After a pair of mid-year state budget cuts, different colleges within Penn State may have to compensate by cutting back on salaries and staff, student activities, and research programs.

Robert Steele, dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences, said if these cuts become permanent, many positions within his college will not be filled, depending on the severity of the cuts.

"If the funds are not there to support the current work force, then the work force must be reduced to be able to balance our budgets," Steele said. "But to date, these cuts have had little if any impact on our ability to meet our educational mission in the College of Agricultural Sciences."

He added that the college's research and extension programming areas have felt the effects most strongly.

Richard Durst, dean of the College of Arts and Architecture, said in order to make up for the budget cuts, staff had to withdraw money from the college's operations budget.

"We use [this] money to help fund needs across the college [such as] classroom equipment and supplies, requests to support student activities, faculty research, and creative work," Durst said. Cheryl Achterberg, dean of the Schreyer Honors College, said the college will have to cut from its technology budget.

"This move will delay equipment upgrades for the Schreyer Honors College and slow some of our more innovative plans for developing new services in the future," Achterberg said.

Starting next year, the college will combine two staff positions into one, and decrease the number of Scholar Assistants, who run scholar-focused student programming in Simmons and Atherton halls.

"We have already cut back on publications and many of the events and receptions that we used to sponsor in the past," Achterberg said.

Douglas Anderson, dean of the College of Communications, said there are three effects that come into play due to lack of funding.

"First, on the faculty side, we had placed five advertisements for tenure track positions for next fall," Anderson said. "But since the cut we have abandoned one of those searches, and now we are only looking for four."

In addition, Anderson said his college has had to hold off on ordering some lab equipment in basic computer labs, as well as put off some improvements to facilities and labs.

"These cuts have caused us to stop or delay things both in terms of faculty services, enhancement facilities and lab equipment, and make us very cautious in proceeding with other projects," he said.

Responding to concerns about the recent mid-year cuts at the University Faculty Senate meeting Tuesday, Penn State President Graham Spanier said he is concerned about future impacts they will have on the university.

"The prospects for next year don't look great," Spanier said.

But he said the university has a lot of other sources of income that provide Penn State with a fair amount of flexibility.

Penn State is governed by a philosophy to do nothing to sacrifice "quality" within the university, he added.

"We know, after all, that we are in a highly competitive marketplace," Spanier said. "That's why we have tuition increases, but we will try to keep [this year's increase] as low as we can."

No matter how bad the economic situation is, Penn State tries to maintain a modest salary increase each year, Spanier said. There has only been one year when Penn State did not raise salaries, he noted.

This academic year, the state government has taken back a total of $6.45 million in funding from Penn State's initial 2002-03 appropriation of $322.59 million. These cuts follow another series of reductions that affected the university last year. Penn State's appropriation -- $316.14 million -- is now $18.67 million below where it was at the beginning of the 2001-02 academic year.