UE President Concedes On Faculty Demands On Program Deletions

UE President Concedes On Faculty Demands On Program Deletions

article submitted to CCO by The UE AAUP chapter

Evansville— 1/28/21 — In an extraordinary U-turn, the President of the University of Evansville (UE), Christopher M. Pietruszkiewicz, last night sent an e-mail to the faculty in which he agreed to allow the program and major deletions within his academic realignment plan to go before the Curriculum Committee of the UE Faculty Senate. This reversal resulted from many weeks of sustained pressure from the faculty for the President to do so. In the key part of the President’s message, he wrote:

The President’s Council plans to submit proposals for deletions of degrees and/or majors to the Curriculum Committee for its consideration and its recommendation to the Faculty Senate.

While the timeline is yet to be determined, we anticipate providing the Curriculum Committee with any proposals for deletions of degrees and/or majors in early March 2021.

To gain a sense of the context for this announcement, it is necessary to return to the original request for the described action. On December 17th, following the release of the President’s draft academic realignment plan, the UE Faculty Senate passed a resolution by which it voted no confidence in that plan. The resolution was passed by 14 votes to 1 with 1 abstention. The faculty subsequently supported that resolution by a margin of 106 – 19 with 3 abstentions. The resolution in question ended with this paragraph:

The Senate’s confidence will only be restored when the President makes a public written commitment to the following:

All proposals for curricular change within the final draft of the President’s academic alignment plan, including but not limited to all that on implementation would result in the loss of majors and/or faculty positions, will be submitted to the Curriculum Committee. That committee will vote on those proposals and then submit its recommendations to the Senate. The Senate will review those recommendations and then vote to either approve them, reject them or return them to the Curriculum Committee for further consideration. Any recommendations approved by the Senate that relate to the addition or deletion of degrees and majors will be forwarded to the President, who will approve them, reject them or return them to the Senate for further consideration. Finally, any Senate recommendations endorsed by the President will be sent to the Board of Trustees and the Board will approve them, reject them or return them to the President for further consideration.

The President responded to that resolution on January 1st through an e-mail to the faculty. In that email, he wrote:

The proposed academic alignment plan is not an educational policy decision, but an administrative decision motivated by financial considerations of the University and based on the program evaluation criteria. The process described in the Faculty Resolution was designed for ordinary operations and provides for the Curriculum Committee’s (and Faculty Senate’s) review of routine proposals for changes. It does not apply to the current proposed academic alignment plan.

The Senate Chair subsequently wrote to the President to ask him to offer the basis for these remarks.

The President was also questioned about them at the Faculty Meeting on January 15th and at the Faculty Senate meeting on January 21st, but offered no further explanation at either meeting. From the President’s message last night, it is evident that he has happily now adopted a position entirely opposite to that which he took in his January 1st e-mail.

The UE AAUP chapter welcomes this first step back towards proper order and we hope that there are more to follow. The President and his team must fully embrace the policies, procedures, and governance structures of the university. The faculty has been tireless in its efforts to make the President and his team do so and it deserves great credit for forcing the President to begin to recognize the importance of shared governance.

To learn more:  Visit our website at saveue.com • Follow us on Facebook at Save UE,  Follow us on Twitter at @Save_UE or Follow us on Instagram at save.u E-mail us at ueaaup@gmail.com

This article was posted by the City County Observer without bias or editing.