| Dear Alumni and Friends,
I want to update you on the draft academic realignment plan we announced in early December.
Today, I informed the faculty that we will be extending the comment, discussion, recommendation, and proposal period for the draft realignment plan until the end of February. In the last month since I shared the announcement of the draft academic realignment plan, the University of Evansville administration has had productive conversations with some members of the faculty and UE community. We want to continue those discussions.
Beginning Monday, we will open the election window for the Voluntary Separation Incentive Program which will allow certain faculty members to leave the University at the end of the semester in exchange for one year of base salary without teaching duties or other University responsibilities and a $10,000 health-care assistance payment. This program will be open to those faculty members for the next 45 days.
The Voluntary Separation Incentive Program is a key element in the realignment plan and our ongoing efforts to reduce the University’s operating deficit. The program is open to all full-time faculty in the following departments and majors: Art History, Biology, Chemistry, Creative Writing/English, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Foreign Languages and Cultures, History, Math, Music, Philosophy & Religion, Physics, and Political Science.
The extension period for additional comments, discussion, recommendations, and proposals, along with the outcome of this voluntary program could, and likely will, affect the final realignment plan and avoid the elimination of some occupied faculty positions and majors included in the draft academic alignment plan.
We know that this is an unsettling time. Demographic trends are forcing significant changes at many universities. The COVID-19 pandemic has compounded those challenges.
These proposed changes are painful. But we must address UE’s operating deficit. With strategic cost-cutting and allocation of additional resources to areas of growth, UE can be in a position to succeed for decades to come. Failing to take action now threatens to cause much deeper pain in the years ahead.
We will continue to provide updates as we receive additional feedback about the draft academic realignment plan and the Voluntary Separation Incentive Program.
Christopher M. Pietruszkiewicz
President
University of Evansville |
The media is focusing on the wrong actors. This is all down to the abrogation of fiduciary duty by the Trustees, especially Linda White and Sally Rideout
They have allowed deficit spending, misappropriation of endowment income and poor leadership by two consecutive incompetent presidents fir a decade. Their corporate approach has yielded the current crisis. They should both be removed from the board.
JOHN DOE
Sound like you have information that the general public don’t have.
Looks like you have the material for a Letter To The CCO Editor
Jean Doe’s basic point is right, but let’s not kid ourselves: Pietruszkiewicz’s disdain for the faculty and disinterest in academic programs has been apparent from his first weeks in office. His idea was that he could arrive in his three-piece suit, snap his fingers at an admissions office broken by a decade of cuts and led by a grossly incompetent VP, and it would somehow fix itself. His ideas about higher education are gleaned from headlines on higher-ed web sites or consultants. I think that most people expected that, given his legal background, he would at least be well prepared for meetings. Instead, he has repeatedly humiliated himself by being unprepared and unknowledgeable. His recent demand that he would only meet with the faculty to answer questions if he were allowed to have an outside moderator is extraordinary. I have been in higher ed for a long time, and I have never heard anything like it. Part of being a university president is dealing with faculty, and UE faculty have been and are a pretty meek group on the whole.
The UE board has used UE as a dumping-ground for cast-off executives they wanted to flush from their own companies or pals of theirs, despite having no experience in higher education. The results were entirely predictable. The huge size of the board has always made it easy for a small inside group to dominate it, and the same basic bunch has been calling the shots for the last 15-20 years. They sank huge amounts of money into programs that have not panned out and turned a blind eye to staggering athletic deficits. You would think that they would own up to their mismanagement and leave the board. Nope.
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