Many University of Montana professors are outraged over prospective cuts at UM, which they argue target teaching faculty and mostly ignore administration. The accusations cut deeper still as some accuse the administration of misleading the faculty and being outright dishonest.

History professor Linda Frey said that not only are administration salaries too high, there are too many administrators all together.

"The ideal ratio by the way, according to AAUP and the Chronicle, is that for every three tenured faculty, [there should be] one person not in the teaching faculty," Frey said. "Our ratio is 1.4 non-teaching to one faculty member... this is totally screwed up as far as I'm concerned."

Professor Mehrdad Kia claims that the cuts, as currently structured, will not only hurt the school's reputation as a flagship institution, but that it will hurt the school financially when it tries to rebuild its humanities curriculum later on.

"These cuts don't make sense," Kia said. "They actually would damage the long term financial stability of the institution. There is no significant cut to the bloated University bureaucracy. You have these numbers, I mean enormous numbers, in millions terms of salary for top administrators, and I don't see any significant cuts in terms of those."

One of the main questions asked has been where to point the blame for declining enrollment and a suffering budget. Blame is often pointed at the fact that UM doesn't have engineering, that Missoula has had a federal investigation of how it handles sexual assault, and that Montana students now have more options. But Professor Michael Mayer says MSU Bozeman also has many of the struggles, but they don't fully explain the decline in enrollment.

"That can't be the reason for the reversal, effectively, of 6,000 students 3,000 switching from one to the other," argued Professor Michael Mayer, "I think you have to start looking at decisions made at Main Hall."

For some faculty, like Michel Valentin, the answer of where to place the blame was clearly the administration.

"What would a business do if the CEO came up in the negative after five years?" Valentin said. "Five years of constant decline for business... who would be fired first? The CEO."

Professor Kia said that the administration directly misled the faculty in the lead up to the cuts. Kia said a committee called the "realignment committee" was created to ostensibly help struggling departments, but that did not end up being the case.

"[In respect to cutting faculty], the President of the University reassured us that the realignment committee had no such objectives and purpose: programs were identified as strong or weak and the weak programs were identified to be helped and strengthened in the long run," Kia said. "Lo and behold, programs that were identified as weak are now on the chopping block."

Many professors fear that the new cuts will target those in the weakest position, and that the proper target for cuts is in the administration's budget. To that end, they delivered the following list of administration salaries to the media:

Top Administrators

Royce Engstrom (President) $303,145

Perry Brown (Provost) $201,243

Nathan Lindsay (Associate Provost) $140,000

Open $99,140

C.Cellier $65,014

J. Laine J $$36,152 Total Operational Expenditure: $684,409



Scott Whittenburg (Vice President for Research and Development) $193,924

J.Fanguy (UM's Director of Technology Transfer and MonTEC President) $102,807

Judy Fredenburg (Executive Director, Federal Relations and Research) $105,795 Total for only three administrators: $399,508



Peggy Kuhr (Executive Vice President/ Vice President for Integrated Communications) $154,196

Mario Schulzke $105,057

E. Palmer $34,658

University Relations

C. Shiemek $57,911

J. Sauer J $40,698

A. Lewis $35,127

B. Roy $34,281

T. Goodrich $38,986

C. Hardy $37,283

J. Heaney $42,253

Classified/Temp Pool $11,519 Total: $403,115



Michael Reid (Vice President for Administration & Finance) $177,197

Beckie Christiaens $154,346

Planning Budget & Analysis Office

Ressel $136,464

Wingard $93,028

Wallwork $68,678

Tomsu $74,581

J. Elias $47,409

C. Burleson $40,021

K.Rudolph $23,559

D. Morlock $47,117

P. Ashworth $41,737 Total: $572,594



Vice President for Student Affairs

Voorhees $86,342

T. Branch $157,523

Open $6,752

A. Jo $26,944

D. Weathers $27,977

B. Bitar $13,478

Classified/Temp Pool $10,514

Total: $329,530

Davidson Honors College

B. Tessman $113,242

L. Pengelly Drake $37,039

K.Kaley $53,684

Classified/ Temp Pool $2,639 Total: $206,604



Kent Haslam (Director, Athletics) $131,194

M. Higgins $46,466

M.Nicholson $53,001

K. Nord $58,343

K. Judge $38,982

B. Doyon $71,011

J. Gee J $80,648

B. Schweyen $65,936

N. Swett $60,000

J. Hunt $44,218

R. Selvig $152,344

S. Ascher $46,772

R. Stitt $175,011

C.Germer $68,026

T. DeCuire $140,810

K.Bone $51,552

C. Woida $55,917

A. Lawrence $35,794

T. Gregorak $79,128

J.Metzger-Jones $55,146

B. Williams $31,635

C. Clough $36,801

S.Schweyen $61,200

R. Stack $50,031

D. Babcock $31,181

K. Matthew $56,400

C. Maes $74,285

J. Amoss $42,684

L. Suiaunoa $63,237

J. Weida $63,237

B. Molloy $45,463

M. Plakorus $64,032

C. Marks $49,746

R. Martin $57,511

G. Sundberg $68,396

CACP Pool $19,530

D. Sirois $28,291

R. Valley $40,451

H. Alexander $39,891

Heiner $57,529

T. Goodrich $9,142

J. Haight $41,773

P. Cooney P $40,726

C. O'Brien $37, 514 Total Athletic Departments and Cost: $2,620,984



Office of Student Success

Sharon O'Hare $95,270

J. Cannon $73,545

Brian French $75,000

Information Technology Administration

M. Riley $165,696

G. Pace $69,510

A. Irish $72,978

C. Holgate $77,811

International Programs