Higher Education Story Archives - Page 2 of 42 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

LOCEA Hears Alderson Broaddus Updates

The Chancellor of the Higher Education Policy Commission (HEPC), Sarah Tucker provided updates about the closure of Alderson Broaddus University to the Legislative Oversight Commission on Education and Accountability on Sunday during the Interim Session.

The Chancellor of the Higher Education Policy Commission (HEPC), Sarah Tucker, provided updates about the closure of Alderson Broaddus University to the Legislative Oversight Commission on Education and Accountability on Sunday during the Interim Session.

According to Tucker, Alderson Broaddus has been on provisional authorization because of finances with HEPC for a little more than a year.

Tucker said in late November or early December of 2022, the then-president of Alderson Broaddus told her he believed the board would vote to close the institution in the spring of 2023.

“While he wasn’t 100 percent certain, he was pretty sure that in the springtime, the board was going to be closing, or voting to close, the institution, that their finances were too out of control, that they were in too much debt that they couldn’t get see their way out of it, and that they would be closing not reopening for the fall semester,” Tucker said.

Since then, both the board and president of the university changed hands and that understanding between Tucker and the previous president did not become a reality.

“The new board made a different decision,” Tucker said “And that decision was that they were going to stay open for the semester. And so, at that point, we were to reauthorize them in June, based upon the finances that I had received, and very inconsistent financial information. There was simply no way that the commission was going to be able to do that.”

According to Tucker, Alderson Broaddus told HEPC they would be receiving funding from numerous sources including a $1.1 million tax credit from the federal government.

“We were actually told that that tax credit had been sent in by the IRS erroneously to the institution and the institution had mailed the check back and that they were expecting to receive the real check anytime soon,” Tucker said. “We were also told that the board chair was going to resign her position because she had become disfavored by other board members. And that as a result of that the institution would receive $500,000 in donations. Neither the IRS refund nor the $500,000 of donations have come to fruition at this point.”

Given the inconsistencies in the financial reports, HEPC asked the university for its cash flow projections for the year. The university had a cash flow of negative $500,000 with more than $30 million in debt.

“They have lines of credit at or near $5 million, which is the maximum. They owed the city of Philippi $835,000 has been reported in the press; it was a little bit less than that reported in the press,” Tucker said. “That’s because they didn’t report the July bill that they also missed. They owe Sodexo, which is our food service company, nearly $2 million.”

According to Tucker, the university made an initial payment to the city of Phillippi of $67,000 with money from a fundraising campaign. She also said the university has been asking for donations from alumni to make payroll.

“I can keep going on about some of these financial issues, but at the end of the day, we came to the conclusion that this institution was not going to be able to stay open for this semester. There was just no financial indicator that caused us to believe that they were going to be able to stay open,” Tucker said. “And once news broke of their finances, we became very concerned that their budget, which was based entirely upon their enrollment, was not in their enrollment projections were not particularly feasible, when that just simply wasn’t going to be able to be met, there was too much out there about how bad their finances were. So, we simply didn’t think they were going to make their enrollment projections.”

The HEPC came to the conclusion to vote to revoke Alderson Broaddus’ ability to award degrees, due to their inability to stay open through the semester.

Students who can graduate by December 31, 2023, are allowed to finish their education at Alderson Broaddus.

Also according to Tucker, eight to 10 Alderson Broaddus students struggle to be placed at a new college or university due to class size restrictions on first-year physician assistant’s classes.

“There is a cap on the number of students that you are allowed to take. All of our institutions which offer PA programs are at their cap for their first-year students,” Tucker said. “They have called their accreditor, to see if the creditor would be willing to let them have a few extra students so that we can get those students through so far those conversations have been unsuccessful.”

West Virginia University President E. Gordon Gee Given Contract Extension

The West Virginia University Board of Governors gave President E. Gordon Gee a one-year contract extension Monday amid a budget shortfall, falling enrollment and plans to cut some academic offerings.

