UE President Christopher Pietruszkiewicz spoke with WNIN's Steve Burger about various aspects of the school's realignment plan.
For the first time since the University of Evansville announced its draft academic realignment plan, UE President Christopher Pietruszkiewicz spoke with WNIN about the plan and how the community and alumni are reacting. Here is a transcript of that conversation:
Burger: Has anything changed with the academic realignment plan between December 10th and today?
Pietruszkiewicz: A lot has changed, you know, the draft realignment plan on December 10th was designed to be a draft realignment plan and so over the course of the last 30 days or so, we've been having a lot of private conversations with members of our University of Evansville community and the Evansville community more broadly including our faculty members and that was the reason why on Friday we decided to extend the period of time for comments and recommendations and proposals for another 45 days or so. So really will be between a little over 75 days, where we will be will be taking comments and receiving proposals. So I think the draft plan has kind of changed in the fact that the meaningful discussions are happening and my hope is that we continue to receive proposals from various parts of the university and that that will likely have an influence on what the final plan looks like.
Burger: What I'm asking is can you share anything specific that has come out of those discussions?
Pietruszkiewicz: Nothing specific because those conversations are still ongoing. So we have received a variety of proposals from a variety of different places within the university. When you submit a proposal it's not just simply a proposal and you say yes or no to a proposal. It's an ongoing conversation and that's what we hope to continue to transpire over the course of the next 45 days or so and and we hope that we start some new discussions.
Burger: What does the announcement last Friday do to the timeline of the overall university realignment?
Pietruszkiewicz: Well, it means that we'll continue to have a conversation about academic alignment until the end of February, you know, there are still ongoing conversations that are happening internally and with our board about administrative and athletic realignment and so those will likely be delayed for a little while while we continue to have conversations about the academic plan. We were originally thinking, I think our board was originally thinking that they would vote on a final realignment plan in February and that's that's not likely to happen. Actually. I should perhaps even get rid of the word likely- it's not going to happen in February because we'll still be in the comment period. So the board will consider our recommendations with respect to realignment as soon as we're ready, but it won't be at the end of February.
Burger: I'm curious what input have you gotten from the community and from alumni on the plan the academic realignment plan?
Pietruszkiewicz: We've received lots of comments. Most of them are we would prefer you not to change and I recognize that as president of the University of Evansville. I would prefer not to change either. My preference is not to create the type of academic alignment plan that was necessary, but it is necessary for a university and I will tell you a lot of the responses that we've received say, you know this affects people and I completely agree. This does affect people. It affects our students it affects our faculty. It affects the University of Evansville and it affects the Evansville community. I don't underestimate that part at all. But I also have a responsibility to make sure that the university has been in Evansville for a hundred years and my job is to make sure that it's here for another hundred years. and sometimes that means proposing really hard things and I would have preferred not to do that. But I think it's also necessary for a university and I wonder what my board or the community would have asked have we not acted and in 5 years or 10 years you would have maybe ask the question. Why didn't you act when you had the opportunity and I think now is the opportunity for us to make the changes that we need to help the university go forward and help our Evansville community move forward.
Burger: That's an interesting an interesting comment. I don't know that I've heard expressed quite that way before so if I could follow up on that would you characterize the discussions that have happened as being board driven or driven by the administration. The reason I ask that is just based on your comment just now that boy if we don't do something now, we might look back at this in five years and say, why didn't we do something when we had the chance, so that's why I'm asking that question.
Pietruszkiewicz: I think it comes from from both places. I think the board has the fiduciary responsibility for our university and and they look and say we've got to do something to make sure that we're financially sustainable and I think my role is very similar in that my overall responsibility is to the entire university and that includes our students our faculty and our staff to make sure that we are offering what we think is a transformative education for our students. And at the same time has to be one that is financially sustainable going forward. So I think that's a that's a mutual goal that exists by our board by our senior administration.
Burger: But have you found anything that would negatively impact accreditation? You may or may not know that we reported on one instance where it seems like it could. I'm wondering if you noticed that in any other areas in terms of accreditation?
Pietruszkiewicz: What I assume you're referring to is our engineering program and that's an ongoing conversation that we have with the accrediting body. So I don't want to speculate on where that would land that's part of the ongoing conversation. We said initially that we believe that the students can complete their degrees and we believe that will continue to have a conversation with the accrediting body. And then something changes will make sure that we let everybody know it quickly as we can.
Burger: We're down to our last couple of minutes and I just really want to give you a chance to make your statement at this point in the process what you like to the community to know?
Pietruszkiewicz: Well, first of all, we're listening, I think there was a misperception that this was the plan the draft plan was really a done deal and that the 30-day period was really more of a formulaic 30 days than to provide an opportunity for comments. What I hope that you saw on Friday was our genuine interest in making the plan we drafted better by having productive conversations with members of the University of Evansville community and the broader community conversations that we have with those that are continually interested in music in Evansville. And what I hope that you saw from the message from the board last week in my message is that we do value that input and we value it so much that we've decided we're going to delay the timeline that we originally thought was possible because we want to be able to continue those conversations.
