistics to determine if someone really needs an upgrade. What about then using those numbers to buy in bulk.
Another possibility would be application virtualization. Where applications are hosted, patched, and updated centrally and streamed to the user. This would significantly reduce deployment time and ensure everyone has the latest version. I have tested Office and it seems to work well. - Michael
Suggestion: Please consider using free software resources, rather than paying for licensed software. For example, Google Calendar offers the same or better function as Oracle Calendar that we currently use. There is even a software that can be downloaded from Google Calendar site which synchronizes the information between Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook. - Kaz
Suggestion: There is a great article here which discusses campus computer labs. “Only four freshmen showed up at the University of Virginia in 2007 without a computer of their own, and the school has decided that it’s no longer worth the expense of running campus computer labs.”
I wonder what those statistics and associated expenses are at Cornell?
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/03/whats-the-point-of-running.ars - Aaron

Landscaping

Suggestion: Every few months the flower beds are ripped out with the tulips, mums, etc. thrown into garbage bags and disposed of. This must represent an enormous cost not only in buying the flowers but also in the labor involved in planting and removing perfectly good flowers. Many times I wish I had a box so I could rescue some of the beautiful specimens I see being thrown in garbage bags.
Another cost savings would be to turn off equipment that is not being used. I see refrigerated centrifuges left on for weeks (they can easily be turned off) because someone doesn’t want to be bothered with flipping the switch and wiping it out.
Thank you. - Michele
Suggestion: Every year the edges of the sidewalks on the arts quad (and elsewhere on campus) are replanted with new grass. This makes no sense when the trucks that drive on the sidewalks are wider than the asphalt. Why not make the sidewalks wide enough to accommodate the double-wheeled trucks and then dollars do not need to be wasted every year. - Barbara
Suggestion: If you are in the need of saving money, one option is to stop always changing the flowers, etc in front of Statler and other places on campus. It might not be much, but even before this economic climate I thought what a waste! to be taking up flowers and putting down new ones so often. I am sure there are other places on campus that do not need seasonal greenery but something that lasts all year. Also end the idling of grounds vehicles while they are working, maybe not use leaf blowers…save ground workers, etc for safety issues (i.e. clearing walk ways during storms). Helps the environment and the budget.
Also, I often see poor cornell workers having to pick up cigarette butts on campus especially between Olin and Uris Library. Institute a fine for any one found throwing their butts on the ground and not using the trash. Also, institute a fine for those people that smoke too close to buildings. Make some extra money and maybe get some people (both staff and students) to stop smoking…leading to health care savings! - Anonymous
Suggestion: For deicing sidewalks, Calcium chloride (CaCl 2 ) and Calcium magnesium acetate (CMA) could be used instead of salt. Perhaps they are more expensive but they won’t kill the grass that grows along the edges of the sidewalks. I see the grounds crews spend lots of time and MONEY tilling up the soil and reseeding those areas every spring and that has to cost money also. Makes a mess too. - Eric
Suggestion: Plant more perennials, and consider substituting ground cover and flowering ground cover to reduce mulch replacement annually in and around trees and flowerbeds. Extension can advise grounds on best choices — free! Wasteful to see bulbs pulled up and replaced continually. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Make Ho Plaza a walking plaza ONLY (except for emergencies). We constantly see construction vehicles, bank trucks, PDC trucks, and Grounds vehicles using Ho Plaza simply to get from one end of campus to the other, or for a simple delivery to a building. Then, in the spring, we see these same trucks parked on Ho Plaza — this time repairing all of the broken stones and pavers damaged by the very vehicles they are using. I’m sure the Ho family would appreciate seeing their plaza turned back over to pedestrians only, and Cornell would certainly save a few bucks not having to constantly repair the area. - Anonymous
Suggestion: You will save money on replanting in the spring if you surround the Arts Quad paths with a mixture of sand and gravel. How much money is wasted each year replanting grass or relaying sod along the edges of those paths? That’s money that could go to Arts & Sciences instead of its Quad. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Don’t shovel snow off Hoy field in the middle of February. - Linda
Suggestion: Use less salt on walkways. This has been mentioned and I want to support this as well. Huge piles of salt are left after the ice is gone. I try to walk around it. - Carol
Suggestion: Every year the soil along the sidewalks is tilled up, added to, then re-seeded. Every year. The equipment used to plow the sidewalks is wider than the sidewalks, so the tires and the plow compress the soil, therefore the grass dies. This is not an efficient use of resources. It may be prudent to either get narrower plows or widen the sidewalks. - Mary Ann
Suggestion: It’s not necessary to mow the grass everywhere on campus. It seems that less mowing is be being implemented already, like in areas near A-lot or the Fuertes observatory, which is good. - Anonymous
Suggestion: This morning walking in at 615am I noticed that there were 3 grounds workers using leaf blowers on the metered lot by Bartels Hall, then the street cleaner came in and cleaned the parking lot. It doesn’t make alot of sense when 30 minutes later it was raining! I can understand cleaning the roads in a construction area but I’m not sure that keeping the parking lots clean is a necessity. - Anonymous
Suggestion: This morning walking in at 615am I noticed that there were 3 grounds workers using leaf blowers on the metered lot by Bartels Hall, then the street cleaner came in and cleaned the parking lot. It doesn’t make alot of sense when 30 minutes later it was raining! I can understand cleaning the roads in a construction area but I’m not sure that keeping the parking lots clean is a necessity. - Anonymous

