San Antonio – The day after KSAT reported on a $4 million budget shortfall at the Texas A&M University-San Antonio, a top official is stepping down.
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Mike O’Brien has stepped down from his post “effective immediately,” according to an email University President Cynthia Teniente-Matson sent to faculty and staff Thursday. The president said O’Brien would remain as a faculty member after a brief sabbatical.
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The announcement was at the bottom of a lengthy email in which Teniente-Matson defended the school’s financial management and level of student enrollment.
“We are in a fortunate and unique position as we tackle the pandemic, with no layoffs or furloughs in academic and administrative positions,” she wrote.
READ: Faculty fret $4M budget deficit, while Texas A&M-SA says financial position is ‘strong’
Teniente-Matson did not draw a direct line in her email between the “recent media reports” and O’Brien’s resignation. However, the provost’s comments about a $4 million budget shortfall at a Nov. 22 faculty town hall were central to KSAT and other media outlets’ reports, which were only published this week.
O’Brien, who was also co-chair of the University Resources Commission, had told faculty during the meeting the deficit was the result of a “comedy of errors.”
“The shortfall came all over the place -- not put in the right categories. Monies were spent twice. That’s the big problem that we have,” O’Brien said in the meeting, which was recorded on Zoom.
KSAT also learned that, as of earlier in the week, 1,800 current university’s students hadn’t registered for spring classes yet, raising concerns about possible further impact upon the budget.
Faculty members who spoke with KSAT on Wednesday, including the faculty senate president, remained largely uncertain about how the budget situation had - or hadn’t - been resolved.
The university’s CFO and vice president of business affairs, though, told KSAT in an emailed statement the school’s financial situation was “strong” and a portion of the university’s expenses had been “funded from reserves as a bridge funding mechanism.”
Teniente-Matson similarly wrote in her email Thursday that “the University is fiscally sound and enrollment continues its upward trend, albeit at a a slower pace in the wake of the pandemic.”
She also referenced the one-time federal dollars the school received through the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) program, which “helped buffer the impacts of the pandemic. For example, one-time funding allowed us to fill temporary (one year or less) positions to provide additional instructional and student services support.”
O’Brien had warned in the Nov. 22 town hall about positions funded with the HEERF money disappearing.
“We’ve got a lot of personnel that we’re going to end up losing because normally we would say, ‘Alright, let’s create a line and put them on it.’ We don’t have any money for lines,” O’Brien said.
Attempts to reach O’Brien for comment directly were unsuccessful.
You can read Teniente-Matson’s full email below: