budget cuts Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

WVU President Gee Highlights Path Forward, Hints At More Cuts

President Gordon Gee hinted at more cuts for West Virginia University in his State of the University Address Monday.

Gee opened his remarks by acknowledging the impacts of the Academic Transformation process that has cut dozens of programs and close to 150 faculty positions.

He highlighted several of the university’s successes, including a national astronomy award and increased freshman retention rates before returning to the issue of the university’s budget deficit.

WVU is facing a $45 million budget shortfall, and Gee said the 2024 budget was designed to to reduce expenses by around $21 million.

“The academic program review process, we are estimating the university will yield around $17.3 million in savings by fiscal year 27 after phased retirements and teach-out plans run the record,” he said. “However, the majority of savings will be realized in fiscal year 25.”

Reviews of WVU’s Beckley and Keyser campuses, as well as WVU Extension, are slated for January 2024.

Gee said the cuts are setting the university on a course to become the modern land-grant university of the future by focusing on “four priorities within the pillars of education, health, prosperity and purpose.”

“We will serve as the great connector — building partnerships that drive industry, education and public sector growth,” Gee said. “And we will create the great public square our society so desperately needs, providing a safe and nurturing place for civil discourse and debate for all ideas.”

Gee also highlighted an effort to expand access to the university by increasing the number of students who graduate with zero debt. He said about 45 percent of May 2023 graduates earning bachelor’s degrees completed their education with zero debt.

Faculty Question How University Will Avoid Future Cuts

At Monday’s WVU Faculty Senate meeting, Provost Maryanne Reed announced a significant number of faculty — 74 — have voluntarily retired or resigned from the university.

Faculty members at West Virginia University (WVU) have started to learn whether or not their contracts will be renewed.

In response to a $45 million budgetary shortfall, WVU determined last month that it needed to cut 143 faculty positions, called reduction in faculty (RIF).

However, at Monday’s WVU Faculty Senate meeting, Provost Maryanne Reed announced a significant number of faculty — 74 — have voluntarily retired or resigned from the university.

“If there’s any good news, it is that the number of faculty who will be receiving their RIF notices has been reduced by a little over 50 percent,” she said.

That leaves 69 faculty yet to be dismissed.

“I realized that is of little solace for the family of those faculty members who will be losing their positions,” Reed said. “I recognize this is going to be very difficult on those individuals and their families.”

Much of the meeting was taken up by questions from faculty senators to administrators regarding the process and appeals for a reduction in force.

President Gordon Gee was asked how the university is planning to avoid future cuts.

“I cannot predict the future, although I can predict that this transformation process will allow us to have an opportunity to be more forward leaning,” he said.

Gee said the academic transformation will position the university to be competitive and continue to grow and invest. He also pointed to a new state funding formula that will be helpful “to look into the future in a much more positive way.”

Faculty members did not seem satisfied with Gee’s answers. Daniel Totzkay, senator for the Eberly College of Arts & Sciences, reiterated the question again later in the meeting.

“We’re here because we had a $45 million budget deficit,” he said. “How do we not get there again?”

Gee said that the academic transformation process was accelerated by the university’s financial problems, but began before as a response to a changing landscape in higher education.

“Can I guarantee that we’ll no longer have budgetary problems? Of course not,” Gee said. ”But I can guarantee that we’ll work to grow our budget, that we’ll work to put ourselves in a much more competitive position.”

Rob Alsop, WVU’s vice president for strategic initiatives, gave more detail regarding the implementation of new budgetary practices, including a new budgetary model.

“Additionally, we are seeking to enhance the reporting from a budgetary perspective,” he said. “There will be more reporting publicly about, ‘How do our revenues look coming into the fall? What do our expenses look like over the first couple of months going forward?’ And so, what we have done in the past, that we’re redoubling our efforts moving forward, is to be more aggressive and looking at leading indicators.”

WVU Community, Affected By Cuts, Puts On Art Show

More than 40 university faculty, students and alumni from the ceramics, prints and sculpture departments are coming together at a local art gallery to put on an exhibition of their work titled “Deep Cuts.”

Earlier this month, West Virginia University affirmed its decision to cut 28 majors and more than 140 faculty positions.

Now, more than 40 university faculty, students and alumni from the ceramics, prints and sculpture departments are coming together at a local art gallery to put on an exhibition of their work titled “Deep Cuts.”

Reporter Chris Schulz sat down with WVU professor and owner of Morgantown art gallery Galactic Panther, Eli Pollard to discuss the exhibit and the effects of the university’s cuts.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Schulz: Can you tell me a little bit about your teaching at the university?