Personnel

Suggestion: Support staff has been dramatically reduced and streamlined on the academic side of Cornell. However, there are divisions in which support staff is bountiful for staff (versus faculty.) Faculty process their own travel and expenses, but there are clusters of (management) staff who have dedicated support staff to perform these and other duties. This incongruity is counter-intuitive to hiring and maintaining key faculty as well as a terribly inefficient use of personnel. -Brenda
Suggestion: As Business/Financial Service Centers were created, Centers should also be created for facilities coordination. Instead of one building coordinator per building, have a center per College per se where there could be fewer coordinators covering more buildings. - Anonymous
Suggestion: It has been made clear that the largest university expense is staff. A hiring pause or offering retirement incentives and then to not fill those jobs may be the ‘nice guy’ approach to save money but is most likely eliminating needed positions while employees remain in positions that may not be needed or beneficial to the university. Now that John McCain has more time on his hands perhaps you can get him to trim the pork here! Don’t necessarily just talk to the department heads for suggestions as they will all look out for “their own”. Talk to front-line staff - you may get an earful — especially about salaried staff. Outside business salaried staff are hard working many times putting in way over 40hrs per week. It seems at Cornell some do the opposite and have very cushy positions without a whole lot to do. And does Cornell need so many supervisors to oversee a few people here and there? If a staff member needs that much supervision they should be trimmed too. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Suggest that faculty and staff, making over $100,000.00 per year take a 10% salary until the economy rebounds. - Joan
Suggestion: No salary/wage increase for any employee in FY09–10. - Scott
Suggestion: Other universities have realized significant cost savings by offering early retirement buyout packages. Is this something that could benefit Cornell too? - Robert
Suggestion: We have many registrars. Most confusing to me is that there is a separate Graduate Registrar, when each College allows the fields to dictate the educational process. I’ve asked a lot of people and never got any reasonable answer. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Outsource Payroll Services
1. Cost. Big businesses, in sound financial times, can often afford to maintain big payroll departments but at what cost? The costs associated with high priced administration (i.e. payroll supervision and management) can however, be a strong deterrent. Large businesses generally have a wealth of high paid, high benefited management employees. The case for outsourcing a payroll department can realize obvious efficiencies of service, reducing human capital at the business and replacing that human capital with payroll professionals that process payroll on a much larger scale.
At Cornell, just look into the amount of management vs. the amount of employees within the payroll department. Look at all the money associated with Peoplesoft training and the raw costs of Peoplesoft software applications. Review the costs associated with the Kronos conversion. Review the total costs (salaries, benefits, taxes, etc.) associated with our current model.
My last company converted to ADP payroll systems and realized huge savings and increased efficiencies.
Do the math. Figure out how many hours your employees are devoting to payroll-related activities, calculate how much you’re spending and compare the amount to the plans offered by several payroll-services providers. Also, be sure to factor in the money your business spends on tasks like printing and distributing checks, creating tax documents, and the like. You’ll probably be surprised by the result.
2. Productivity. Payroll management is a time-consuming activity. With this burden removed, your employees can focus on doing more productive things, and you may even be able to trim your staff’s size.
3. Accuracy. Payroll mistakes can be painful, angering employees and - more ominously - the government. A good payroll-services provider is far less likely to make a serious error than your in-house staff. Furthermore, if a big mistake is made, you can seek financial restitution from the provider - something you can’t do with your own employees.
4. Reliability. In-house payroll activities function as reliably as the people doing the work. With a payroll service, output speed and quality won’t vary in accordance with vacations and illnesses. You also won’t have to spend time helping new hires understand your business’s payroll system.
5. Speed. Since payroll-services providers are specialists with vast technical resources at their disposal, they can process even the most complex payrolls at lightning-fast speed. Unlike most employers, they can also accommodate a temporary influx of seasonal workers without acquiring new systems that will remain dormant the rest of the year.
6. Insight. A good payroll-services provider will know all the ins and outs of payroll-related tax laws and regulatory mandates on the federal, state and local levels. Your employees could try to achieve the same level of understanding, but it would take a considerable investment in training, time, and effort.
7. Accountability. If paychecks are delayed or paperwork is mishandled, it’s the payroll-services provider’s responsibility to fix things. If the provider can’t (or won’t) remedy the situation to your satisfaction, you can sue. You can also switch to another service provider in a snap - even if you have to eat a portion of an existing service contract. Try firing, hiring and training an in-house payroll staff in anything less than several weeks.
8. Flexibility. Boring, repetitive payroll work can act like an anchor on your business. Your staff, when freed of rote payroll responsibilities, will be free to focus on other, more creative work.
9. Security. Do you have the time and energy to closely supervise your business’s payroll for time and rate abuses and other shady activities? Most payroll services firms have technologies that can spot and alert clients to various types of payroll fraud, such as payment manipulation and “phantom workers.”
10. Worry. There’s a lot to be said for the peace of mind that outsourcing payroll services can bring to a business owner or manager. No headaches, no hassles: You’re left to focus on running a profitable business.
And finally, put together a multi disciplinary team of administrators, employees, and supervisors to search for a provider. This team should review all costs (salaries/benefits of current staff, costs of supplies, cost of training, costs associated with current software vs. costs of payroll provider) Do not only rely solely on HR and Payroll to review and make recommendations on outsourcing because they will have a vested interest in looking out for number one and not what is in the best interests of Cornell. - Anonymous
Suggestion: The era of excess executive compensation is over, in business as well as educational institutions.
Limit administrative salaries and benefits to 110% of that of highest paid faculty in the University, including the Medical School. The performance of no administrator in Cornell’s history has justified greater compensation than this. Why to we keep hoping it will happen? - Dan
Suggestion: Reduce the use of search firms for filling vacancies and focus more on promoting from within. In my opinion, Cornell over utilizes search firms for positions that can easily be filled from within. Search firms can be extremely expensive. While not all positions can be filled internally and there are times where search firms should be utilized, it seems to me that their use has become the norm instead of the exception. It seems they are used automatically without sound analysis almost as if they are used as a safety net for the hiring managers.
Not only can search firms be very expensive, Cornell often ends up paying a higher salary for the position then they would have otherwise. In addition, because many of the hires come from outside of NYS, they will stay for only a few years then move on leaving us to perform yet another costly search. - Robert
Suggestion: Targeted early retirements.
At a UC I attended, they offered early retirements to all faculty over a certain age. This lead to those who were good enough to find new positions to retire and leave to other Universities. Some less than stellar faculty also left, but I’m not sure the campus was in a better situation when it was all over.
Early retirements are a good way to save money, but if we can target them, we should. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Consider Furloughing faculty and staff without pay for an additional week during the winter break or during the summer. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Change the retirement contribution from 10% to 9%. Doing this insures that all endowed faculty and staff contribute to the financial crisis. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Cut size of the police force. It seems they spend most of their time pestering people over minor infractions. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Review all positions for possible conversion to 9-, 10-, or 11-months, including those at higher levels. Many staff would be willing to convert if the position allows it and the work can be performed differently or in fewer months. - Anonymous
Suggestion: It seems a certain percentage of us are maxed out on our sick time balances and end up losing. maybe we should cut one week of this time from our benefit - for those whom are maxed it would make a difference but may be an incentive for those to save time and be at work more routinely. - Pete
Suggestion: Morale is already low, make your decisions on how many staff are to be cut so the cuts can be made. This allows the staff to return gifts to the stores prior to the holidays savings money/debt. Better than finding out afterwards and wishing you didn’t buy your children the Wii…
All the hints about giant budget cuts with a bloodbath of cuts going around is an industrial psychology tactic to make the real cuts more acceptable. Understandable that you want to soften the blow, but we expect more of a university than typical industry tactics. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Cornell offers a very generous retirement contribution package. Has anyone considered pausing that contribution for a period of time to allow the university to clarify its priorities and save jobs? I would much rather have a job and lose a little retirement savings in the process of saving my job.
Also, as we consider laying staff off in our groups, there hasn’t been any mention of offering retirement packages in lieu of layoffs. Corporations offer “early” retirement packages which offer the continued health care coverage, access to funds and the benefit of taking the retirement option which feels better than being laid off. Financially, the severance package might be better for layoffs with many years of service, but some combination of the 2 would be ideal.
Thanks for listening. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Freeze the retirement program for one year. This will save you 10% of the endowed side salaries, and whatever on the state side. This will go a long way of preventing the massive layoffs projected from the 10% scenarios. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Offer close-to-retirement faculty a retirement package, similar to the one offered to staff in the past. We have been told many times that “X percent of our faculty are within 5 years of retirement”, why not package out faculty in areas that can be reduced. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Cornell’s contribution to retirement 403 (b) plans is generous at 10%. While I am not complaining, perhaps it could be tweaked a bit for some short period of time to help deal with this particular economic downturn.
Essentially, if the 10% CU contribution held steady for employees making less than 40 or 50 K it would still provide a strong long term savings base for lower paid campus community members while higher paid employees might receive a 1 or 2 year reduction to 8%. (Voluntary contributions would not affected). This reduction could be sloped based upon earnings i.e. 50K- 85K would mean 9% and so on. If for contractual reasons this is not possible, perhaps some highly compensated employees might voluntarily agree to a temporary reduction, particularly if it meant reducing the number of fellow employees who will be laid off.
This might be combined with an opportunity for employees to decline to receive raises (if there is to a SIP this year). If the employee could be credited as having made a “gift” to Cornell and they itemize their tax return it could, depending upon their individual circumstances, benefit them and of course, CU.
So, why would people do this? Many people would not voluntarily unless they saw some tangible and intangible benefit. Therein lie the keys for the motivation. Recognition as special campus citizens, being part of a building positive momentum of one’s peers and respected colleagues, realizing and seeing that 10 people banding together saved a person’s job, understanding that they are likely to just as happy with a few thousand dollars less (if they already have many hundreds of thousands or millions, because after all, do people generally have higher satisfaction with life and see ever increasing levels of happiness with each raise? Note that after the inital euphoria even lottery winners’ happiness returns to its previous state. )
