EMPORIA — Found in a survey conducted by the faculty president, Brenda Koerner, there is low morale throughout the faculty at Emporia State.

This is the second time the survey had been conducted this year, and this time, it had a significant increase in responses, obtaining 121 responses according to Koerner. Koerner wanted to accurately address faculty concerns and represent them so she asked one open-ended question which was “what’s on your mind?”

Pay concerns were the largest issue addressed with 67.8% of responses mentioning it. Along with this, nearly a quarter of the responses involved workload concerns, administration issues and the direction ESU is going in, which could potentially lead to unhappy faculty and administration.

“I do think it is indicative of the general sense of feeling overworked, exhausted, unsupported through lack of salary increases for long periods of time and I think it is a perfect storm of all of those things coming together,” Koerner said.

There were large budget cuts made over the last year, or at least the largest Koerner had ever seen in her 17 year career at ESU, and she believes it has played a large role in many of the issues harming faculty morale. Funding from the state has been reduced every year for universities, including ESU, so the operating budget when Koerner first started compared to now is drastically different, according to Koerner.

“I don’t expect that we are going to solve these problems in a month or necessarily in a year but for faculty to see steps are being taken to move things in the right direction would create a lot of goodwill,” Koerner said. “That is my suggestion, move things in the direction of better conditions.