Sandra Woodley and the University of Louisiana System has started to put out weekly webinars directly targeted towards students, faculty, and staff of universities in the state addressing the impending budget cuts.

Woodley, the president of the UL system, has been hosting the webinars on different subtopics, which fall under Louisiana budget cuts as a whole.
The part of the webinar centered on Nicholls in the presentation given on April 10, shows graphs and charts on how the university measures up to its peers when it comes to retention and graduation rates as well as the money Nicholls receives from the state annually.

The chart entitled “Performance vs. Funding” shows that Nicholls retention rates are nearly 5 percent higher than its peers as well as the graduation rates of Nicholls are about 2 percent above other universities. However, Nicholls receives almost $3,000 less per full time student than the peer average.

Another chart included in the webinar shows that at Nicholls, there is an $8 return for every dollar Louisiana invests in the university and a total of 2,843 non-university jobs have been created as a result of Nicholls spending.
The predicted budget gap for Nicholls State University will be $12 million or 82 percent. This number varies by universities in the system but most of the numbers show a huge cut in each university’s budget.

Since 2009, there has been a $4.9 million change in total funding at Nicholls and in that same graph, there shows that currently, 71 percent of tuition and fees and only 29 percent of state funding go into the money that Nicholls has to spend on programs and teacher salaries.

In 2009 those numbers were drastically different with 40 percent tuition and fees and 60 percent state funding went into the Nicholls budget.

According to the University of Louisiana System website, over 400 faculty, staff, students, alumni, board of regents and reporters have watched the weekly webinars as well as 95 percent of those people found the webinars informative.

“I find the webinars informative but extremely boring with all the different charts and statistics,” said Bobbie Fremin, a family and consumer sciences junior from Thibodaux. “I think it would be a lot more appealing to students if there would be different webinars pertaining to just Nicholls and to put the information in much simpler terms so students can relate and understand it.”

Some students, however, do not view the webinars at all nor have the interest in listening to a 30-minute presentation.

Glenn Loupe, a pre med sophomore from Raceland, said, “I really haven’t given much thought into looing at the webinars. I don’t find that they are too advertised at school and it doesn’t sound too appealing to the average student.”

Although many students ignore the information given in the webinars, some students find them extremely helpful in gaining a better understanding in the budget situation as a whole.

“I think that the webinars really shed a light on the impending budget cuts. It actually gets me fired up about the situation our university is in and has caused me to call my state legislators and do something about it,” said Shiena Marie Normand, a government Senior from Niceville, Fl.

The webinars are held every Friday at 11:30 am and even after the webinar has passed, they are recorded and put on YouTube for the public.

The UL System also offers questions and answer sessions where attendees can ask questions in real time for Woodley and other members of the board to answer during the webinar.

Each webinar shows how students can take action and contact their state legislators in order to get something done about the impending budget cuts being announced in June.

Normand said, “I definitely recommend all students to at least take a look at these webinars being offered to them free of charge in helping them understand what is going on right in our own backyards.”