Since I don’t know the strata of salaries and proportions of employees earning salaries within each strata I can’t project a savings number or target. While not as effective, a voluntary program would probably work better. It also would not compromise David’s promise to maintain competitive compensation for the many valued faculty and staff of Cornell. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Senior level management- could use a salary cut off of say $200000 or more- receive a 3% pay cut, and have a one year hold on salary increases. I keep seeing layoffs, but losing the base of workers will only lead to a top heavy workforce with a crumbling foundation- the loss of efficiencies from a situation like that would be far greater then the money cut from the top. It’s not unprecedented either, looking most recently with the failing auto industry. - Katie
Suggestion: No raises this year for staff or faculty. That’s 2–3% off next years’ payroll right there. - Mike
Suggestion: Departments and individual programs could be encouraged to think about whether they really need a full-time professional, or if part-time offerings could be increased. I am an experienced technician, and prefer to be employed part-time. I’m sure I’m not alone, with professionals of all types thinking more about how best to use their time for greater overall happiness.
A program may find that a part-time employee completely fills its needs, saving money. The employee seeking a part-time position will be happier in her work-life, as well as at home, if she doesn’t have to “settle” for a full-time position. - Roxanne
Suggestion: Institute a 20% paycut for all administrative employees effective immediately. - Don
Suggestion: Do not provide resources, office space, etc. for emeritus professors who are NOT conducting university related business. - Anonymous
Suggestion: - no salary increases this coming fiscal year
- possibly offering an incentive plan for the retirement of: people that are retirement age, people who are close to retirement age, people who are casual employees and are retirement age, etc.
- combine jobs to help alleviate any potential staffing shortage, for example: Project Management/Business Analyst, Business Analyst/Programmer, etc. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Cornell Police, “Retirement incentive”
Hire rate is for new patrol officers is 38,000. For senior patrol officers over 20 years it is 62,009. For senior patrol officers over 30 years it is 62,629. That is an approximate difference of 24 - 25 thousand. If the University offered a buy-out of $25,000 plus benefits for 5 years, it would save the University money over time. It may possibly allow some senior officers to retire or find employment more suitable for persons over 55 years old. For Officers years of dedicated service, I think the university should offer $30,000 for 20 years and $35,000 for 30 years. - Charles
Suggestion: This may be heresy but might there be a VOLUNTARY program if you can afford to cut your own salary by say 3–5%. It would have to be PRIVATE and voluntary but I think that there are many who might be able to afford to give something back. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I am a full professor. My suggestion is a one-time across the board uniform salary cut for faculty and college/university administration, possibly exempting hires within the last few years.
Even though it would take money out of my pocket, my suggestion is motivated by self-interest. To leave faculty and administrative salaries untouched, we would need to make substantial cuts in many other areas. Early in my academic career I was fortunate to spend about 10 years (at another university) with a superb department Chair. When money got tight, he made it an absolute principle not to sacrifice the quality of life in the department. We would not have to teach the same number of students with fewer TAs to help us, we would not lose support that we depended on (computer support, help preparing budgets for grant proposals, etc.), we would not find the supplies closet bare. Instead we would accept small raises or no raises, leave a faculty line open for an extra year, and so on. If coming to work had been a pleasure (and why be a professor if it isn’t?), he made sure that it stayed that way.
We’re not at Cornell for the money. We’re here because we know that this is a great place to work. Keeping it that way should be our top priority. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Why not take suggestions from faculty and students who have been around for a long time (>8 years) who can tell you, with complete brutal honesty, which of your staff members we can live without, because they get very little accomplished? I can think of probably 3 people in our department alone who are totally worthless to us, or who could be replaced with work study students rather than receiving full pay plus benefits. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Please read this article about creative ways to save from layoffs —
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/business/22layoffs.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
Teresa
Suggestion: In this time of fiscal restraint, we need to take a close look at the level of middle management at Cornell. In my 33 years as a Cornell professor, it seems that the level of middle management has grown exponentially. For example, the CIT budget in 2007 was $61.7 million and it is proposed to be $78.2 million for 2009. While I am a member of FABIT and a proponent of the use of information technology for teaching, research, and extension, this increase appears to be very excessive.
Other middle management offices, such as Human Subjects, Animal Use, and Life Safety are important, but one sometimes get’s the impression that these offices drive top-level administrative decisions out of unreasonable “fear” for the financial stability of the institution. In addition to the actual operational cost for the expanding numbers of people, offices, and other expenses associated with these offices; they often promulgate what appear to be excessive and unreasonable demands on faculty time that interfere with the actual work of the university. - Michael
Suggestion: President Skorton,
I commend you in your efforts to assist the University in its endeavors to survive the current financial woes that the nations also face today.
I have been working In Campus Life Facilities for close to 20 years now and do have concerns with how operations are run. My colleagues often lament at how there seems to be many bosses and yet fewer staff to keep the University at satisfactory standards for its customers. It is almost as if, and I quote the line from the movie “Office Space”, “I have eight different bosses right now!” and “So that means when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it.”
President Skorton, Campus Life has, at first, Vice President of Student Affairs, then Director of Campus Life Facilities, then General Manager of Campus Life Facilities, after which there are three Facilities Managers and six Assistant Facilities Managers after which comes the “Front Line Staff”. The question often raised by my colleagues is, “Why did they hire three Facilities Managers? The areas can be run smoother if they just had the Assistant Facility Managers working directly for the General Manager like they used to when they were just Supervisors.”
It appears to many workers, and not just Campus life Facilities, that this University is very “top heavy” and under scrutiny many ‘unnecessary positions can be eliminated’ and the funds put to better use.
Also, our Department has a “no return” policy. Which means that if supplies are ordered and some of the shipment is wrong and/or cannot be used, we do not return it for refund or trade. So it sits on our shelves, having wasted our energy and finances. This is a policy that seriously needs to be reviewed and changed.
In conclusion, I do hope that whatever your decisions will be regarding financial savings that they will meet with success and also bring back to the University the levels of service that it deserves. Levels of service that I can remember many parents being proud to send their children here and many children attending and graduating here with pride and happiness with the service they received. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Some of the top industrial executives have set a good example by taking no million dollar bonuses this year or working for $1. Perhaps the top administration of Cornell should follow this example. (Does anyone get a “bonus”?). They could take a 10% cut in pay, or a lag until the financial crisis is over. This would set a good example. Make it proportional to the size of the paycheck, like income tax. If you want to spread the pain around a little, you could offer the faculty the option of forgoing their SIP this year or taking a postponement.
(Most of us are not in it for the money anyway. The guys in my department could easily double their salary if they went out of academia to industry. We just love what we do.) - Anonymous
Suggestion: Salary reduction for all or most of existing staff could reduce staff costs. I think it’s worth considering salary reductions commensurate with ability to sustain them, so that those in the top salary levels would take a larger percentage reduction than those in the middle levels, with those in the lowest pay grades taking either no or very small reduction. In this way, we could avoid resultant “underemployment” that might happen were the lowest pay grades undergo significant salary reduction. (I think we should avoid scenarios that force staff to choose between paying for heat or buying food, for instance.) I have no idea what actual reduction percentages would make sense with what pay levels, since I have no idea how our salaries are distributed across these levels. It is clear that such a plan would create wage compression in compensation, something that I know as a practice we try to avoid. But it seems to me that if we are committed to keeping all staff employed, wage compression may be a side effect we are willing to deal with in the interim while the economy recovers. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Review for all possibilities of moving some (many?) positions to a 10 or 11 month status. In general (not true in all areas) service/support workload decreases during the summer months. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I would like to have the ability to forgo my SIP this year (provided we have them!) so that the pool will be larger for those who need it. I hope that given the current economic climate, if people want to do this kind of thing, the administration would be able to find a way to make it so and that, perhaps, if enough people elected to do so, this could make having SIPs be a possibility for everyone else. - Stephanie
Suggestion: My suggestion is that every employee at Cornell University should be held responsible for their work time. For example, the administration staff in the building where I work does not have to clock in daily, but instead fill in their time at the end of each pay period via computer. Therefore, when a person or persons are late on a consistent basis, they are not penalized for their absence/tardiness, but are actually rewarded by being paid for the missed time.
I wonder how wide this misuse of time and money has spread across campus, and how much money Cornell University continues to lose as a result on a daily basis?
Instead, I propose that all employees should have to clock in daily; thereby holding them accountable for their work time and saving Cornell University a lot of money. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I think it is admirable that Pres. Skorton is voluntarily taking a 10% salary cut. Perhaps other key administrators can follow his lead. That made me think — how can all of us, even if we are not making a substantial salary, help in that regard?
What about starting a 1% club? Faculty and staff who offer to give back 1% of their salary belong, and therefore are making a direct contribution to the financial solution we are seeking. One percent does not sound like much, but as an aggregate it can be very meaningful and powerful and help save jobs all across campus.
Join today! Let’s get this rolling! - Lynne
Suggestion: In light of the current and continuing financial hardships, it would seem prudent to ask ALL Cornell employees earning $40,000 / yr or more, to immediately take a 10% permanent salary reduction adjustment. This would enable the employees to give back to a university that has so generously supported them over the years. - Paul
Suggestion: I wanted to voice my support of the suspension of the salary improvement program in order to avoid any possible layoffs. I think it is most important to secure jobs over small pay increases, and find it a worthy sacrifice in these times. That’s all! - Sarah
Suggestion: In Uris library they have 3rd shift custodians for cleaning, I do not see any reason why they cannot clean on first shift. Olin library has a staff of custodians that cleans the library during first shift. It is not a huge savings but by moving the staff to first shift would allow Cornell not to have pay the shift differential for this group. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Assuming that Cornell has implemented a hiring freeze for faculty replacements, you might augment, temporarily, your curriculum (or limit reductions in course offerings), by seeking short-term “volunteer” help from selected alumni, especially retired or partly retired alumni.
For example, I recently retired (at age 62) as the Joseph Henry Lumpkin Professor of Law at the Univ. of Georgia. I have rejected offers to visit elsewhere but would consider teaching, on a part-time temporary volunteer basis at Cornell. My background is both academic and practical. It is summarized on the UGA law school website.
Other alumni, many of whom have been high achievers in their chosen fields, might be similarly willing to contribute, even if their skills and experience were developed outside academia. Our law school, for example, regularly brings in a “visiting chair from practice,” recognizing the overlap between academic and practical learning.
