The Brown & White

President Alice Gast said the economic crisis has had a large impact on the university's budgets at a faculty meeting Monday.

Gast showed a graph tracing the endowment's progress throughout the years. It amounted to $1.09 billion as of June 2008 and $888 million as of Oct. 15, 2008.

"The endowment supports quite a bit of what we do," Gast said.

The effects will not be limited to a decreasing endowment.

"Need-based financial aid might be a more expensive proposition," she said.

Gast also pointed out that there has been a drop in college-age children in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, three of Lehigh's biggest states for recruitment.

"We need to focus on geographic expansion while retaining quality," Gast said.

She cited the recent trip to Malaysia by several representatives of the university as an example of efforts to extend recruitment.

Gast also said there has been a 38 percent increase in Saturday tours, which began running last year, so she feels confident that enrollment will not suffer as a result of economic downturn.

Gast stressed the role of higher education during these times.

"What we do at Lehigh is fundamentally important and needed," she said. "We turn to higher education for a solution and college-educated students to lead."

Gast encouraged the faculty to keep their primary goals of teaching, research and service in mind during the coming tough months.

"We have a prudent budget, so we will benefit from that in these times," Gast said. "Be confident in that, but we need to prepare ourselves for a long, multi-year recession."

After Gast's speech, the results of a survey given to junior faculty members at Lehigh, Brown University, Boston University, Case Western Reserve University, Duke University and Tufts University between October 2008 and January 2008 were announced.

The Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education survey focused on the reasonableness and the clarity of various criteria for tenure, which showed Lehigh averaged lower than the associate schools.

Lehigh scored low on interaction with senior faculty but was more satisfied than its peer schools with parental or family leave issues in the survey.

Bruce Taggart, vice provost of library and technology services, said all classroom phones have been replaced and installed with speakers that deliver emergency messages when needed.

In the case of an emergency, the message will repeat three times. Testing for the new emergency system will take place on Nov. 12 or 13 between 11 p.m. and noon.

Correction: due to a math error, a previous headline said Lehigh had only lost $102 million, which was $100 million less than the actual loss.