Gee, 79, was given an extension through June 2025 during the board’s special meeting in Morgantown. His contract was set to expire next year.

Gee thanked the board after the vote was announced, acknowledged the ongoing challenges and said the intent is to have “a process that is clear, that is visible to everyone” about improving the university.

The move comes as the university is evaluating nearly half of its academic programs and addressing an estimated $45 million budget deficit.

In June, the Board of Governors approved an estimated $1.2 billion budget for fiscal year 2024 that includes $7 million in staff cuts, or around 132 positions, including 38 faculty members. The board moved forward with slashing 12 graduate and doctorate programs and approved a tuition increase of just under 3%.

Gee and other top university officials have said the budget shortfall is largely a result of enrollment declines. The student population has decreased 10% since 2015. Gee also has cited the factors of inflation stress and increases to premiums the school is required to pay for the state’s government employees’ health insurance program.

In 2019, Gee was given a three-year contract extension through 2024 at a salary of $800,000 per year. At the time, board Chairman William Wilmoth said Gee was “one of, if not the top, university leader in the country.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic started a year later, the university issued $40 million in debt to deal with it. The university also took on an additional $10 million in debt to pay for the increased employee insurance costs.

Gee is in his second stint at West Virginia that began in 2014. He also was the school’s president from 1981 to 1985. Gee also served two stints as president at Ohio State and had similar roles at Vanderbilt University, Brown University and the University of Colorado.

Governor Considers Special Session Request

Gov. Jim Justice has addressed a request from the House of Delegates Democratic Caucus to call a special session of the legislature next month.

Last week, the House of Delegates Democratic Caucus delivered a letter to Gov. Jim Justice urging him to call a Special Legislative Session during the upcoming interim meetings Aug. 6 – Aug. 8.

In the letter the caucus suggests the session focus on the state’s corrections and foster care employment shortfalls as well as what they call a higher education funding crisis.

During an administrative briefing Wednesday afternoon, Justice gave his position on the three issues, saying he supports doing any and everything to improve foster care. He also said the state needs to help out its universities, but the economics of the situation need to be better understood.

“The shortfall in regard to corrections, I’ve sent it up twice,” Justice said. “Really, and truly, this should have been done a long, long, long time ago. So don’t anybody now ask me from the legislature side, as to ‘We really want you to send us and send this off” and everything. For God’s sakes, alive! It should have already been done.”

The governor did not rule out the possibility of calling a special session and says he will evaluate it more seriously when his chief of staff is back in Charleston.

In response to a question, Justice said that the August interim session would be the right time to call a special session.

“The August interim is the time that we should do this. We ought to do it right now,” he said. “That’s just all there is to it.”

W.Va. House Democrats Call For Special Session To Remedy Multiple Crises

The caucus suggests the session focus on the state’s corrections and foster care employment shortfalls and what they call a higher education funding crisis.

In a letter delivered Tuesday to Gov. Jim Justice, the House Democratic Caucus urged the chief executive to call a Special Legislative Session during the August interim meetings.

The caucus suggests the session focus on the state’s corrections and foster care employment shortfalls and what they call a higher education funding crisis.

The letter reads:

“With the surplus that you (Justice) announced this month, we should address these challenges that for far too long have gone unaddressed. A $1.8 billion surplus doesn’t do much good for the 8,000 children in foster care if we don’t act to help them. The surplus won’t help our colleges and universities offset their shortfalls if we don’t act to help them. And the surplus won’t help our struggling corrections workers if we don’t act to help them by finally adjusting their outdated pay scale.”

House Minority Leader Doug Skaff, D-Kanawha, said these are all non-partisan issues.

“Regardless, if you’re a D or an R, it’s about helping West Virginians,” Skaff said. “Whether it’s higher education and our students, or those trying to find people to fill all the vacancies in our correctional facilities. We’ve got to quit kicking the can down the road. It’s going to continue to get worse. I know for a fact there’s, there’s institutions of higher learning right now deciding if they’re even going to be open this fall or not.”