As another example, my son’s undergraduate college (Yale) regularly brings in, via the residential colleges, a variety of practitioners from practice to offer courses as college “fellows”. My son has indicated that these courses frequently were among the most popular offered.
In short, Cornell might look “outside the box” during this financial crisis to augment its students’ learning experience—and the search could prove serendipitous. - James
Suggestion: I worked for IBM inmanagement and we did a buy out for employees. Offered 2 yrs pay over 4 years. For every 2 people we saved 1 salary. Backfilled critical positions with existing people. Did not hire anyone new. Has anyone looked at the demographics to see who might potentially leave?
What about shutting down the university for a week in July, without pay like many states are doing?
Going to a 4 day work week in the summer? - John
Suggestion: My first “real” job was as a secretary at the University of Pittsburgh back in 19 (gasp!) 78! The remarkable thing about Pitt was that it was a little ahead of its time in staff policies; 35 hours/week was considered full-time, and even a lowly secretary like me was salaried as opposed to hourly. There was a certain amount of satisfaction and prestige in being treated with that kind of respect. Now I’ve been at Cornell for nearly 15 years and can’t get beyond the hourly rate and the need to work four hours / week more than I really want to. Personally, I’d be willing to take my current hourly rate and cut off the extra four hours/week, losing four hours/week pay, to be considered full-time and salaried (exempt). I’d be willing to bet there are a lot more like me. In economic times like these, perhaps it’s worth considering at least as an option to staff who have been here for a number of years. I hope you’ll consider the suggestion. - Evangeline
Suggestion: I would be interested in talking about short term unpaid leaves. For example, If my supervisor/co-workers agreed, I would be willing to take a one month unpaid leave of absence this Summer. Benefits, of course, would need to remain active. - Katie
Suggestion: I really did appreciate the $750 bonus given to people making less than $40,000 a year. But what about the people that may make $40,700 a year. Is this fair? Not really, honestly the financial crisis effects everyone, not just people that make $40,000 or less. In my own opinion, I think it’s fair to have the bonus taken out totally. If the bonus won’t be given to everybody I don’t think anybody should get it. This will save Cornell even more if you times $750 for everyone that makes less that 40K. We all need to be thankful that we still have a job. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Some cost savings could be achieved by reducing or eliminating positions containing the titles of assistant or associate “dean” “registrar” or “vice provost”. In the past twenty years there has been a significant increase in these numbers with questionable benefit, yielding a top heavy administration. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Encourage Faculty that retires to stay retired. The opportunity afforded to continue to earn upwards to $30,000, have office space, administrative support, lab space, even parking spaces for the former superstars, former deans and directors while a great way to slow the brain drain, costs the university in many ways.
Continuations of their pet projects, allowing them to branch into other arenas of interest require new investments of equipment, computers and support. I believe that a fairly large number of these seniors cost the university a large percent of capital while not returning the volume of tangible returns: in numbers of under and graduate students supported, articles published, the numbers and size of grants that the younger hungry faculty members are awarded.
This isn’t to say that the ideas and discoveries emeritus faculty members make can’t continue to push the envelope of human knowledge, it is strictly a cost cutting proposal - if they can continue to bring in the grant money to continue to support their research, then by all means keep them. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Significantly increase the use of volunteers, both in Ithaca, and elsewhere (such as alumni). The dollar value of this gift to the university will far outweigh any additional liability insurance that might be needed. This will also allow project currently curtailed on paused to go forward. It will also make volunteers (including alumni) feel a part of the solution, instead of having responses like “sorry, for the most part, we do not use volunteers because of liability issues.”
Cost savings can be enormous, brain power gifts can be even more. - John
Suggestion: In terms of labor: the solutions should seek to enfranchise all staff through shared sacrifice and building solidarity. Identify the budget cut required from each department, communicate that number in a way that inspires confidence, then reduce all wages across the board by that amount. Exempt those making below a set amount. For very senior staff members, create a bridge to social security; e.g. three years at half pay in order to reach age 62.
Again, the goal should be to create a sense that we’re all in this together. - Jim
Suggestion: I read this article and wondered if Cornell would do something like it instead of laying people off:
State touts alternative to layoffs
Employees can be compensated for cut in hours
By Debbie Swartz - dswartz@gannett.com - February 17, 2009
Employers considering layoffs have an option, according to a state Labor Department commissioner.
The Shared Work Program allows companies to avoid layoffs by offering reduced workweeks for employees. The employees are then eligible for unemployment insurance benefits for the hours that were taken away.
”Many business owners, particularly small-business owners, may not be aware of the services we provide,” said New York State Department of Labor Deputy Commissioner Nancy Dunphy.
”It’s really one of the best programs we have in New York state. It has not been widely marketed. … We don’t want it to be a secret anymore.”
To participate in the program, an employer designs a Shared Work plan, completes an application and submits it to the Unemployment Insurance Division in Albany. The plan can cover the company’s entire work force, certain shifts or particular units. There is no extra cost to the company.
To be eligible, a company must have at least five full-time employees.
Although a Shared Work plan can be approved for up to 53 weeks, only 20 weeks of benefits can be paid in a benefit year.
If a registered company is facing a downturn in business, it can cut employees’ hours - rather than lay them off - and the employees would be able to collect a portion of unemployment insurance benefits based on the percentage of hours they have lost.
Here’s an example: An employee at a participating company has his hours cut by 30 percent. Based on his full salary, let’s say he qualifies for $309 per week in unemployment insurance benefits. Under the Shared Work Program, he would receive 70 percent of his full salary from his employer for the hours he actually worked, and 30 percent of $309, or $92.70, from the Shared Work Program.
Statewide, 121 employers signed up for the program in December, and another 209 have signed up since Jan. 1, Dunphy said. - Bev
Suggestion: I would like to also recommend employee furloughs. They could be either mandatory or required. I work in CIT, and I would definitely sign up for between 1–4 days/month unpaid furlough. You could even structure it so that employees take furlough days during their least busy times of the year. Maybe some people would sign up for 1 day/month or others 1 day every two months or even one day per week. (I am not quite old enough for either of the retirement incentives.) - Anonymous
Suggestion: Why in the world, in this time of deep deficits, are Cornell Police patrolling off campus?? This is a huge waste of money. Save money by stopping this practice immediately. Less hours for officers, less wear and tear on cars, less gas, etc., etc.
Patrolling off campus does not help our students, staff, or institution. Stop wasting money in such a manner! - Anonymous
Suggestion: I would like to see the University explore the possibility of having faculty, administrators and staff (above a determined level) take pay cuts if this will mean that we can offset (or even stem) layoffs. One might, for example, mandate a 5% salary cut this year across the board (again, while protecting the very vulnerable from it), and possibly another 5% next year. I, for one, would be willing to do this. - Shawkat
Suggestion: I love attending Cornell for my graduate education. However I have noticed a practice in my undergraduate institution that may help improve the future financial success of Cornell.
At my undergraduate institution, there was a significantly higher percentage of student employees. For example, I worked for a year as a maintenance worker in the student dorms. I was overseen and trained by a full-time employee, and worked along-side two-other student employees. This was prevalent all over campus. Janitors were students, who were overseen and trained by full-time employees, as were secretaries in the administration and department offices.
In some ways, it may be less efficient, due to the continuous training of new student employees. However, I feel it is more rewarding for the full-time employees and provides useful on the job training for students during their education. Knowing my modest pay rate, I’m sure that the University also benefited financially—because what students don’t earn in pay, they are earning in experience and training.
As full-time employees retire, this may be considered an option to continue into the future, which I think can benefit all members of the Cornell community. - Darrell
Suggestion: EXEMPT STAFF PAYROLL ALLOCATION—BI MONTHLY TO MONTHLY
I am a professor in the sociology dept and have been a professor at other ivy institutions, as well as held professional posts in the “non-academic” world.
Cornell is the only institution to my knowledge and experience that pays “exempt staff” on a bi-monthly basis. Typically exempt staff is paid monthly and non-exempt staff is paid by-weekly. I am sure that there is probably some “Cornell” reason for this.
Paying exempt staff on a monthly basis would rationalize the payroll as well as bring Cornell in line not only with its peer institutions but everyone else with exempt staff.
The bi-monthly payroll has to cost more money. While I am of course happy to have my pay check, it seems that once a month could be a potential small, but long term, cost saving to the university. - Mabel
Suggestion: Look into the Cornell Local Roads Program in Riley Robb Hall. Possibly reducing or eliminating this program They seem to employ several engineers and numerous administrative staff for a program that does not involve students or have much awareness on campus or in Ithaca. We want to put the students and research first when considering Cornell’s budget woes. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Offer a voluntary lay-off to employees. Allowing the same benefits to those who volunteer for a lay off as those who weren’t able to make that decision and found themselves laid off. This would help secure positions of employees who enjoy their current position and/or cannot afford to be laid off. It would give an opportunity to employees who are not happy in there current positions to focus on finding a position that better suits their current needs and those of other departments. - Anonymous
Suggestion: There is a 4–6 week period during the summer where many units on campus are just plain slow. Perhaps offering people a month off in the summer (a voluntary 11-month appt) would be appealing to many employees with young families. I would love to have the summer off so I could spend quality time with my kids. Taking 1 month off unpaid, and supplementing it with 2–4 weeks of vacation time would give me some good family time, childcare savings, and immediate payroll savings. - Anonymous
Suggestion: If future staff layoffs are necessary, I would like to suggest that the first layoffs should be people that have retired from Cornell (probably State employees). I know of many Cornell employees that retire from State service and then get an endowed job on campus. Since these employees have a pension plan it would seem the jobs should be made available to others who will placed on layoff status. This seems a bit like double dipping. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Allow employees to elect for additional vacation without pay (up to 1 week). The way I have seen this administered is that an amount is automatically deducted from every paycheck for the year the employee elects the additional vacation that “pays back” the university for the equivalent amount of salary. This way the employee does not experience a big earnings impact on the days the vacation is taken and the administration requires only one adjustment to salary and vacation accruals at the beginning of the year. - Pam
Suggestion: Although CU continually expresses its commitment to S.I.P., I hear on an almost daily basis that employees would rather forego this if it were to keep others employed.
It’s difficult to accept even a modest wage increase when you know coworkers or other university employees are being released from employment.
The S.I.P. should be reconsidered or some campus-wide poll should be taken. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Staff employees with significant annual leave balances should be encouraged to use additional annual leave between now and the end of the fiscal year. Use of annual leave will result in additional savings to the University at year-end. When banked annual leave is used it reduces the amount the University has to set aside to pay out at a future time. Accrued annual leave University-wide represents a significant expenditure. - Anonymous