Pollard: Well, that’s rapidly changing as has been the case for quite a while now. I do teach at the university currently, but this looks like it will be my final semester. I started here in 2008, in the humanities department. I had about 300 students a year teaching Western Civ. Unfortunately, all the faculty from that department has been fired, let go, which was kind of mind-blowing considering the amount of students I had for about $23,000 a year. We made a lot of money for the university, but it wasn’t quite cutting it, I guess.

I was able to transition over to the design department, which has been great. I’ve taught fashion design for them. I’ve taught interior design courses for them as well. Landscape architecture, I do a lot of drawing and foundational courses and portfolio courses for those departments. And I’ve been teaching and designing community development and also developing study abroad courses, which have been amazing for the students. We’ve gone all over.

I started in Central America, then things got a little bit difficult working in Central America, I wasn’t allowed to go there anymore. So I started working more in Europe, and I’ve taken students all over Europe, and we’ve had incredible experiences over there. It looks like my last one of those is going to be Greece this winter. If any students are listening, you have until October 1 to sign up for that program. But I just got word last night that I won’t be able to run those anymore either, which is a huge loss, again, to the students.

Schulz: Western Civ and design, those are two, at least to my mind, pretty disparate topics. How did you end up there?

Pollard: Doing backflips to survive here is kind of the short answer. But in more detail, humanities and western civilization has a lot to do with art history. We had people in that department that had backgrounds in history, and we had people who had backgrounds in fine arts and literature. And because there’s so much content covered in the humanities, in western civilization, each of us were able to kind of develop the course with our own kind of unique perspectives. That fine arts perspective, of course, transfers very nicely into design work, which is a lot of what I do as well.

Schulz: What has been the impact on your role? Are you slated to receive one of these potential RIF notifications in the coming weeks?

Pollard: Yeah, just these past few days, maybe four or five days ago, I was told my position teaching is over. And I had always understood that there was a possibility to continue the education abroad courses if my regular teaching had to come to an end. They have just apparently switched that stance and now I will no longer be able to teach those as of last night or the night before, I was told that one. So, they’re both done.

So my focus is here on the gallery now, which is fine. I’m still trying to kind of grapple with, I’ve been here for 15 years teaching now. It’ll take a moment to adjust, but I’ve had a lot of warning, like I said, my first department was completely slashed. And then I took an impact from an earlier budget cut where I went from full time to adjunct staff. So, I’ve been kind of grappling with this before all this headline news hit. It’s just unfortunate now because I’m seeing so many people I know and respect facing the same kind of future, basically.

Schulz: Are you from West Virginia originally?

Pollard: No, I was born in Florida, but I moved here when I was three, my family’s from here. So, everything except born here, pretty much. My parents, my mom and my stepdad had to leave the state for similar reasons. They were teachers in the school system, well, teacher and school psychologist, and everybody’s getting pink slips in education. So, they headed out of state. I ended up coming back for school. So, I’ve been back and forth many times.

Schulz: You know obviously this has a much wider effect, which is why we’re going to be talking about this event happening later this week. But before we get into that, can you tell me a little bit about the background of Galactic Panther and this space? I understand that it’s not exclusive to Morgantown even.

Pollard: I started Galactic Panther, working on renovating this space right before COVID hit. So, we pretty much opened up here in Morgantown during COVID, which was tricky, of course. It’s already tricky to have an art gallery. To make it extra tricky. I’m on the outskirts of Morgantown and to make it that much more challenging it was opening during COVID. So, kind of a dreamer’s tale I guess. But it’s worked to a certain extent, the gallery is still here in Morgantown. And because of my efforts here, I had a partner who was interested in assisting with opening a second space in the DC area.

We are focusing on art exhibits, of course, as a gallery but we have events in there with live music, and a friend of mine has been doing sound baths if you’re familiar with that, which is kind of a beautiful form of meditation, where he brings in his Moog synthesizer and does full analog sound baths where you just kind of let the sound wash all your troubles away. So some healing events and music events and art events are kind of the real focus.

Schulz: So tell me a little bit more about this week’s event on Friday.

Pollard: This Friday, the 29th from 5:30 to 9:30 is when we’ll be having an event.

Schulz: And what is the event? I understand that it’s titled “Deep Cuts.”

Pollard: It is. “Deep Cuts” is an exhibition from the WVU printmaking, sculpture and ceramics departments. This includes faculty, students, and alumni. So, it’s quite a large grouping of artists, we’ve got about 40 visual artists involved. Many are, in the area, household names, I would say, a lot of talent coming in. I’ve also gotten music booked for the evening as well, by alumni of these departments.

Schulz: How did this all come together?

