This message from Provost Montoya was written as part of her May 19, 2025, Provost Perspectives newsletter for Academic Affairs leaders.
Over the last few weeks, many of Utah’s universities have released details of their plans to respond to H.B. 265, the “Higher Education Strategic Reinvestment” bill passed during the state’s 2025 legislative session.
The University of Utah’s initial Strategic Reinvestment Plan was presented to the Utah System of Higher Education on Friday, May 16. We’ve followed a different approach by design.
This is a moment of reinvention for the U. We are striving to live up to the mission, vision and goals outlined in the Impact 2030 strategic plan, and our reinvestment plan reflects that strategy. In alignment with the state’s charge, we are committed to being careful stewards of resources while maintaining our commitment to student success, research excellence and community engagement. Our guiding principles regarding H.B. 265 implementation are transparency, accountability and innovation. This is an opportunity for us to lead and deepen the partnership between the U and the state.
Many of you are familiar with—or have been directly involved in—the annual university budget and planning processes within your departments and colleges. In Academic Affairs (AA), we are actively engaged in a process we are now calling Mission-Aligned Planning, or MAP. You’ll hear more about MAP in the months to come, but its primary focus is to ensure AA planning efforts and resource allocation decisions are tightly aligned with the U’s mission and strategic goals.
The work we are doing is not easy, but we’re ready for this moment due to our efforts to instill systemic and intentional approaches to planning in the AA units.
For example, in 2023, we launched the redesigned University Analytics and Institutional Reporting (UAIR), which was essential to provide the data we need for our planning endeavors. We also kicked off the annual Academic Enterprise Planning (AEP) process. That process engages AA leaders and their teams in integrated planning, ensuring that all resources—human, financial, physical and technological—are aligned in a data-informed way and in relation to the mission and priorities of the university and the individual units.
We continued our momentum last year, when we acquired the Gray DI tools, providing access to information on student demand and program competition, as well as wages, skills and jobs associated with academic programs. We kicked off a series of Activate projects in response to the National Institute of Student Success audit and recommendations. We also expanded our development of coordinated services for advising, finance, HR and advancement. And we brought together the colleges of Humanities, Science, Social and Behavioral Science and School for Cultural and Social Transformation under the umbrella of the new Colleges and Schools of Liberal Arts and Sciences to further improve how we deliver critical support services to faculty and students. We are already realizing additional benefits of this reorganization in the form of new interdisciplinary projects and collaborations.
Every school, college and service unit has been involved in the new MAP planning processes, and I want to thank AA leaders for working with their teams, engaging in tough conversations and making difficult decisions. Because of our persistent efforts, we have been able to consider and respond to the mandates and spirit of H.B. 265 in a deliberate and planful way.
To be clear, the impact of H.B. 265 is significant. The U’s portion of the higher ed budget cuts required by H.B. 265 is about $19.6 million. We must identify strategies to reduce and reallocate the full amount over the next three years. During this first year, we are required to show about $5.9 million in cuts as an institution. The numbers rise to $13.7 million next year and the full amount in year three. We also need to indicate how we will redistribute those funds to meet legislative priorities.
The AA units are shouldering the largest portion of this year’s cuts, at 69%, or about $4.1 million. While these numbers may seem daunting, we were prepared thanks to our MAP processes and hard work over the past two years. When we started hearing in fall 2024 about probable budget cuts from the legislature, we asked our campus leaders to engage in a budgeting reduction exercise planning for a 10% to 25% reduction. Each AA unit submitted detailed recommendations, thus ensuring we would be ready to respond to potential legislation.
State officials also asked that we focus on low-enrollment programs. In response the AA academic units provided detailed and thoughtful recommendations for how low-enrollment programs could be redesigned, marketed in new ways to improve enrollment, consolidated or potentially eliminated.
In addition, each of the AA leaders completed the AEP process for the year, and our normal university budget analysis and evaluation process is currently underway. The budget process will wrap up June 4, when our AA budget is due to the President, and budget letters should be sent to all AA units before the department mass update ends on June 20. That budget will include our recommendations for budget cuts and strategic reinvestments. Because we are focused on planning carefully and emphasizing consistent MAP processes across all AA units, our budget will reflect cuts in all our units, as well as reinvestments that are aligned with H.B. 265 and with Impact 2030.
It’s important to remember that all strategic reinvestment plans are considered draft and tentative until they receive final approval by the state legislature. The U, which faces the largest share of systemwide reallocations, is working closely with USHE to allow for adjustments during this review period. The Utah Board of Higher Education will consider and approve strategic reinvestment plans on June 6, after which the U’s final numbers will be released. The state legislature’s Higher Education Appropriations Subcommittee will review the reinvestment plan on August 19, and the Executive Appropriations Committee is scheduled to consider and approve plans on September 15.
We will share additional information about Academic Affairs impacts as we move through this process. We also anticipate providing opportunities for everyone to learn more about the MAP processes and tools as we begin the new academic year.
For now, I want to thank all of you who have worked so hard these last few years, and especially the last few months, to prepare us for this opportunity to lead as we reinvent ourselves to become the university envisioned in our Impact 2030 plan. The U is strong and growing. Through the steps we have already taken and the actions we will continue to pursue, we can ensure that growth continues for years to come.
— Mitzi M. Montoya