PRINCESS ANNE, MD - The University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES) has announced upcoming financial restrictions as Maryland grapples with a $3 billion budget deficit.
According to officials at UMES, the school is enacting financial cuts to comply with Maryland’s 10 percent required and anticipated budgetary slashes. The financial tightening will include the elimination of positions vacant for three years or more, a hiring pause with some exceptions, telework for some employees beginning May 23 through August 8, and a cost of living adjustment for all employees.
“We are enacting these measures to minimize the impact on our faculty, staff, and their families,” said UMES President Dr. Heidi M. Anderson. “This will be a difficult period for everyone, but these efforts will make our university, our region and our state all the stronger moving forward.”
The planned cuts were announced to the UMES University Assembly on Tuesday, May 13. UMES officials say further attrition, a reduction of temporary workers, and furloughs are expected to produce additional savings.
Anderson told WBOC on Tuesday she does not expect any permanent staff to lose their jobs. However, there is uncertainty there.
"It's hard to predict what happens in FY27 or beyond," said Anderson. "We tried to minimize the impact of this on our personnel."
The same obscurity, according to Anderson, can be placed on the school's hiring pause and when it will be lifted.
"We're not quite certain what's going to happen, and if you combine that with what's going on at the federal level it's really difficult for us to nail down definitively what that would look like," said Anderson.
WBOC also had the chance to speak with a few students on campus today and present them with the upcoming budget cuts.
Erik Petersson, a junior at UMES, said he is worried about how this could impact his educational experience.
"We have several professors that are involved with their own projects and their own research," said Petersson. "If our professors lose funding for their research they might have to try to find somewhere else that will fund them which means we lose professors, we means our educational quality declines."
Anderson said there are no plans to cut funding for programs or research.