Pollard: This is something that I came up with, it just felt like a need. There was a necessity that this happen, I felt, and I didn’t see that anybody else was offering this. So, I reached out to the art department. They were very positive in the response and have had a strong hand in curating this exhibit. They’ve reached out to many students and alumni to expand our voice, so to speak. Everybody seemed to really appreciate the idea, so we’re all coming together. And I’ve gotta start running now and make sure we’re all ready for Friday.

Schulz: So many exhibitions are often so focused on a topic or a subject or a medium. I think it’ll certainly be interesting to see so much variety in one show. What are you hearing from the people that are contributing to the show about the need to do this now? Because it seems kind of bittersweet to have simultaneously such a great plethora of local artists coming together, but also the reason behind it is, obviously, a bit of a weight to say the least.

Pollard: Yeah, it is bittersweet. And I have heard a lot of frustration coming from the artists as they’re bringing their work in. It’s just a blow, not just to the students at the university and to the faculty, but to the community. As I mentioned, these artists are doing things like the Morgantown Studio Tour. If that faculty has to leave, then that is going to leave, probably, with them. One of these artists designed our state quarter, one of these artists teaches at BOPARC for everybody’s kids in the summertime. So, there’s huge impacts here, culturally, beyond what’s happening at the university.

These impacts culturally, of course, will have eventual economic impacts, which brings us full circle. Which makes you wonder why these are even happening if the folks making these cuts are doing this for economic reasons. They’re mistaken. They’re deeply mistaken because these are the people that build the economy of a community. They build a community and they build the economy, so if you’re getting rid of the people that do this, you’re shooting yourself in the foot ultimately. That’s part of the message that we’re here to convey.

Schulz: Is there anything else about this situation about this process more generally, that I haven’t given you an opportunity to discuss?

Pollard: This is a free event, it’s Friday from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. Donations are greatly appreciated for snacks and musicians and things of that nature. Buying artwork is highly encouraged, we would accept payment plans because this is supporting artists. It also, from day one, Galactic Panther, we have given a portion of all sales to local food banks, and this is no different than any other event. So you’re supporting the artists in the gallery and local people in need as well. So please come out. Please be respectful of the neighborhood but come out numbers and be heard.

I don’t know that I’m the spokesperson for the full process of what’s happening at WVU. I’m just a kind of a modest megaphone for the artists in the area and the community that’s being affected at large. I think this is a great opportunity this weekend to come together and discuss this. This is maybe beyond the 11th hour, but there’s a lot of intelligent people here. If our voices can be heard, maybe we can come up with a positive solution here.

“Deep Cuts” will run through November by appointment at Galactic Panther, 462 Dunkard Ave. To book an appointment to see the exhibition after Friday, contact Eli Pollard at eli@galacticpanther.com

New Art Exhibit Reflects Loss From Recent Academic Cuts At WVU, This West Virginia Morning

On this West Virginia Morning, Education Reporter Chris Schulz sat down with WVU professor and owner of Morgantown art gallery Galactic Panther, Eli Pollard to discuss the exhibit and the impacts of the university’s cuts.

On this West Virginia Morning, West Virginia University (WVU) earlier this month affirmed its decision to cut 28 majors and more than 140 faculty positions. A new art exhibition titled “Deep Cuts” by university faculty, students and alumni reflects this loss.

Education Reporter Chris Schulz sat down with WVU professor and owner of Morgantown art gallery Galactic Panther, Eli Pollard to discuss the exhibit and the impacts of the university’s cuts.

Also, in this show, for people with mental health challenges, life can be complex. Add the trauma of incarceration, and they’re caught up in a system that’s not designed for treatment. Despite that, many people with mental illnesses are behind bars. Sometimes without support or medication.

On the latest episode of Us & Them, host Trey Kay hears the experiences of people who say the suicide watch cells and paper clothing designed to protect them while in jail, were instead humiliating. We listen to an excerpt from the episode.

West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.

Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University.

Caroline MacGregor produced this episode.

Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning

WVU Continues Cuts With Reductions To Library Staff

WVU libraries will be asked to further reduce their budget by up to $800,000 as part of a review of 20 academic support units.

During a Campus Conversation Zoom call Wednesday morning, West Virginia University announced more planned cuts as part of its continuing restructuring in the face of a $45 million budgetary shortfall.

WVU libraries will be asked to further reduce their budget by up to $800,000 as part of a review of 20 academic support units.

Unlike academic units, academic support units are not subject to the Board of Governors’ rules and will not have a chance to appeal.

Mark Gavin, the associate provost for academic, budget, facilities and strategic initiatives, said the cuts will come from reductions in staff positions without disrupting offerings.

“This sounds like a heavy lift for a unit that has already seen reductions, and it is,” he said.

In June, the university announced libraries would reduce spending on collections by 8 percent for fiscal year 2024. In the same announcement it was noted that the libraries’ personnel expenses have already been reduced by 7 percent.

