The University is reducing its faculty staff by 100 positions for fall 2013.

Most or all of the cuts will come from faculty members retiring, leaving for other jobs or faculty who were on one-year contracts, said David Kielmeyer, University spokesperson.

Faculty on one-year contracts were previously notified that these contracts would not be renewed after this year, Kielmeyer said. Cuts will come from both the University’s main campus and the Firelands campus.

The reduction will allow for the reallocation of $5.2 million to create more competitive staff salaries and to put toward unspecified “other University priorities,” said President Mary Ellen Mazey in an email to faculty and staff Friday.

In response to the cuts, the Faculty Association plans to send a letter to the administration asking to negotiate the cuts, said David Jackson, president of the association.

“We are completely opposed to this plan, to this process,” Jackson said. “We oppose these cuts and if there is a rationale we would like to hear it and we’d like faculty to be involved in the decision making.”

The University is still in the process of finalizing the cuts and is unsure as to how the administration will react to a request to negotiate cuts with the association, Kielmeyer said.

The decision to reduce the number of faculty positions was made after the University compared its staffing needs to that of Miami University, Ohio University and Kent State University, according to a press release from the University.

Despite the decrease in faculty, Rodney Rogers, senior vice president of Academic Affairs and provost, said in Mazey’s email that the quality of education will not be diminished.

“Our priority is ensuring the success of our students, and we are constantly evaluating staffing to meet their needs and operate as efficiently as possible,” Rogers said. “This will not impact the quality of a BGSU education or a student’s ability to graduate on time.”

Jackson said he was not aware of the University notifying anyone in the association about the reduction of faculty before the announcement came Friday.

“That alone shows that there hasn’t been an iota of faculty involvement in this decision,” Jackson said.

While the University is cutting 100 faculty positions, it is also preparing to push toward increasing the number of students at the University to 25,000, Mazey said during her State of the University speech this past September.

“We see a real contradiction in that plan,” Jackson said.

The decrease in faculty positions comes after Mazey received a raise a month ago, taking her salary from $375,100 to $382,602, according to a University document featuring gross earnings for the fiscal year 2011-12. Other faculty and staff also received raises that went into affect this past September.

The Board of Trustees also gave Mazey a $50,000 bonus this past month, which Mazey said she would donate to student scholarships.

Editor’s Note —

Danae King, campus editor,

contributed to this story.