Concerned about recent state budget cuts and increasing student enrollment, the Council for University Planning has proposed salary increases for retaining more full-time faculty members, providing a better faculty-student ratio without overcrowding classrooms.

“We have no increased budget for the next year,” said Edward Del Biaggio, Vice President of Administration and Business Affairs, in a Budget Status report. He said the university is expecting a $ 600,000 ? $ 800,000 reduction, but is seeking additional funding from the state.

A new Enrollment Management plan would also give more academics for freshman and transfers.

But a report by University Institution Research, which has been tracking student enrollment and retention problems, said that enrollment has grown so fast over the past five years that the school facilities cannot keep up.

A recent report indicated that freshmen and transfers out of their major field don?t have sufficient, regular academic advising.

While acknowledging that student management is an immediate problem, the biggest goal is to gain more full-time faculty, said Interim Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs Paul Noble.

“We have terrible budgetary, mechanical construction, and not enough people to research for it,” Noble said.

Sacramento State has been hiring temporary or part-time lecturers since 1996 without increasing faculty workloads.

Concerns about decreasing full-time faculty were raised by the Council members. Full-time faculty have to advise more students because temporary faculty cannot.

As a result, the proportion of tenure-track faculty has declined from 73.8 percent in 1997 to 64.1 percent in fall 2001, according to Noble.

For 10 years, Sac State let each department decide class structure with input from the college, the department and faculty. That encouraged creativity from the faculty, but was discouraged from an academic level, he added.

The university has been facing a growing number of full-time faculty retirements. The number of faculty participating in the Early Retirement Program increased from 47 in 1997 to 151 in fall 2001.

Ric Brown, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, said the school is going to hire more 10-year tenure-track faculty than three-year tenure-track faculty for the goal.