Henderson wants to ‘strengthen our ties’ with Hot Springs, acting president says
Acting Henderson State University President Elaine Kneebone told college alumni on Friday that its Hot Springs location would not be affected if HSU becomes part of one of the state’s two university systems.
“Hot Springs is always going to be important to Henderson,” Kneebone told Friday’s meeting of the Henderson Alumni Lunch Bunch at West Shores Retirement Community.
Henderson offers undergraduate and graduate degrees through the HSU-Hot Springs location. Classes are held at the Landmark Building at 201 Market St.
Kneebone noted that Garland County ranks second in the state for counties that send the most students to HSU.
“All we want to do is strengthen our ties with Hot Springs,” she said.
Kneebone also updated the group on the status of the university’s ongoing financial woes.
“We’ve looked at our budget from last year. In doing that, we realized that the revenues coming into the institution were overestimated. The expenses that the university spends on a regular basis over the past couple years have not been accounted for accurately in the budget, which ended with us spending more money than we brought in. And we did that for more than one year,” Kneebone said.
“We had to take some money out of our saving accounts, and we did that longer than we should have. That put us in a position that we needed to get some help from the state.”
HSU recently received a $6 million advance from the state. “That allowed us to take care of some bills from last fiscal year and to get us started on this year,” she said. The school’s fiscal year begins in July.
While the school received financial aid from the state, measures have also been taken on campus to improve the school’s financial standing.
“We have taken some budget cuts at Henderson in the last month. All of our nonclassified employees are going to take a 3% pay cut, and that includes me,” Kneebone said, adding that she “lost a lot of sleep” because of that decision.
“It doesn’t cover the whole amount, but it’s a step in the right direction.”
University contributions to employee retirement funds will also be reduced from 10% to 6%, as
well as reductions to all nonessential travel and supplies and services budgets, she said.
Kneebone said the school plans to work closely with individual departments to create a highly detailed operating budget.
“The budget that was created last year doesn’t have the kind of detail that you’re probably looking for to be able to tell exactly what’s planned and where the money’s going to go. So that’s part of what we will design for next year,” she said.
“We’re looking at everything we do to make sure that it’s absolutely critical to the mission of teaching students and advancing the university, because that’s what’s reasonable, and that’s what you do when money is tight.”
Kneebone said she was grateful for Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s assistance.
“He has told us, ‘Let us know what you need,’” she said.
“With his assistance, we’re going to get through this. But we did want to show him that we were going to tighten our belts and we were going to do what we needed to do.”
“When the governor approved us to get the $6 million advance, he said that he wanted our board of trustees to investigate and consider joining a system,” Kneebone said. The state has two university systems, the University of Arkansas System and the Arkansas State University System.
HSU is paying the Arkansas State University System a fee of nearly $53,000 through Dec. 31 to assist with its finances. “They’re helping us look at our expenses and everything from last year, rebuilding our budget, deciding what kind of changes we can make to our budget for this year, and then they’ll also help us step through the process of budget for next year,” she said.
“We are working closely with their executive vice president at the ASU System. Her name is Julie Bates, and one of the things she said is that ‘If you had had the oversight that we provide to our campuses that are in our system, you would not be here financially. We would not have let our schools make some of the decisions that were made.’”
Kneebone listed the benefits of possibly joining a university system, including better health insurance rates, access to multiple attorneys and financial advisers and easier credit and student transfers between the schools.
The school’s name, logo and beloved mascot would not be affected by joining the ASU System, she said.
According to Kneebone, ASU System President Charles Welch has said publicly and on Facebook that the ASU board has told the university “It’s whatever you want to do. If you come into the system, that will be your choice. We will not dictate either one of those things.”
According to “most alums,” Kneebone said the consensus would be to keep the school’s name, logo and mascot.
“It would say ‘Henderson State University: a member of the Arkansas State University System,’ which is an example of how that could be handled.”
If HSU joins the ASU System, Kneebone said two HSU representatives would be added to the five-person ASU board of trustees for a total of seven members. At that point, HSU would no longer have a board of trustees, but rather a board of visitors.
When asked why there had been no talk of an HSU-U of A System partnership, Kneebone said, “I know who reached out to help us. Who has reached out to us in terms of meeting with what the governor asked us to do in terms of looking at systems.”
Despite the challenges HSU has faced recently, Kneebone said for the students on campus, it’s business as usual.
“They’re going to class. They’re having fun with their student activities. The band’s practicing. The football team’s practicing. Their experience is still exceptional. We’ve just got to get the business side of things worked out.”