As fiscal crises and cutbacks hit higher education, instructional/faculty developers need a broad array of methods for sustaining programs. Based on a forum at the 1991 POD Conference, this article identifies specific innovations and strategies that instructional/faculty developers are using to cope with and, in some cases, enrich faculty development programs during these difficult fiscal times. Recent reports on higher education conclude that budget cuts are imposing the hardest times state colleges and universities have experienced since the Depression. The recession is taking its toll, and nearly everywhere in academe the outlook is described as bleak (Cage, 1992; Jacobson, 1991). For example, more than half of our states made midyear budget reductions in 1991, and we can expect more in 1992. Even at private colleges, there are signs that the growth years of the '80s are over as student enrollments (and tuition money) drop by as much as 20 percent. Ironically, despite shrinking resources, faculty development centers are increasingly called upon to cure long-term problems in undergraduate education-through the training of teaching assistants, multicultural and diversity education, teaching evaluation for both improvement and personnel decisions, efforts to elevate the status of teaching, the development of new faculty and chairs, and the revitalization of mid-career and senior faculty. Put simply, many of us fmd requests for services burgeoning while resources diminish.
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