Justice has said he wants a consensus before talks on corrections and has talked of progress in foster care hiring.

The interim meetings are slated for August 6 to 8 in Charleston.

WVSU Holds Archaeological Field School In Malden

The historic Hale House in Malden is the site of WVSU’s archaeological field school.

West Virginia State University (WVSU) is having its archaeological field school at the historic Hale House in Malden in eastern Kanawha County. For four weeks, students have been digging up West Virginia history for their History 399 class.

“We do a field school which is a learning experience for the students,” said Michael Workman, class instructor. “They learn some of the basic techniques of archaeology. This is, however, historical archaeology and that we use not only what we can dig, but also historical records.”

Student Keyira Curtis (left) and field coordinator Carl Demuth look at plans for the day.

*Credit: Jack Bailey/West Virginia State University*

WVSU students and faculty sit down for a meeting about the dig site.

*Credit: Jack Bailey/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

The Hale House is believed to have once been the house of Kanawha Valley politician, Dr. John Hale. Hale was the owner of the largest salt works in North America, supplying salt to the thriving meat packing center of Cincinnati. After the collapse of the salt business in the 1870s, he ventured into brick making machinery, the Bank of the West in Charleston, which he helped organize, as well as the city’s first gas company.

The archaeological dig project came about after a chance meeting with Bob Maslowski, a consultant, and Lewis Payne at Dickinson Salt-Works.

“We came up with the idea of getting a field school started at Dickinson Salt Works and maybe, have it turn into a long-term project,” said Maslowski “As it turned out, this particular site came up and we decided to start the excavations here, at the Hale House. We thought originally that it was occupied by John Hale who was a famous historian and salt maker and we haven’t been able to substantiate that, but it is one of the early houses in Malden and in the Kanawha Valley.”

Hale helped initiate the move of the state capitol to Charleston in 1870 and headed a group of investors who built the capitol building in 1871. Hale also became the mayor of Charleston that same year.

Students search for lost items from Kanawha Valley history.

*Credit: Jack Bailey/West Virginia State University*

Carl Demuth is the field coordinator for the project and an adjunct professor at Marshall University. He said it is important for students to learn about the lives of people in history.

“There’s not many other opportunities you have to be the first person to hold something that no one else has touched in fifty, a hundred, two hundred, a thousand years, and that’s what a lot of these students are doing,” Demuth said. “Working with these students lets them have the chance to embrace their own heritage and history in a way that’s a little bit different and, you know, that’s really why I’m out here.”

West Liberty University Names New President

Timothy Borchers was selected unanimously as West Liberty University’s new president by the Board of Governors Friday morning.

Borchers, who was chosen out of a group of four finalists, previously served as the vice president for Academic Affairs at Peru State College in Nebraska.

There were 59 applications for president in total, according to the university.

Borchers has 18 years of higher education administrative experience. He holds a doctoral degree in communication from Wayne State University, a master’s degree in communication from Wayne State and a bachelor’s degree in Speech Communication from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

He said he was honored for the opportunity to address the school’s challenges and find creative solutions.

“Together, we will increase enrollment,” Borchers said. “We will increase retention rates working together. I’ll be transparent. I will be a steady and consistent leader. I’ll be present on campus.”

Borchers and his wife, Suzanne Williams, plan to be on campus by the first week of June and are excited to engage in the university’s activities and culture. He will assume the presidency on July 1.

“We’re already looking forward to the first athletic and arts events of the fall semester,” he said. “We’ll be happy to have people to the house to deepen those connections, to re-engage everyone after this semester gets started.”

Borchers succeeds Interim President Dr. Cathy Monteroso who has served as president since January 1, 2023.
West Liberty chose to let the contract of previous president W. Franklin Evans expire in December after accusations that he failed to give proper attribution in several speeches.