Recycling

Suggestion: My suggestion relates to both sustainability and financial savings. I think it is time for Cornell to discontinue offering bottled water at large meetings and events. This practice has become so commonplace, and it really bothers me that so often, there is no receptacle available for recycling the bottles. I don’t know if offering cold water in pitchers with paper cups is any more sustainable or cost-efficient, but surely the plastic bottles are costing the university a great deal. Perhaps there could be a concerted effort to remind folks in advance to bring their own cup to meetings, or it might even make sense, as a one-time expenditure, to offer “BYOC” cups to employees.
Even if we do continue to offer bottled water occasionally, we as a staff and an organization need to be more thoughtful about our impact on the environment. Do the bottles really need to be labeled “Cornell University?” Doesn’t this add unnecessary cost to something that is already of a questionable necessity? I don’t claim innocence here—when there is bottled water available, I often drink it, but i would also drink water out of a paper cup, or bring my own cup. - Julie
Suggestion: This proposal deals with both financial and sustainability.
Several universities around the country have a central asset recycle/recovery department devoted to the sale or reuse of equipment. They also contract auction services to handle the sale and shipment of the goods.
We tend to rent and fillup warehouses and barns to store items that may never be used and are probably often forgotten.
The recovery department would may need a close tie to purchasing, for example if your purchasing new office equipment, or computers someone needs to find out what is happening with the current assets and then deal with their disposal. In my tenure I have seen dumpster loads of IT equipment some it was brand new in the box sent to the landfill.
In addition I believe records retention area is another place we could save on cost by providing a centralized document scanning and retrieval center. Now we have to: purchase boxes for boxing it, record it in some fashion, ship it to a facility miles away from the university, retrieve it as needed, and eventually pull and verify it for shredding. A very manual labor intensive process. - Gary
Suggestion: Every time I order supplies they are delivered in a new cardboard box which is broken down and recycled. While recycling is good, re-use is better when feasible. Could the university consider more ways to reuse certain resources rather than disposing of them after a single use? It would reduce the costs of constantly buying new. - Anonymous
Suggestion: The Water Filtration Plant, EHS, and others could launch a “I love tap water” campaign, like the one at UC Berkeley <http://www.uhs.berkeley.edu/tapwater/index.shtml>. This would provide financial savings by taking pressure off those departments that currently purchase water for water coolers and support CU’s sustainability commitments by reinforcing national efforts to reduce the use of disposable water bottles.
Many of my colleagues remember the alert about Cornell tap water from six years ago. (“Water quality tests in December 2002 and February 2003 showed that Cornell’s drinking water exceeded the EPA’s standard for haloacetic acids. <http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/03/6.12.03/water-OK.html> This created a distrust of Cornell tap water at a time when the purchase of bottled water was becoming more common. I don’t think there has been a problem since; nor am I aware of any significant effort to reassure the public and “market” the qualities of our tap water.
Many departments will continue to feel pressure from staff until the university does a better job of extolling the virtues of our own tap water, which we believe is good enough to sell to the city. CCE has some resources we could build off <http://waterquality.cce.cornell.edu/bottled.htm>, and the Chronicle referred to some, as well <http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Aug07/bottled.water.sl.html>. - Sharon
Suggestion: As a new employee hired in September, I am not sure what Cornell does with used toner cartridges. There are companies that buy used cartridges and sends checks to the business. Shipping is covered. It is a simple process and helps the environment as well. - Anonymous
Suggestion: In the last couple of years I have seen dozens and dozens of new, unopened inkjet cartridges thrown away on campus, presumably because the expiration date had passed or the printers were no longer working. They must have cost $500 just in the batches I happened to see in the trash. Some cartridges will work after the expiration date even if the printer claims not to recognize them. In general, there should be caution about stockpiling these cartridges, and maybe a way to offer them to others on campus, or at least give them to a charity to recycle. - Amy