“Under its current structure saving $800,000 from the personnel roster would be rather debilitating, but through restructuring efforts, the Dean of Libraries Karen Diaz is confident she can realize these savings without negatively impacting service levels for students, faculty and staff,” Gavin said.

The university’s recommendation also includes an evaluation of the physical footprint of the libraries, but Gavin said it does not include the closing of any library facilities.

The Teaching and Learning Commons, a unit that provides broad services including classroom support, multimedia production and course and curriculum design support, will have many of its functions moved to other units.

Several positions for instructional designers and multimedia specialists will be moved to the WVU Online unit, as well as micro-credentialing and its related positions. WVU Online’s own recommendation letter states “there is confusion regarding who is responsible and accountable for certain activities/services.”

The management of Zoom and related functions and associated personnel will also be transferred from the Teaching and Learning Commons to an as-yet unnamed unit.

WVU Press and the Smith Outdoor Economic Development Collaborative received recommendations to seek external funding. In the case of the Smith unit, the recommendation specifies “a plan to fully shift the unit’s salaries and operating expenses off of University general funds by FY 2026.”

The Women’s Resource Center and LGBTQ+ Center were among six support units that received a recommendation to continue to the current level of activity with no action. The full list of recommendations for all 20 support units can be found on the university Provost’s website.

Gavin apologized for what he called an “unfortunate and unavoidable” pause to the review of academic support units which began in May.

“The portfolio review process ended up demanding the full attention of our office so that we could deliver on the accelerated timeline set by the Board of Governors,” he said. “We had to pause our review of the ASU and recognize that in doing so, we created unrest and uncertainty.”

Reduction in Faculty

Administrators also briefly touched on details of the reduction in force (RIF) process for academic units that were approved to be cut by the Board of Governors on Sept. 15.

Faculty in the affected units will have until Sept. 30 to complete an “affirmation form” stating their desire to be considered for contract retention. WVU General Counsel Stefanie Taylor said faculty will learn whether the position has been eliminated no later than Oct. 16.

“The week of October 23rd, we will have due process hearings or meetings for certain types of faculty and classified staff that will be subjected to a RIF,” Taylor said. “On October 30, we’ll let folks know the results of those due process meetings and then December 1 is the last date by which you could sign and return a severance agreement if you were offered one.”

Emotions High As WVU Board Of Governors Approves Cuts To Programs, Positions

After weeks of contentious meetings, walkouts and protests, the West Virginia University Board of Governors has voted to eliminate 28 majors and more than 140 faculty positions at West Virginia University.

Updated on Friday, Sept. 15, 2023 at 3:30 p.m.

After weeks of heated meetings, walkouts and protests, the West Virginia University (WVU) Board of Governors has voted to eliminate 28 majors and more than 140 faculty positions at West Virginia University.

Following a presentation that outlined the financial challenges and enrollment decline that led to proposed cuts at WVU, students began chanting loudly and emotionally as board members started to vote. After several minutes, students exited the room, continuing to chant, as board chair Taunja Willis Miller called for order.

“No student was asked to leave,” she said. “And I will not let that misinformation be spread.”

This is just a snapshot into the weeks of contention at West Virginia University.

Some of the schools, departments and programs that will be affected by the cuts include Education, Management, Creative Arts, Law, various sciences and mathematics, Communication Studies, Philosophy, among others.

Notable is the full elimination of the World Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics Department. The only exception for this department are continued elective courses in Spanish and Chinese, and seven faculty positions in this department will be saved.

Ten of the 28 majors eliminated are undergraduate majors, while the remaining 18 are graduate or professional majors.

According to school officials, the reduction in undergraduate majors, including double majors, will affect 91 students. At the graduate and professional levels, the reduction will impact 238 students.

It was noted in the meeting that students who will be affected by the eliminations would either be able to complete their majors or be offered alternative majors that “meets their academic goals.”

Additionally, the Master of Fine Arts in Acting, which was previously a proposed cut, will be retained.

WVU’s Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Maryanne Reed was the last person to speak ahead of the vote. She acknowledged the difficult decision to eliminate so many academic programs but argued it will make the university stronger.

“Even with the accelerated timeline, this was a thoughtful, professional and data informed process. I am proud of the work done by the members of our team who has spent the last six months entirely focused on this effort,” Reed said. “They did so, as did I, believing that this was the right thing to do to preserve our beloved WVU for the future. I recognize that many of my colleagues and friends do not feel the same way, some of you are in the room, and I respect your right to argue against these changes … While this has been a challenging time, I truly believe brighter days are ahead of us if we can rebuild trust and work together toward building an even better and a more sustainable WVU.”

The university will still offer more than 300 academic programs.