Faculty unplug office landlines to cut departmental costs

In another year of huge slashes in state funding and extensive campus-wide budget cuts, one department is taking small steps to reduce costs and save money.

In February, administrators of the English department asked their faculty to give up the landline telephones in their offices on a voluntary basis as a cost-cutting measure. Nearly a third of the faculty members responded to the request and handed in their telephones, said Caleb “Q” Na, English department manager.

Na, who joined the English department in November 2009, was looking for ways to cut costs when he took a look at the department’s phone usage and expenses. He found that many faculty seldom, if ever, used their landline phones.

“The records showed that there were months where certain faculty never picked up their phones even once,” Na said. “A lot of phones were just collecting dust, and all we had to do was ask if people wanted to give them up.”

Lynn Batten, a professor emeriti in the department, was among those who volunteered to give up their phones.

“In many ways, the phone was only valuable when I was in the room,” Batten said. “Now, I just have students e-mail me, and now most students can e-mail or check their e-mail from their phones, so it’s not a problem.”

According to Na, the department’s telephones used Voice over Internet Protocol, a digital phone technology that cost between $17 to $18 per line. The option to add voicemail features cost an additional $6 or $7, bringing the total to around $23 per line each month. All told, the call for faculty to turn in their phones allowed the department to cut their total phone expenses by 25 percent, Na said.

“It was an easy way to cut wasteful spending and save us a few thousand dollars a year,” Na said. “Especially right now, if there’s anywhere to cut money, we really need to.”

Those who got rid of their landlines were asked to list the English department’s main office number on the directory. Since the faculty handed in their telephones, the main office has not seen any significant change in the number of calls received, Na said.

“The last thing we wanted to do was save a few bucks and increase the workload for the staff,” he added.

Faculty response to the request was overwhelmingly positive, with those who needed their phones opting to keep them, Na said.

“For those who wanted to give up their phones, it was a great way to save a few bucks,” he said. “A few faculty were just dying to get rid of their phones because they said they only ever got calls from wrong numbers or people selling course materials.”

Batten said he used to list his office number on the syllabi for his classes, but most students never called.

“The phone was essentially trivial,” he said. “I gladly gave it up if it meant that the department can use the money it saves for more important things.”

The department is continuing to look for ways to cut costs and save money, even making small changes, such as sending staff out to bring back food for department events instead of ordering through a vendor that delivers, Na said.

“We’re doing a lot of things to try to save money that aren’t necessarily going to make a huge impact, but little things to help the department,” he said.

Other departments within the humanities division, including comparative literature, Near-Eastern studies, Slavic languages and literature, the writing program, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender studies, have also asked their faculty to voluntarily give up their landlines, said Lauren Na, chief administrative officer of the Humanities Administrative Group, who is married to Caleb Na.

“Departments have become very proactive to save money where they can so that as much of their budget as possible can go towards students and instruction and less so to things like phones,” said Reem Hanna-Harwell, assistant dean of humanities.

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