Reduce Paper

Suggestion: CIT net print prints a page just to tell you that you are out of funds for printing. Seems a little self-defeating, doesn’t it? - Tim
Suggestion: Cornell does many many mailings, I’m most familiar with the staff mailings. As Accts Rep III for thePDC Paint & Carpenter Shop I see too much waste from these mailings. My complaint is about the notices sent to employees who have been laid off or let go for months and sometimes years. In this day of electronic information there is no reason for these waste. I’m not speaking of one or two printed notices I’m talking about 20–50 each time. That’s a waste of time to print notices, cost of paper & ink, mail the notices, deliver the notices, sort out these notices, and then the cost to recycle these notices! If it’s happening in our department I know it’s happening throughout the campus. We could really be saving some trees also.
I have brought this to the attention of a couple people responsible for this happening and they just say it’s the people soft listing they have to use? - Bonnie
Suggestion: No more campus mailings! It should all be done electronically. Even right down to the paw print, chronicle, etc.
I received last week, as we all did, a flyer in campus mail from the employee assembly about a meeting in ways in which to save $. The mailing alone was a waste, it should have come to individuals electronically.
Less mail means less paper, ink and personnel. - Julie
Suggestion: Do we need a printed phone directory any longer? People could use cu info or eudora to look for someone - also add a feature in Eudora directory search so someone could locate the main line to any individual dept. - Julie
Suggestion: Given the amount of information found online, I feel it is a huge waste to have the paper Directory (or at least so many of them). Not to mention that they are often outdated less than half way through the cycle.
Also, given the amount of reminder the University does to get the word out about special events (i.e. the forum) there are still post cards sent to each employee. If people truly don’t use the computer then post it in a few places around campus, there is no need for each person to have a post card on something so heavily published already. - Teresa
Suggestion: I feel this suggestion targets three of the four categories you specify: sustainability, efficiency, and financial savings. There are far too many print documents sent to large quantities of people across campus. From in-depth financial reports to post card announcements. This produces too much wasted paper and printing costs (and I can’t tell you how often I struggle with recycling a well designed, color printed brochure).
Instead, an e-announcement—targeting either all staff, and/or all faculty, and/or sub-sets of these groups (Chairs and Directors, Department Managers, etc.) with a PDF attachment of the designed document would work. Printed copies could be offered for those who would like. OR, a weekly e-announcement inviting people to visit sites where “current news and information” is posted, which could be set-up with specific access rights depending on who should or should not view certain documents. People could choose to book mark and visit as often as they like.
The initial designing of such a communication system, and potential creation of appropriate listservs will cost money but the overall, long-term savings should (potentially, more than) outweigh the cost. - Dorothy
Suggestion: As an alumnus and former employee I am continually frustrated by the amount of unsolicited mail I receive from the University.
At home, as an alum who gives annually —but not a lot of money — I receive mailings from every part of the University that I have ever given too. In the interest of saving trees, I have worked hard to limit the amount of mail I receive, and now, with the exception of “resident junk mail” and one or two bills, all of the mail I receive is from Cornell! I know that I am not the only one who feels that my gifts would be better utilized by a student.
In the office where I worked, which was not in Ithaca, we were always receiving mail from different departments/colleges/units which were mailed first class that could have been sent via campus mail, and multiple copies of the same publication were frequently mailed (in separate envelopes) to people who no longer worked in the offices.
I understand that its difficult to keep databases up to date, and also understand that with out solicitations, no one will give money… but working on these small things will save resources and may garner more alumni giving. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I know that the new staff directories are going to print within the next few days. In talking to co-workers the feeling is that now that we have an electronic directory system, no one ever uses the “hard copy”.
I’m am sure that we may have some people who would still want the hardcopy, but should we be taking a closer look at the needs of the campus and cut back on the number of copies printed (huge savings). - Donna
Suggestion: Just received lovely annual report from Johnson School, but in light of economic crisis, I should have been given the option to opt out and/or view report online. Maybe create a web page for publications from each college/unit to be viewed AND/OR ordered for mailing. - Anonymous
Suggestion: If it were cost efficient, perhaps all of the yellow campus mail envelopes could be ordered as laminated from now on. This would mean that they would have to be replaced very infrequently and with their increased life span, CU staff and faculty can simply apply mailing labels with the recipient’s info, which we do already in our office to get more life out of the envelopes that pass by us. These mailing labels should be able to be easily peeled off too once they “build up,” so that the envelopes’ can be used indefinitely and be much more sturdy. That is, of course, if the cost of laminating them isn’t outrageous. Thanks. - Sarah
Suggestion: Stop the creation and mailing of paper notifications of things that could be readily sent via email. Anything that can be conveyed in a promotional postcard (especially one-sided) would only occupy a few lines in an email - promotional cards from the campus store, information about information fairs, &c can all be spread via email.
The costs of producing such mailed cards are staggering when you add them up: the cost of staff time to produce them, the resources to make them, the cost of distributing them, &c…it all adds up.
Many of these types of promo cards are immediately recycled…what a waste.
Longer materials of course do not lend themselves to small emails, but smaller items do.
Implement this practice university wide and the savings would be huge. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Recently I (and several of my coworkers) received a piece of mail inviting me to attend a talk by a representative from TIAA-CREF. Though I appreciated the invitation, as a Graphic Designer I was a little surprised at the printing cost associated with the invitation. The invitation, on card stock, contained bleeds and a full color photograph, as well as, being a non-standard size.
The same message could have been achieved by an e-mail with an attached .pdf document, or if by mail, eliminating the bleeds, changing the full color image to a grayscale image and using only two ink colors (black and red). All the information would have fit better on a standard 8.5 x 11 flyer and mailed in a regular #10 envelope.
My sense of security regarding my retirement benefits was not helped by the poor planning and lack of fiscal responsibility associated a piece of media inviting me to be reassured. - Drew
Suggestion: 1)Limit the amount of mailings done by the University. Mass communication to employees/retirees can be accomplished by email. For those employees/retirees who do not have access to a computer, they should be referred to their HR contact. Retirees can always come to Benefit Services to use our kiosk. The University has several options to communicate information to employees: email alerts, Pawprint, the Chronicle and providing workshops.
2) Encourage everyone on campus to scan documents instead of making copies to send through campus mail or to individuals outside of Cornell. - Maureen
Suggestion: As Controller for the Statler Hotel, I am on many campus wide distribution lists that deliver publications to me through campus mail. Many of these publications are full size, color brochures on expensive heavy, coated paper. Although I find many of them interesting reading material, I have often wondered how I became on the list to receive them due to the lack of correlation to my position. I have always thought, wow, these must be so expensive to distribute all over campus. On the flipside, this is my third year at Cornell and in this position. I am still trying to navigate my way to the distribution lists (primarily electronic) that I need to be on to receive the information I need to be effective in my job. For example, many months in I learned that there was a Controller’s listserv. I am still trying to find out how to get on the list to receive updates to financial policies.
My suggestion would be to ask Colleges/Units to reduce the distribution of color publications on campus. It would also be a beneficial exercise to have someone review, streamline and centralize distribution lists. - Tracy
Suggestion: Eliminate routing of paper forms wherever possible by deploying a university wide work flow tool including the capability for electronic signatures.
In addition, have the forms feed the information directly into the the various systems to eliminate duplicate data entry. In today’s electronic age it is amazing how many paper forms are still routed manually across campus. I think one of the primary reasons is the need for a signature on the form. The university must address the need for electronic signatures. I quickly to a look in the finance arena to see what forms are still routed manually and here is small sample (Single/Sole Source Form, P-card application, ADAFs, Capital Asset Disposition Form, Wire Transfer Form, Vacation/Sick Leave Correction Form, etc., etc. etc.).
Not only are these forms routed manually, often the information on the form has to be manually rekeyed into some system. The forms should all be fully electronic including electronic signatures. There should be built in edits to ensure data validity and accuracy and the data on the form should feed directly into the appropriate system.
There are many “electronic forms” out there that appear as if they feed directly into the appropriate system when in fact a person on the receiving end of that form is printing it then manually keying in the information into the system.
Benefits of fully electronic and integrated forms:
- Less paper - more sustainable and cost effective
- Less mail delivery needed, less fuel used, and potentially fewer mail employees needed
- Improved efficiency in processing forms - edits will ensure date is more accurate and direct feeds into systems will help eliminate duplicate data entry and human error.
- Less physical storage space needed - retention periods for most financial forms and documents is six years.
What is the cost of a paper document/form over its life? That would be an interesting cost study. What is the carbon foot print of a paper form/document vs electronic forms? - Robert
Suggestion: In the past few weeks, I have received six separate mailings at home from Human Resources and Benefits Services. All of this information could have been delivered electronically or at least to my department, saving on postage and paper. In addition, at my benefits info session, packets of several hundred pages were distributed to all in attendance - with information that is easily accessible online. It’s not much, but these little expenses add up very quickly! - Dan
Suggestion: Yesterday (11/25) a four-page paper “newsletter” was sent out by Transportation & Mail Services, presumably to all employees. That’s a lot of paper used for information that could easily have been sent out via email.
I don’t wish to single out T&MS, since they are not alone. However, this is just an example of what we should NOT be doing in times of budgetary challenges. Instead, everyone in the Cornell community should be mindful of waste and should be doing everything they can, even in the smallest ways, to eliminate waste. Was this mailing going to break the bank? No…but the wastefulness certainly caught my attention, enough to want to offer this comment.
Thank you, President Skorton, for giving us the chance to provide our thoughts and ideas. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Have OHR halt the paper mailings to home addresses that serve as a reminder of certain benefits deadlines. Instead, do this by e-mail or rely on the first mailing with the deadlines. - Anonymous
Suggestion: After checking my office mail box I removed a paper news letter from T&MS. It was informative but then I remembered that we (and Cornell community) are trying to be sustainable and financially responsible. Our division status report even stated “limiting printing as much as possible” in a recent email. Months ago our section made a great effort forward sending out our newsletter via email. My department as a whole is moving forth with limiting paper use, but then we encounter this which is defeating the idea of sustainability for Cornell.
Wouldn’t it be a great if newsletters and or advertisements(especially the color advertisements) from groups across campus were sent via email …. the savings in paper, printing cost’s, delivery costs… etc. Electronic newsletters and advertisements would help the campus community be more financially responsible and sustainable at the same time. - Greg
Suggestion: As a Cornell retiree who at times uses the Cornell computer labs, I suggest:
Each time one does a printing (even just one page), the printers in the public computer labs issue a cover page, which then usually gets thrown out … (although one can leave it with the operator for recycle).
Is this really necessary? It contains information on the user’s cost of the printed page(s) and the balance s/he has left over.
I wonder if paper/ink needs to be wasted this way!!!
Thanks for listening. -Anna
Suggestion: I have seen multitudes of paper mailings from all over Cornell that do not even get read. They just end up in the garbage. I suggest that entities use email for advertising services and communicating with the Cornell community rather than using funds to purchase paper products and ink as well as the printing services. If this was done, it would not only reduce the financial cost, but it would also make Cornell more environmentally friendly by reducing waste. - Anonymous
Suggestion: We could save a lot of paper by encouraging faculty and staff to re-use paper whenever possible, e.g. for taking notes or recording meeting minutes. Paper printed on one side, photocopies that turned out not to be useful or are no longer needed, etc. are all reuseable. I reuse these kinds of papers for notetaking, and as a result have needed only one or two new pads of paper in the past 16 years! - Margaret
Suggestion: The printer’s default setting on all net-print is to print out a cover page with a net id at the beginning of a print job. It would save a lot of paper/money if the default was not to have this page - and if the net id cover page was needed - it could be enabled. - Kristin
Suggestion: I have been told that the university mails W-2s to all employees. Other organizations have gone to electronic versions and simply inform employees when their W-2s are available for review and printing by providing a link to an appropriate web page. I would think the security extant in the CIT architecture would allow for this process to work readily here. I believe this would save time, money and resources. - David
Suggestion: The Cornell Chronicle is mailed to my home every week and I assume that it’s mailed to the home of every employee. I usually get a copy at work, and by the time it gets to my house it is old news. I recommend that Cornell Chronicles should no longer be distibuted by postal mail. - Donna
Suggestion: Consider returning both the Cornell Chronicle and the Paw Prints publications to black and white only, and print them on newspaper rather than the heavier paper currently used. Reduce the number of copies distributed. (I used to compost the extra newspaper issues, but am afraid to do so with the heavier paper and colored inks.) - Shelly
Suggestion: Print official-looking signs and put them on or near all university printers (in TA, Faculty offices) emphasizing the use of the blank sides of scrap paper wherever possible. - Carl
Suggestion: A not insignificant amount of paper (and toner) could be saved by asking that when agendas or other materials are distributed, usually electronically, in advance of a meeting, have the person sending the meeting materials indicate whether copies of the agendas/materials will be provided at the meeting or the individual is expected to print and bring their own copies, if desired. I can’t tell you how many meetings I go to where many of the attendees have brought copies of the materials that were sent to them in advance and the person running the meeting will have also brought copies of everything for each person attending. It’s waste that is easily avoided by simple communication or a standard practice. - Tom
Suggestion: I think a lot of money could be saved by reducing printing. Today I received two glossy brochures from the Johnson Museum. I took a quick look and then tossed them in the recycling bin, where they joined many others that other people had thrown away. We are constantly receiving expensively printed brochures providing information that could easily be posted online instead. - Rachel
Suggestion: Can the Cornell Chronicle: it is a seldom-read money consuming boondoggle.
Check inside any building at Cornell and you will find piles of Cornell Chronicles, some even still with the binding strap round the pile. In the P&C at Judd Falls the Chronicle was still in a bound bundle several days after publication, the only such newspaper in that state.
Ther Cornell Chronicle was started in 1970 following student uprisings in 1969 and 1970. This was way before the internet. Today a web site would suffice. If needed a weekly list of contents could be e-mailed to the Cornell community. This would save paper, trees, printing (color no less), and disposal costs, and the personnel could be drastically cut.
Cornell and the world have moved on since 1970. It is time to update, and save money and the environment in the process. - Peter
Suggestion: Decrease printing of the paper CU phone book. One idea would be to print-on-demand one copy per department. Then have them make a request if they wish to receive it as a hard copy in the future. This would help to phase out the phone books.
Related - offer a cell phone application that looks people up (we might have this already, not sure). - Anonymous
Suggestion: My questions:
Why do we have to print the Faculty, Staff, & Student Directory?
If we must print it, why not reduce the number printed? (Although, larger numbers of copies undoubtedly provides economies of scale and, therefore, a smaller number of copies would have a higher per copy cost, but total cost might be less than is now budgeted).
Can’t all this information be less expensive to put on one of our web sites, since I believe the vast majority of Cornell employees & students use computers? And, the information would be updated in real time, too.
Is the Directory distributed to more than just Faculty, Staff, & Students? To whom, & why?
How many Directories are sold? At what price? Where is the Directory sold other than the Cornell Store?
Of course, I’ll withdrawn my questions, if the advertising sales revenue and direct sale of Directories provide revenue greater than cost, i.e., a profit, for Cornell! - Brad
Suggestion: Many staff across campus feel that the money spent to print the Cornell Directory, which has numerous errors this (and every) year could be better used. They start working on them so far in advance (usually August) that they are often outdated by the time we get them in February and no matter what steps we take to verify past data, they still are full of errors. With all the changes to department staff this year and the unknown effects of next year’s cut backs, it would seem even more important not to waste time and money creating these books. With all the systems we have in place to locate someone, this just seems to be a huge expense that we could do without. Many of the staff don’t even take one because it just frustrates us to use them. Then you have to find a place to store them and recycle the old ones. If there are still people who insist that they are helpful, then order a smaller number of copies and maybe ask people in advance if they will be using them. To just drop ship them to buildings based on the number of staff in each location is not the best use of money when you find them sitting in boxes untouched. - Anonymous
Suggestion: The phone books that are printed by the university of Facility/Staff/Students do not need to be printed or at least not in the quantity that they are now.
I would like that 90% of people on campus do not look at the directory. I have not used one in a few years. I use the electronic directory. It is easier and more accurate than the printed version that we do not have out until half of the semester has passed. Too many are sent to our building and we try to give them away. Then end up recycling new books that are still left over. What a waste! 20 years ago, the Campus Store used to sell the directories. Perhaps we could go back to that idea? Take a survey; find out how many people want a new book each year. Then print only that number and charge to the departments/units who want these books. Even make a few available to people who might want to purchase through the Campus store.
Even worst is the duplication of yellow books. This year, Verizon and Haines delivered books to the building. There will be hundreds of booked that will be recycled. Perhaps the university could approach these vendors to cut the number or not deliver to the campus at all. - Anonymous
Suggestion: In the future, I think the University should consider not printing the faculty, staff, and student directory. Personally, I never use the directory although our building is supplied with them for all the laboratories and offices. It is much easier to use the website search option. - Jacque
Suggestion: Is the PawPrint paid for from Cornell’s budget? Please stop printing it. Just as the Chronicle is going paperless, so should the PawPrint and any other publication aimed at staff. - Jamie
Suggestion: The Cornell parking ticket appeals process is online. That is great. But the response from Parking Services comes on a letter through the mail. If Parking Services just responded electrically (like we submit), Cornell would save postage and paper. - Anonymous
Suggestion: In my campus mail today, a big color brochure for Cornell Concert Series, Sept’09-April’10. I, like many employees, can’t afford these types of events. Even if I could, I couldn’t plan buying tickets a year ahead of time. What a waste of paper, ink, energy, design cost, etc. - Amy
Suggestion: In preparation for the Baker Institute’s Havemeyer Foundation Summer Fellowships, I learned that one of our fellows was able to obtain a student ID at the Registrar’s Office without the requisite “gray card” (ID Request Form) from the Office of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions. That office had prepared such a card for each of our incoming fellows. The Registrar’s Office prepared a student ID for the visiting fellow merely by accessing the student’s information from the computer system into which it had already been entered. The University would save money, time and duplication of effort by eliminating preparation and use of the ID Request Forms. This suggestion falls into 3 categories: sustainability, efficiency and financial savings.
Thank you for the opportunity to make a suggestion. - Dawn
Suggestion: I was pleased to hear that the University is planning on saving money by reducing the amount of printed material that is sent out. However, there still seems to be a ways to go. This week I got 3 separate glossy, color mailings from the Johnson Museum…1 at my office and 2 at home…all of which I threw out! - Rachel
Suggestion: I received a letter from you encouraging us to donate to the United Way. While I agree with donating to this worthy cause, I was dismayed that our resources were used to send out so many copies of this letter. It would seem prudent to send this message via email.
I was especially surprized that a letter with this topic was sent by paper, when email messages concerning health care are sent via e-mail.
Thanks so allowing us to share our concerns. - Anonymous

Reduced Work Week

Suggestion: Cornell could offer non-exempt employees the option to work shorter hours—providing there is a limit that would ensure the workplace wouldn’t be negatively impacted, and the employee would maintain benefits at current levels. For instance, a drop from 39 to 34 hours would allow employees to work 4-day work weeks, which would be a big incentive for some. This could be a voluntary program that could save the university thousands for each employee that signed on. - Christine
Suggestion: Encourage hourly staff to work a 35 hour week in situations where practical AND desirable to the employee; this would equate to a 10% payroll savings in each instance.
Leverage the university’s purchasing power and require use of preferred vendors. FY2008 Supplies and General expenses amount to $478M - if we could save 1 cent on each dollar spent that would amount to almost $5M. - Ken
Suggestion: I think a great way to say on things such as electricity, heating costs, travel costs for employees would be to have a 4 day work week. Shutting down on Thursday night and reopening on Monday would be a good way to still maintain the same workload but save on costs. - Amanda
Suggestion: First of all, THANK YOU, President Skorton, for providing this opportunity to voice our opinions/suggestions.
I believe Cornell could save substantially if employees were to revert to a 4-day work week. Some savings could be the following, but not limited to…
1. lessened use of UTILITIES (electricity, heat, air conditioning, water, gas).
2. lessened use of OFFICE APPLIANCES (microwave, coffee maker, stove, refrigerator, toaster).
3. lessened use of OFFICE RESOURCES (computer, office supplies, breakroom supplies, telephone, etc.).
4. lessened use of ATHLETIC FACILITIES & RESTROOMS (savings in electricity, water, bathroom necessities).
5. MORE PARKING AVAILABLE, since not everyone would be on the same 4-day schedule.
6. possibly BETTER MORALE of employees since they would have more quality time with family, therefore, possibly less employees taking sick days?
EMPLOYEES, on the other hand, would benefit by:
1. less need for child daycare. Also less need for daycare for our elderly and pets.
2. less cost for gas as well as less wear/tear on our vehicle, and/or lessened need for public transport.
3. quality time with family.
This could be a win-win situation! Thanks for listening! - Anonymous
Suggestion: I would like to suggest extended days and a 4 day work week. It would be interesting to see what the savings would be if the work day was Monday through Thursday 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM. I previously worked in an institution that did this for summer hours at considerable savings. I would assume given the harsh winter temperatures in Ithaca building heat could be set back considerable; there would be a savings on electricity etc. This would also assist employees who are feeling the pinch in commuting costs. While gasoline prices are currently low we cannot assume they will not rise again to the record levels they were this fall. Thank you for reaching out to us for our suggestions and opinions. - Janet
Suggestion: I would like to present a case for a four day work week. This measure has been instituted by some enterprises and cities and has contributed to huge savings. For Cornell, I think that moving level D and below administrative positions to a 4 day work week, will save thousands in utilities and labor costs. Yes, we would go home with less salaries/hourly wages, but I would have a three days to transfer my cost of living to another area. We would save on the cost of servicing, supplies, utilities and maybe more areas. With two children, a middle schooler and a 13 month old, I would appreciate the cost savings to my family for the day of care. My commute is less than 10 minutes, but cost savings can be received from not commuting on that day as well. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I was curious as to President Skorton’s thoughts on possibly implementing a 4-day work-week. I realize that this would not be feasible for certain staff - especially those who work in the Dining Halls because we still need to feed the students and others in the Cornell Community. By going to a 4-day work-week, we could save a considerable amount of money spent on utilities, heating, not to mention there would be a cost savings on those that commute to campus long-distances. I have read in USA Today of a city that has begun this (earlier this summer), (the Mayor put this into effect) and the cost-savings was quite considerable. Just wondered what Skorton’s thoughts were on this as well as the other VPs. - Mary
Suggestion: Might I suggest that the university look at a 38, 37 or even a 35 hour work week. Giving the university and departments a significant cost savings and would possibly avoid layoffs in some departments. - Deena
Suggestion: I believe that the biggest expense for any company is payroll. I would suggest that the University reduce its employee hours to a 4 day work week, working 9 hours per day, yet still keeping ones benefits. This would reduce wages, and costs for the employee in terms of gas, mileage to and from the University, free up parking spaces, and give the University more money in their pockets to use elsewhere. I am willing as a loyal employee of the University to contribute what I can to save us from losing our jobs completely. Thank you President Skorton for giving us, the Cornell Community, the opportunity to share our views with you. We are lucky to have you. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Thank you for setting up this “suggestion box”, and also thank you for sponsoring the various forums. Every one of the people with whom I’ve talked would voluntarily shave their hours to save the jobs of fellow employees; in previous jobs I’ve had, when layoffs occurred, the people who kept their jobs were almost as upset as those who were let go. What if we started such a process, where people could sign up to give back hours? For example, one could work 39 hours per week and be paid for 38 or 37, etc. The money saved across campus would be substantial, and could be written off against the general budget, or even put into the Capital Campaign. This would be in keeping with your idea of “growing our way out, rather than cutting our way out”. Thanks for listening, and best of luck with this huge task. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Many suggestions were made for-exempt personnel to work a 4 day work week, and/or shortened hours. I would like to suggest that exempt employees be given the opportunity to work a reduced work week for a proportional reduction in pay while keeping benefits if working 20 hours per week or more. For example, an exempt employee could voluntarily cut down to 32 hours per week at 4/5 of their full-time salary, 24 hrs/week at 3/5 of full-time salary, etc. The amount worked per week could be static or could change from week-to-week depending on work load. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I would simply like to add to the chorus of voices recommending a four day work week for some of the administrative staff. Thank you for the opportunity to provide our thoughts. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Perhaps go to a 4 day work week? Or observe more holidays or more time off during winter break? - Anonymous
Suggestion: Switch to a university standard 4-day work week for at least the summers, but perhaps year-round. This could provide significant savings by reducing energy costs, reduce the total shifts needed to staff campus dining areas, and other facilities.
Here is a link to a college is saving over $250,000 / year making this change: http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/worklife/08/12/shorter.workweek/index.html
Here is a college that switches to 4 day week during summer ($40,000 / week … which would save about half a million in just 12 weeks):
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20070522/ai_n19166734/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1 - Curtis
Suggestion: I suggest that the University consider a 10% work reduction for both exempt and non-exempt staff for a specific period of time.
Cornell
- Employees would work 9 days in a two week cycle verses the current 10 days.
- Departments could determine how they would schedule employees to either continue to maintain the same number of days of service or possibly to shut the office or building down entirely on the 10th day to maximize the energy savings.
- By cutting days/hours, we retain an additional 1 in 10 employees and keep the employee connection to Cornell strong. Then when the economic situation improves, we will be in a better positioned to ramp the hours back up without incurring recruiting and retraining costs.
Employee
- Although the reduction will create some financial hardship, by sharing the “pain” fewer employees and households will be devastated and potentially forced into complete insolvency. This is better for Cornell, employees and the community.
- Employees could choose to supplement their reduction in pay with their vacation time until their benefit time is expended which would thereby reduce the University’s accrued benefit burden.
- The University avoids costly severance pay and outplacement services.
- Employees would be able to file for unemployment for the one day of lost wages.
- Employees would save the cost of that day’s commute and perhaps turn the additional time into further savings on the home front. For example: More time to devote to economical grocery shopping and food preparation.
- Employees could choose to pick up other casual employment on their day off to supplement their wages if needed.
- If Finances are not an issue, employees could volunteer their time or work on self development through the Wellness Program, SkillsSoft courses or other available means.
Cornell Community
- We talk about being a community but we do not always act like a community especially if we are only concerned about taking care of number one and are unwilling to be a community when there is too large of a personal cost.
- What an incredible statement about Cornell’s values and community if we could avoid laying people off because we were all willing to take on our share of the pain. - Jo Ellen
Suggestion: Reduce the standard work week hours from 39 to 35. One hour per day would not be a large impact to Departments. Staff can be staggered to cover hours of operation. The reduced paycheck would be an adjustment to employees but they would at least retain a decent job and great benefits. - Lori
Suggestion: Change Cornell’s standard work week from 39 hour to 35 hours resulting in a 10.25% savings across the university. (This could be phased in over a couple years reducing to 37 hrs in FY10 and then to 35 hrs in FY11 or some variation.) - Anonymous
Suggestion: I am all for the reduction of the work week if it means financial savings for my program and the University. I am also in agreement that the cost of food at meetings/seminars could be drastically cut. - Wendy
Suggestion: If the university is cash strapped, consider reducing the work week to 37 hours from 39 in lieu of a pay raise in July. Keep salaries and biweekly incomes the same (increase hourly rates to compensate for two hour cut) I was at Hofstra Univ. in the 70s when they moved from a 37.5 hour week to a 35 hour week. Staff appreciated the time and this helped save some staff jobs. Everyone got an hourly rate increase but the university offset this with the hours reduction. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Has the university considered using Summer Hours? Prior to coming to Cornell, I worked for 11 years at a university that would adjust the workday by one-half hour during the summer months (8 a.m. to 4 p.m., rather than 4:30 p.m.) to include the time between the end of Commencement and two weeks before the beginning of the fall semester. Non-exempt staff were still paid the same, but did not take their two fifteen minute breaks during day to make up the time. It was a good morale booster and something that everyone looked forward to. While this may not result in a salary savings, it could result in fewer resources being used during the course of the week. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I would like to suggest that the standard work week be reduced by one hour across the board for all full-time positions. This would be that instead of the standard full time position being 39 or 40 hours, which it currently is, the standard position would be 38 or 39 hours, depending on job as it currently is. This would be a very small adjustment to the majority of people, yet it could net a fairly good portion of the overall budget. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I’m sure it has been suggested already, but shutting down the University over spring break would save a weeks worth of operation costs. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Convert to a 4 day work week for staff. - Michelle
Suggestion: Cornell could cut down in many ways and save positions with a simple four day work week. The money that would be saved by closing buildings for one day is substantial. With the price of gas going up again I am surprised this has not been done. It would also be beneficial to Cornell for maybe a 35 hour work week for everyone. I do think so many positions could be saved with just those two.
One other cost saving measure is the food that is bought by the University for “meetings” is really to me a joke. We all have to bring a lunch to work…we know that. Unless your the President of the University or meeting with potential donors is it really a necessity? Recruitment is another area that makes me wonder…so we all go recruiting in the winter to where??? Florida, California anywhere warm from what I saw. Its a waste of money.
This is just four ideas that would save the University a ton. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Consider a shortened workweek for some functions IF that allows closing a building for that part of the week. This means that lights, computers, etc., have to be shut down and heat/ac minimized. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Perhaps offering 4 day work weeks at the departmental level. Folks can choose to work 8, 9, or 10 hour days with that 5th day (department shut down) being utilized to save overhead cost (offices closed…..lights off, computers off, etc). - Anonymous
Suggestion: Change non-exempt 1.0 FTE to 35 hours. This reduction could be temporary for a couple of year until the university begins to stand on better ground financially. Spread this across as many non-exempt staff as possible and I suspect the savings in wages would be substantial. - Anonymous

