By Cheryl Jahn

More restructuring at UNBC to meet budget challenges

Feb 4, 2021 | 12:19 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – More tough decisions for Administration at UNBC.Yesterday, it announced the decision to eliminate the Office of University Advancement.

“And that includes [the elimination of] nine positions,” explains Dr. Geoff Payne, Interim President of UNBC. “We are retaining two who will go into the Office of Research and Innovation to continue to support some of our development activities.”

Those nine positions include four exempt positions and five CUPE positions.

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“Obviously the university is impacted with COVID on our revenues, but we’ve also had a structural deficit for many years. This is to address our structural deficit.”

He says this is part of a larger plan to address that deficit.

“We were looking at a four-year sustainability plan. Last year was an extremely tough budget. It was 21 positions last year. And then we assess where we are and this was Year Two of our four-year plan. And, unfortunately, this was the decision we had to make.”

And he adds, this decision is in no way personal.

“What’s really hard, and I said this to each and every one of those employees, this has nothing to do with them. This is on us. We have to address our budget challenges. They’ve made outstanding contributions to this institution and don’t let our decision devalue what they’ve done.”

He says, as tUNBC moves forward and the university gets into a better financial place, then we’ll look at bringing things back but in a more strategic way.