Some full-time University of Kentucky lecturers have received notice that they will be laid off at the end of the next school year, but officials say the cost-cutting move is a "contingency plan."

Regulations require lecturers to get 12 months' notice that their jobs will end, so some deans have chosen to send letters that tell lecturers their contracts will end next spring, Assistant Provost Richard Greissman said.

The affected lecturers — Greissman would not say how many — also were told that if money is available, they will keep their jobs.

"The problem is we don't know how deep the cuts will eventually have to go," Greissman said. "So we've established a contingency, then we're saying we hope we don't have to avail ourselves of it."

UK officials announced this week that about 140 people have lost their jobs and 164 vacant positions are being eliminated. They are the first major layoffs at UK in recent memory, and they affect about 1 percent of its 14,000 employees.

Greissman said there are about 100 lecturers in undergraduate education at UK. Most of them are centered in the colleges of arts and sciences, fine arts and communications. He declined to say which college sent out the letters, but he said it was not arts and sciences, the largest college of the three.

"We stand by the president's message," he said, "that we will do everything we can to make sure we don't compromise the teaching."