His message: MSU officials expect to cut operating budgets between 15 and 20 percent — or as much as a total of about $80 million — in the next three years.

“Departments will have to change, colleges will have to change and the relationship among the colleges will have to change,” Wilcox said.

Dave Byelich, the director of MSU’s Office of Planning and Budgets, and MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon joined Wilcox in fielding questions from council members.

On Sept. 8, Wilcox sent a memorandum to request each college dean submit a list of recommendations for long- and short-term budget reduction strategies by Oct. 16.

Wilcox said officials expect to cut 4 percent this year, 6 percent in 2010-11 and a predicted 6 percent in 2011-12.

A 15 percent cut represents about $60 million from the university’s budget.

Robert Maleczka, an at-large member of the Executive Committee of Academic Council and a chemistry professor, said the meeting didn’t convince him every college will meet the deadline with a plausible plan.

“It’s going to be tough to come up with a reasonable plan to do the things other than cuts,” Maleczka said. “The provost said it’s going to be messy, but I’m not so sure that you can do it properly and in a way that’s not just going to leave a lot of blood on the tracks.”

Wilcox said recommendations that reflect an attempt to find ways to restructure the college and its programs will be favored over those without many calls for change.

“Those units that, for whatever reason, aren’t able to do an honest assessment and present a set of recommendations to me that simply don’t look like we’re going to change … it’s going to be much harder for me to support,” Wilcox said.

A question about the administration’s efforts to relieve MSU’s budget crisis as colleges reach the halfway mark of their budget reduction deadline prompted Wilcox to list actions ranging from cutting staff positions to relying on video conferences instead of traveling.

“I assume that in every unit and in every department, the same kind of analysis about subscriptions, travel, trying to find additional external support to off-load the general funds are what is happening in that area,” Simon said.

Maleczka said although the economic climate requires university officials to respond quickly with cuts, he remained skeptical regarding whether the evaluations would result in saved jobs.

“I understand that there’s a need to have a bit of an accelerated pace of this, but that doesn’t mean within the confines of that time frame we’re going to be able to solve this budget challenge by simply retooling the way we do things,” Maleczka said. “In the end, it’s just going to be cuts.”