Telecommuting

Suggestion: This suggestion actually pertains to all of the above selections. Cornell should consider implementing telecommuting for staff who are able to complete their duties from home. At my previous employer this worked fabulously. Most everything is done online these days, so it’s possible to maintain the same level of output and effectiveness from home as from the office.
Where appropriate, employees could enroll in a trial telecommuting program, perhaps beginning with 1–2 days/week working from home. If it’s successful, the time could be increased up to 4–5 days. Of course, flexibility is needed if an employee needs to be on campus for events or meetings.
But such a program could save money by cutting down on the university’s subsidized costs for commuting, energy costs for employee workstations, and other costs generating by having employees physically anchored to an office.
Not only that, it promotes sustainability. Fewer cars on the road, fewer trips to and from campus, and less strain on resources. - Ted
Suggestion: Provide On-line classes whenever possible rather than CCU employees traveling to Ithaca. EG: Brio classes held next week may have been able to be hosted thru a web-ex based program to eliminate the cost of travel, lodging and meals. - Sharon
Suggestion: There are many conferences held through out the year in various states. In most cases, more than one employee in the same department attend the same conference. Why not have it teleconferenced instead? - Anonymous

Transportation

Suggestion: In the interest of saving financial resources I suggest that the school should cease purchasing bus passes for freshmen beginning Fall 2009. Given the fact that few freshmen use these passes during the week as more than a means of conveyance between north and central campus, they are not cost effective. Truthfully, few students, be they freshmen or seniors, travel far off campus during the week. Therefore it should be sufficient for the university to provide free bus transport to students on weekends (as it already does), during which time most students require a means of traveling to the store, the commons, etc. - Jared
Suggestion: This is only a small part of overall expenses of the university however each time I see this being worked on I wonder why and for what reason.
The Traffic gate that stops traffic from both directions on the south side of Lynah rink seems to be a very high maintenance item. Each time I see work being performed on it I wonder what is its purpose other than a glorified speed bump?? if that’s the case maybe some consideration should be given to make it just that.. The University has not used that gate to limit access for years. I bet as well there is some City ordinance that would not allow it there in the first place.. just a thought for whatever it is worth. - Dick
Suggestion: Limit driving on campus to delivery and bus traffic. Use electric golf cart trains a la Disney, to shuttle from parking lots to campus. Limit bus runs to down town and mall area. (Saves T-Cat money, but it sounds like Cornell subsidizes them for some of the Cornell runs…)
Drop giving the Deans free cars. Is it really a required perk?
Drop the free T-Cat omni pass to staff and faculty. Sure, the free pass encourages to forgo driving, but if you take away the ability to drive on campus anyway, you can save money.
Convert the parking permits to bar code stickers. The parking enforcers can just walk up to a window, scan the bar code, and if the car is in violation, ticket them. This is more efficient and should reduce the number of parking enforcers needed.
Have all deliveries go to one location, off campus. If traffic is then reduced to bus and the electric golf-cart trains (a la Disney), you can save money on plowing, etc. Packages can be delivered from external place by the same electric golf-cart trains or by PDC 4×4s.
Do the re-landscaping every two years instead of the yearly redo every spring. - Anonymous
Suggestion: When the Laguardia to Ithaca flight canceled last Thursday night following the board meeting, the Campus to Campus bus was full. It dawned on me how much money that act of nature had saved the university (they will get credited with half the cost of their roundtrip ticket - approximately $262 - and only pay $75 for the one-way bus ride) and got me thinking that given the cost of a round-trip ticket from Ithaca to NYC at around $525, plus the $60 cab fare to and from the airport, Cornell could save a lot of money by putting a freeze on flying to New York and forcing use of the Campus to Campus bus at $150 round-trip and no cab fare. That’s a savings of $435 per person per trip. I don’t have the numbers of how many people per day fly to NYC but imagine it is not an insignificant number. Perhaps an exception could be if one is traveling down and back on one day since that it difficult to do on the bus and still have a productive day of meetings, not to mention that they would then be saving the cost of a hotel room. Another exemption could be made for travelers who plan enough ahead and don’t make changes to their itinerary, since doing so can result in fares as low as $155. But it does require careful planning… - Laurie
Suggestion: Perhaps instituting a nominal fee to those Cornell employees who hold parking permits for off-campus locations such as EHP or Thornwood Drive would help offset the university’s financial constraints and perhaps lower parking fees for folks on campus. Because our cars are typically so far away from our buildings and the likelihood of finding a spot upon return is so limited, we don’t enjoy the same privileges as our non-campus peers who have the ability to run errands on their lunch hours or schedule appointments, yet we pay an enormous amount of money for our permits and they pay nothing. - Anonymous
Suggestion: How is it that administrative employees at East Hill Office Building get both free parking and a private shuttle to campus (despite Cornell paying into TCAT which provides frequent service to East Hill Plaza). Neither financially nor environmentally sustainable.
I have to pay >$300/yr to park a 10 minute walk from my job, or even more to park closer. Employees don’t get to choose their work location on campus. Some already benefit from free parking if they work near A lot, or parking close if they work at the Vet School. But the East Hill situation is ridiculous. - Anonymous
Suggestion: Parking permits should be sold per car, not per person. Why do married faculty members get to park on campus for free for driving together - they already save money by carpooling. If your spouse is not a Cornell employee, you pay even though you’re only bringing a single car to campus. Cornell is missing out on a source of income here. - Amy
Suggestion: In terms of potential cost-cutting measures and in the interest of trying reduce waste in university operations, I would like to suggest the following be examined. Since the Office of Sponsored Programs has moved to East Hill Plaza and the Environmental Health and Safety building opened, a shuttle runs along a route of several stops on campus before proceeding back to East Hill Plaza. The shuttle is an extremely large van, running every 15 minutes, and is capable of holding upwards of 20 people. However, every time I have ridden the shuttle or seen it drive by, it typically has 1 passenger on it, and I have never witnessed more than 4 or 5 people riding it at any given time. Thus, it seems that a vehicle of this size operating every 15 minutes is wasteful and could easily be scaled down. A vehicle of this size is complete overkill, and realistically, a small van or sedan fleet vehicle would likely be more than sufficient and comfortable, reducing fuel costs. Reducing the operating times would further decrease gas expenditures. I’m am by no means down playing the vital roles that EH&S and OSP play for the university, I just wanted to point out that excessive transportation capacity and frequency between campus and these buildings is something that should be closely examined. - Aaron
Suggestion: 1. The fleet car reservation system ALLOWS carpooling, but perhaps it can be forced or at least encouraged more strongly.
2. Use EZPass in the fleet cars and distribute the costs of tolls across all fleet car uses. The EZPass saves in tolls, saves in gas (don’t have to idle), and I have had trips when the only travel reimbursement I submitted was for a few dollars of tolls. EZPass would have saved the administrative cost of submitting the reimbursement. - Anonymous
Suggestion: I’d like to suggest getting rid of the East Hill Shuttle service for the staff, which runs between the central part of Ithaca campus and the East Hill Plaza area. There are now two TCAT bus routes, 51 and 82, that cover the majority of the stops that the shuttle covers. The faculty, staff, and students can ride the bus for free with a CU ID anyways, and the runs are pretty frequent. (The route 51 comes every hour, and the route 82 comes every 15 minutes, compared to the shuttle which comes every 10 minutes.) Usually I see less than half a dozen people on the shuttle even when it is the busiest. On the other hand, the buses seem to have a plenty of space to accommodate those who usually take the shuttle. - Kaz
Suggestion: Why run our own East Hill shuttle now that TCAT has service (Rt 82) between campus and East Hill Plaza every 15 minutes? - Steve

Tuition

Suggestion: Thank you for your email. I know your are a good man, and thank you for not taking a raise, in fact a decrease in pay.
However, I can’t believe you are raising tuition. Don’t you think that your full tuition paying parents are all just trying to survive through this economic turmoil?
Our investments have been cut in half and we can’t borrow any money. How can you possibly believe that we can pay these already rediculously high costs? Why don’t you freeze our tuition and fees?
You have billions in the bank for unusually chaotic economic times. Isn’t that now? Why doesn’t Cornell hold their its (already too high) tuition and make an investment in your students. It’s better than the stock market. - Anonymous
Suggestion: This is less of a suggestion and more of a Thank you.
As a poorer student here at Cornell, I greatly appreciate the leadership’s choices to continue to improve financial aid, even during these hard times. The sacrifices made will surely be worth it. Thank you for all you have done, I sincerely appreciate it. - Cooper
Suggestion: Financial aid is currently a huge monetary issue for the university and each college. If we were to scale back what we provide as financial aid, this would go a long way to reducing the university and college financial woes. This would mean that a larger percentage of admitted students could not attend, but we provide students with an outstanding education, and we can (due to the number of qualified applicants we receive) put greater restrictions on the amounts of financial aid we give, especially when there are still applicants that are willing to pay a large part of the costs out of their own pocket. I would not want to see financial aid disappear, but providing the current levels of financial aid is causing tremendous hardships at Cornell. - Jeff

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