By Jena Emmert
Last March, Edgewood College put together the Program Prioritization Commission, a 16-member group of faculty and staff commissioned to create a set of recommendations to reduce programs and classes.
The recommendations regarding major reductions and layoffs of faculty and staff made by the commission are now being considered with a Nov. 15 deadline.
Majors such as Theatre Arts, Spanish, and French and other Arts and Sciences majors are at the forefront of these decisions, according to Melanie Herzog, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences.
Dean Pribbenow, vice president for academic affairs, said the school’s leadership has an idea which majors are going to be cut for Fall 2020, although he is not prepared to make this information public until the broader faculty have been notified.
Herzog and Pribbenow said any current students declared in a program that is cut in the Fall 2020 catalog will still be able to carry on in that major until they graduate, as they will be enrolled in a previous catalog. “The catalog is a contract,” said Herzog.
Herzog and Pribbenow said the majors recommended for elimination are being given time to come up with an alternative recommendation, or a plan that will keep the majors running while also cutting back costs.
The Program Prioritization Commission considered the following qualities in choosing majors recommended for elimination: mission fit, quality indicators, cost and revenue, demand, and history and opportunity.
The commission’s goal was to reduce courses by 10%, or about 120 sections of classes, between the 2018-19 to 2019-20 academic year. “We actually exceeded that goal,” said Pribbenow.
Certain majors with low enrollment will continue to have classes in the field although the major will be eliminated.
“Right now we are exploring how we might reconfigure majors with only a few students as pathways in more interdisciplinary programs, so that students can move through these programs as more of a cohort and can also pursue studies in academic fields according to their own interests, passions and calling,” said Herzog.
Edgewood plans to further encourage students to individualize their majors, allowing students to declare in one or many fields of their interest in a major that may not exist.
Interim president Sister Mary Ellen Gevelinger, O.P., said that general education requirements will be re–organized as well.
The day after Gevelinger announced the Nov. 15 deadline at the college assembly on Sept. 9, Pribbenow formed a group to look at the general education requirements. The goal of this group is to reduce the requirements in addition to creating relevant pathways for specific programs.
The current general education requirements were made to create as many possibilities as possible for students although Pribbenow said that model is now “not sustainable.”
Faculty and staff, although fearful for their programs and positions, remain hopeful.
“Every college in the United States must manage the national decline in high school graduates,” Professor of Business Dennis Collins said.
“We are fortunate to have Sister Mary Ellen Gevelinger here to guide us through this process, along with caring and engaged faculty, staff and students. As for students, they should continue to learn as much as they can from their dedicated teachers and all that happens around them.”
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