Dear Chairs,
I received word from the provost on Friday and he told me that the president has decided he does not want to break any extraordinary faculty contracts. Unfortunately, in most departments, we do not have the enrollments to assign them classes. Therefore, I have asked Laurie to review the course enrollments in all departments and make a recommendation to me regarding where we might use some of these faculty members. I will do one of the following three things:

1. I will assign extraordinary faculty in departments where they are clearly needed.

2. I will offer the remaining extraordinary faculty a buy-out of half their salary plus benefits in exchange for their signing a release from their contracts. I will use the salary money recovered from this buy-out to replenish the operating budgets in the college.
3. I will use selected extraordinary faculty members to cover courses for faculty to whom I will grant a course release in exchange for special service to the college.

In those departments in which courses are covered by full-time faculty and the extraordinary faculty are not needed, I ask that you discuss the possibility of a buy-out with your extraordinary faculty and let me know what their reaction is.

Frank