Details are beginning to emerge about Thursday's announcement of proposed cuts at the University of Evansville.
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"It was almost like you got a gut punch."
Daniel Byrne said that's what it felt like when proposed program and faculty cuts were given to UE faculty during a video conference Thursday afternoon.
Byrne is an associate professor of history at the Unversity of Evansville. He is also the Secretary-Treasurer of the UE chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
A release from UE said that their academic realignment plan would consolidate the unviersity's programs into three colleges. Those are: William L. Ridgway College of Arts & Sciences, College of Education & Health Sciences, and College of Business & Engineering (including the Center for the Advancement of Learning).
Three departments, Music, Philosophy and Religion and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science would be eliminated. Byrne said, "The Electrial Engineering program is almost a hundred years old. It survived the Great Depression and so many other things, and this time, we have these major cuts."
In an email Thursday evening, UE officials confirmed to WNIN that, under the proposed plan, about forty faculty positions would be cut. Byrne said his information was thirty eight positions would be cut, of which thirty two are in the arts and sciences area.
Byrne said, "The logic is that we're cutting these (faculty) lines out, and the three departments out and the majors out so we can reduce the total budget by three to three and a half million dollars, that's what he (UE President Christopher M. Pietruszkiewicz) said."
In addition to eliminating three departments, a total of seventeen academic majors would be eliminated under the plan. They are: History, Art History, Physics, Political Science and Spanish, Cognitive Science, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Ethics and Social Change, Music, Music Education, Music Performance, Music Therapy, Philosophy, Religion and Software Engineering.
The release from UE said that the cuts would take effect in the fall of 2022, but students in the affected majors would be allowed to finish their programs.
The next step is that faculty will have about four weeks to give any feedback on the proposed cuts. According to the release, the administration would like to finalize any cuts in early 2021.
Byrne said during Thursday's video conference, Pietruszkiewicz was asked if all the proposed cuts are taken, what the university's direction will become. According to Byrne, "What was striking to me is that the president was asked, 'Where is the university going?' He really couldn't articulate that. We're clearly headed away from being a liberal arts college, but where we're headed is hard to see."
WNIN's John Gibson contributed to this report.
