In a Thursday email to the Northwestern community, University President Morton Schapiro and Provost Jonathan Holloway provided an update on the University’s budget deficit and confirmed that NU is reducing the number of administrative staff.

“These reductions were targeted primarily in areas where there has been significant growth in administrative positions in recent years or where the reduced number of projects results in decreased staffing needs,” the email said. “We are now in the process of notifying persons whose positions have been eliminated.”

Eighty staff members, about 1 percent of the total staff, have been affected by the reductions, University spokesman Al Cubbage said in an email to The Daily. No faculty positions have been eliminated, he said.

In an email obtained by The Daily, vice president of IT and chief information officer Sean Reynolds informed his staff that the IT department was asked “to join other units in taking the difficult step of implementing staff reductions” as part of Northwestern’s efforts to address “current financial challenges.”

The University announced in January that the school was projected to run a budget deficit for this fiscal year. In May, Provost Jonathan Holloway told The Daily that despite the deficit, NU was not planning on laying anyone off. He added, however, that they had “absolutely slowed down hiring.”

Natalie Gillespie, a staff member with Northwestern IT, told The Daily in an email that two members of her team in NUIT were “told suddenly” that their NetIDs were deactivated and were instructed to turn in their Wildcards and leave campus today.

She said her team was later informed about those layoffs, in addition to others around campus, at a meeting. Gillespie said they were previously “told repeatedly” that there were not going to be any layoffs and added that it is “a lot to process.”

This article was updated at 4:30 p.m. Thursday to include information from University spokesman Al Cubbage.

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