Members of UF's Faculty Senate called for greater input over decisions about faculty layoffs and department shake-ups during the Senate's Thursday meeting.
Plans to reduce the budget by $47 million required all UF departments and units to propose 6 percent in cuts.
Since the May 5 announcement, some of the cuts outlined in the proposal have incited controversy between administrators and faculty who say their voices were not heard in academic decisions.
As a result, the Senate passed a resolution that asks administrators to give faculty members a "meaningful" chance to share their views on significant changes to their colleges.
Kyle Cavanaugh, senior vice president for administration, took the place of UF President Bernie Machen at the meeting. Machen was on a fundraising trip.
Cavanaugh said staff members were notified of layoffs Thursday, but it will be another 30 days for faculty to get the news.
When Cavanaugh told senators he understood that plans submitted by each dean had the endorsement of faculty within the college, he was met with a flurry of shouted "No's" and shaking heads from faculty members in the room.
Joe Glover, interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, addressed accusations from several disgruntled CLAS faculty members who said shared governance was not considered in the cuts, which will result in 10 faculty and 13 staff layoffs from CLAS.
Glover said because two of the college's committees charged with finding solutions for an almost $6 million cut stopped several million dollars short, he was left with no choice but to make cuts by himself.
"I would argue that there was ample opportunity for shared governance," Glover said. "I believe the evidence is there."
Despite three doctorate-degree programs in CLAS being saved from elimination, some CLAS faculty still expressed frustration over the cuts.
More than 30 members from the departments of zoology and botany attended the meeting to urge administrators to reconsider merging their units as outlined in CLAS' budget-cutting proposal.
Because both programs are nationally ranked, professors argued that combining them might diminish their prestige.
Korean lecturer Kyung-Eun Yoon, one of six faculty members from the Department of African and Asian Languages and Literatures slated to lose their jobs, said some of the professors who will probably be laid off are struggling with their new and fast-approaching realities as they do research in foreign countries.
"We are feeling really alienated right now, and we are feeling really abandoned in this situation," Yoon said.
Not all faculty members have as much disdain for their unit's process for coping with cuts, however.
Elizabeth Bolton, a UF family, youth and community sciences professor, said budget cuts were discussed at every faculty meeting and through e-mail long before they were announced.
"It is painful, but it can be done," Bolton said.
