Arts and science faculty members voted by a wide margin Thursday to express "no confidence" in the leadership of Case Western Reserve University president Edward M. Hundert over budget and other issues.

The vote by professors representing about 9 percent of the full-time faculty is nonbinding. Only trustees can terminate his contract.

The college of arts and sciences faculty voted 131-44 to express "no confidence" in Hundert's leadership and 97-68 to express "no confidence" in John L. Anderson, provost and vice president.

Faculty members opposed to Hundert have expressed concerns about budget deficits and uneven fundraising on the campus of nearly 10,000 students and schools including medicine, dentistry, nursing, management, law, engineering and graduate studies.

Hundert said he took the vote seriously and was determined to listen to faculty complaints. The support of the trustee board expressed at a meeting earlier in the week remains unchanged, Hundert said.

An early critic, physics professor Lawrence Krauss, said the vote reflected faculty concern over the university's direction. "We feel there needs to be a change in direction," he said after the vote held at a closed-door faculty meeting.

Hundert said earlier in the week in a campus e-mail that some $17 million has been cut from the university budget and Case faces a possible $40 million recurring annual deficit, or 5 percent.

Hundert became Case's president in 2002 and previously served as psychiatry professor and medical-dental dean at the University of Rochester and taught at Harvard medical school. Anderson served until 2004 as engineering dean at Carnegie Mellon.