The University of Maryland, Baltimore, will lay off staff and is reducing salaries for current employees as the school faces a fiscal year budget reduction of about $33.8 million amid state and federal cuts.

University President Bruce Jarrell told the University System of Maryland Board of Regents Monday evening that the school will lay off 30 full-time staff and eliminate an additional 30 vacant positions.

Additionally, “modest salary reductions” will impact approximately 1,000 employees at the university, to save about $3 million. The unspecified salary reductions are expected to impact employees at the university’s medical school and will include Jarrell and other university leaders.

“This is a clear and present danger,” Jarrell said, referring to the loss of funds.

The losses come on the heels of an $111 million state funding cut to the university system from Gov. Wes Moore and federal cuts to the National Institutes of Health and other research funding. According to Jarrell, UMB is facing a 7% budget cut or a loss of $25.9 million, from the state.

The school has also seen a $7.9 million drop in its indirect cost recovery, or government funds for facilities and administrative assistance to support research.

Cuts to NIH funding and indirect cost recovery primarily effect the school of medicine, since about 80% of the university’s research funding is for that unit.

The School of Medicine, which is the only public medical school in the state, is facing reductions of $14 million, Jarrell said.

Four thousand faculty and staff receive a “significant portion of their salary” from research grants, according to Jarrell. The university has over 600 total grants; approximately one-third of those are from the NIH, which has seen significant cuts from the Trump administration.

Because of that, the university is expecting to reduce its grant funded faculty and staff over the next few years, Jarrell said. The university could lose an additional 158 grant-funded positions, about 70% of which would be staff positions, he said.

As a result of the losses, the university will not be providing merit increases to faculty and staff, in order to save “as many more jobs as we possibly could,” Dawn Rhodes, the school’s chief financial officer, said in the meeting.

The majority of the university’s budget — 73% — goes to salaries, Rhodes explained, while 27% goes to other operating expenses. The university will cut $10 million of its operating expenses.

Rhodes said that cutting jobs will account for 34% of the $33.8 million hole the university needs to fill.

In January, Chancellor Jay Perman announced the University System of Maryland will eliminate 400 jobs to absorb some of the shock from state funding cuts.

Most of the state’s public universities will have to cut their budgets by 3-5%, because of the state funding cuts, with hiring freezes announced at the University of Maryland, College Park, the University of Baltimore and others.

Perman told the regents that he’s asked the schools in the system to think “in a multiyear way.”

“Having said that, we have an acute manner here, in terms of the conditions under which UMB is being forced to think about the immediate future,” Perman said.

Despite the grim outlook, Jarrell wrote in an email to faculty and staff sent Monday evening that he is not pessimistic.

“I know that we will find our way through this, we will maintain our mission, and we will find new opportunities to excel. We will come out stronger, together,” the university president wrote. “I believe in our mission, and I believe in all of you.”

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