During what should have been one of the best years for the 100-year-old Scripps Institution of Oceanography, its centennial celebration has been marred by one of the worst periods of state funding cutbacks since the 1930s, and promises to result in layoffs and to threaten several notable programs at the institution.
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Scripps, which received a 10-percent, or $1.267 million, cut in research funding from the California state legislature this year, is making plans to reduce or cut funding for certain programs and will lay off about 20 staff members over the next three years. Scripps currently employs about 1,200 staff members, including about 190 graduate students.
“”Scripps is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, and this is the worst year we’ve ever had from a financial standpoint,”” said Tom Collins, deputy director of administrative affairs at Scripps.
The cut in state research funding caught the institution at a particularly vulnerable time, having faced cumulative state funding cuts since 1992 that have resulted in a net reduction of 30 percent in state funding, according to Collins.
Both SIO Director Charles F. Kennel and UCSD Chancellor Robert C. Dynes committed their support toward finding alternative sources of funding for the institution.
In a Nov. 26 speech, before the chancellor made his last of three State of the Campus addresses, Kennel told an SIO audience of 170 individuals that the current funding situation was “”inevitable,”” citing a decade long reduction in spending.
Kennel said the financial model used by Scripps over the past 50 years was “”no longer viable,”” and outlined a three-part plan that will span the next decade and bring in alternative sources of capital to give the institution more leverage to endure changes in state-supported funding.
In the next year, SIO plans to mitigate the immediate effects on state-funded programs. This means seeking private donations, as well as short-term help from the University of California Office of the President and from UCSD, according to Kennel.
Over the next three years, Scripps plans on implementing a new multi-source funding model that will look more to federal agencies and to private foundations for funding. The emphasis of this program, according to Kennel, will be to bring in long-term funding, which SIO lost the most from the state research funding cuts.
In ten years, Scripps hopes to replace 15 percent of university funding with endowment income. In order to accomplish this, Scripps will need to triple their current annual private fundraising. Additionally, Scripps hopes to expand to a full-service educational enterprise, including general education, undergraduate majors, graduate studies and post-graduate research.
Dynes, who made grim predictions about the immediate future of state funding given California’s $20 billion deficit in its $75 billion budget, said in his Nov. 26 State of the Campus address at Scripps that that the University of California and UCSD remain committed to supporting Scripps in both the short and the long term.
“”SIO is a funding priority,”” Dynes said.
The chancellor mentioned the institutional campaign started by UCSD to increase private financial support and increase public awareness of the university’s mission.
Dynes added that the same state research cuts that affected SIO also affected the UC Davis School of Agriculture. Because of the political leverage behind the agriculture industry in California, Dynes said he hopes the lobbying efforts associated with preventing further research funding cuts for the agriculture school will also help Scripps in the future.
In the meantime, Scripps faces some tough choices in order to preserve the quality of its programs and research. Collins said the immediate plan at Scripps is to find alternative ways to maintain most programs and staff members.
“”What we did was really try and identify those actions that would minimize the impact on our people,”” Collins said.
Layoffs would affect museum scientists who maintain the SIO Oceanographic Collections in the Marine Science Division, marine technicians and research associates in the California Cooperative Oceanic Fishery Investigations, and people in central administration, according to Collins. Cutbacks would occur over the next three years to reduce the overall impact on programs and staff.
The largest cuts, without affecting staff, will be made in the funding for SIO’s large fleet of research vessels. Collins said there is no SIO staff associated with cuts to the research fleet funding. Scripps, which operates four research vessels and one research platform, uses one of the largest research vessel fleets for an institution of its kind, collectively logging about 100,000 nautical miles a year.
Cuts that will almost certainly result in layoffs will be to two programs: the Marine Sciences Division and the California Cooperative Oceanic Fishery Investigations.
The Marine Science Division maintains Scripps’ extensive collections of preserved marine life, samples of the ocean floor and sediment samples. Jointly, there are four collections — the Marine Vertebrates Collection, Pelagic Invertebrates Collection, Benthic Invertebrates Collection and Geological Collections. Should alternative funding not be found, the collections would have to be maintained by an organization that could provide adequate funding for their continued preservation.
The entire collection includes over two million fish specimens, 110,000 zooplankton samples, 40,000 assorted benthic invertebrates species, as well as geologic samples that cover the last 75 million year history of the ocean floor.
“”These things are so profoundly important, that it’s not the sort of thing that you can take and pour down the garbage disposal,”” Collins said. “”We would have to find somebody else to maintain them.””
H.J. Walker, a senior museum scientist at Scripps and a collection manager for the Marine Vertebrates Collection, said Scripps would be hard pressed to find another institution, museum or university to take on such a large collection.
“”There isn’t any institution — even the Smithsonian [Institution] which has one of the biggest collections in the entire world — who could incorporate all this ,”” he said. “”They just can’t do it.””
Another program at risk is the California Cooperative Oceanic Fishery Investigations, which was established in 1948.
Collins said the CalCOFI program is important because it provides the most detailed time series — or continued observations — of any part of the ocean over a long period of time. He noted that the program has made important observations since its inception, showing that the abundance of zooplankton essential to the marine food chain has dropped 75 percent from 1950 to 1998 and the average ocean temperature has increased one to two degrees centigrade. Changes such as these, he said, are important to the field of oceanography.
In the short term, Scripps is seeking federal funding to secure at least three more CalCOFI cruises.
SIO officials warn that ultimately the entire UCSD campus will feel the effects of the state funding reductions at Scripps.
“”UCSD was born here at Scripps,”” Collins said. “”What’s happening to this institution is happening to all UCSD.””
