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GREENSBORO — The layoff process has begun at UNCG as the school tries to cut its budget by up to 7 percent in the coming year.

More than 100 employees could lose their jobs, including dozens of faculty.

Chancellor Linda Brady announced the layoffs to students, staff and faculty in a letter Tuesday. Although the state’s budget process isn’t complete, she said, the university would need to cut staff now to pay accrued benefits before the cuts take effect July 1.

“We won’t know the size of the budget cuts, and the mix of one-time and permanent dollars required, until the General Assembly completes its work, the governor signs a budget and the UNC Board of Governors provides guidance for the campuses,” Brady wrote in the letter. “However, we do know the cuts will be larger than anything we’ve previously experienced.”

In December, each of the UNC system’s 16 campuses was asked to submit plans for budget cuts of 3, 5 and 7 percent.

When Gov. Bev. Perdue released her first draft of the state’s budget cuts, the reductions worked out to a system-wide loss of $195 million, or an average of 6.4 percent per campus. UNCG officials estimate their campus’s cut at between 6 and 7 percent — a reduction of about $10 million.

In its December reduction plan, UNCG proposed the following cuts to shave 7 percent from its budget:

• Eliminating 109 positions, including 59 faculty.
• Eliminating 275 class sections, nearly 7,500 classroom seats.
• Eliminating 60 percent of freshman seminar classes, to be replaced by a large lecture series.

University officials said some of those positions have been kept vacant for months in anticipation of the cuts but layoffs will still be necessary.

In her letter, Brady said the school’s benefits department would soon begin alerting the affected employees. Sources at the school said that could begin as early as next week.

Similar cuts are not yet under way at N.C. A&T and officials there said they did not know when expense reductions would begin.

Contact Joe Killian at 373-7023 or joe.killian@news-record.com