Universities across the country are attempting to improve communication with faculty and students to keep them updated during tough economic times.

Universities are trying to continue to be transparent and open with the information to their campuses as well as looking to each other for ideas. The Association of American Universities, a group of 62 leading research universities in the U.S. and Canada, posted letters written about the economic situation on their campuses to be used as models for other campus leaders, according to the AAU website.

The University of Michigan is working to improve students’ and faculty’s understanding of its budget and where the money is going, said university spokesperson Kallie Michels.

“One of the new things that we have done in the last few years to really help people understand the budget is we developed an online budget tutorial,” Michels said. “It’s a really simple tutorial and it goes step by step through how the budget is created, what the elements are and where cost cutting have occurred.”

Michels added, because of the tough times, they sent out an e-mail before Thanksgiving break this year to all their students, letting them know financial aid was available for those who were considering not coming back because of money issues.

The University of Wisconsin is trying to keep the lines of communication open across campus in a variety of ways, according to UW spokesperson Amy Toburen.

“I think it’s incredibly important to keep the university community informed about any changes that are happening on campus or any proposals that are out there, but more importantly we try to be transparent in any information we provide,” Toburen said.

Toburen added there are several methods administrators use to reach people like mass e-mail, Facebook and Twitter.

“For students especially, we use Student Newslink with some of the key issues for students. For faculty and staff we use Wisconsin Week, which is a newspaper that’s geared for faculty that comes out every other week,” Toburen said.

Associate professor of communication arts Jonathan Gray at UW said it was important for the university to get information out to everyone in a controlled and consistent manner that is fair, so some people are not finding out important information before others are.

Gray also said UW does a pretty good job of keeping the faculty informed, but there have been times when he wishes they would have gotten information sooner.

UW junior Michael Liang is a transfer student from UW-La Crosse who said he feels the university could do a better job of keeping students informed. Liang added he knew about some of the budget cuts the university was facing but he would like to know more about how the university planned on dealing with them.

“At La Crosse, we would get an e-mail from the chancellor almost every day,” Liang said, “It was almost too much, but I think that once a week would be nice.”