UVM faculty upset with cutbacks in College of Arts and Sciences

[B]URLINGTON — The University of Vermont’s College of Arts and Sciences is moving to cut costs by eliminating faculty positions and increasing class sizes for introductory courses.

These moves have upset the college’s faculty, who say that the university is moving away from funding its educational mission in exchange for non-essential amenities and that larger class sizes will hurt students.

Two longtime non-tenured faculty — one in the classics department and one in romance languages and linguistics — are not being renewed for the next academic year.

Ten additional faculty members who currently work full time are getting their positions reduced to less-than-full-time status, CAS Dean Bill Falls wrote in an email to faculty announcing the changes in December.

But as positions are getting cut, the numbers of students in some of the college’s introductory courses will be increasing. The maximum number of students in some introductory courses will be rising to 60.

Nancy Welch, a professor of English, said that she sees the moves as part of a broader shift in the university’s priorities, away from academics.

“I think we’re really losing the soul of UVM and why students come here,” she said. “Regardless of what they chose to major in, they are promised small classes and faculty contact. That’s what is promised, that’s what makes us different and that’s what is being taken away.”

Student enrollment in CAS has fallen 17 percent in the last eight years, Falls said. Over time, students have been drawn more toward the social and natural sciences, he said.

These cuts are part of a wider effort to adjust staffing resources to follow student demand, which Falls said he realized was necessary when he took over as dean in 2015.

“We had staffing that was more like the staffing when we had far more students before the recession,” he said. “We knew that at that time, we had to undertake a strategy to right-size the faculty to match more of where the students are and how many students we have.”

CAS has 81 non-tenure-track full-time equivalent (FTE) lecturer and senior lecturer positions, and a total of 241 tenure/tenure-track full-time equivalent positions. The cuts would represent only 1.3 percent of the college’s FTE faculty, Falls wrote in his December announcement to faculty.

The college’s tenure/tenure-track faculty has decreased 5 percent while the non-tenure-track faculty increased 16 percent in the last eight years, Falls wrote.

Faculty and students gathered Tuesday afternoon at a meeting organized by United Academics, the UVM faculty union. More than 100 people attended the meeting.

Sarah Alexander, a professor of English and the president of the union, said that the teachers who have their jobs reduced from full time to part time but have their caps increased would end up teaching the same number of students for less money.

Larger class sizes would also affect the number of assignments faculty can assign and grade and the quality of classroom discussions, Alexander said.

Many students take classes in CAS during their first two years at UVM, and Welch said she is concerned the larger class sizes and lack of personal interaction with the faculty in those classes could inspire students to transfer.

“Historically, the advantage of UVM is you got all the benefits and opportunities of a research university with a liberal arts focus and attention,” she said. “That’s what we’re losing, and we don’t have to.”

In increasing student numbers in introductory classes, Falls said that the college is making exceptions for drawing classes, writing intensive courses, language and speech courses, and courses in gender, sexuality, women’s studies, and race and ethnic studies. In these courses, smaller class sizes are necessary to foster learning.

But in some other disciplines, Falls said, the college saw an opportunity to give students more access to some of the introductory level courses without hurting their experience.

Falls also said only a small portion of the introductory level classes would see an enrollment increase, and that non-tenure-track faculty wouldn’t be disproportionately affected by the changes.

“I understand and respect the faculty concern, but I am not awfully concerned about the number and type of courses where enrollment is going to increase,” he said. “Really, it’s about equity across the college, taking that college view of how we’re offering courses, and giving students access.”

The classics department has been particularly hard hit by faculty staffing reductions. Two longtime faculty members have retired in recent years and lecturer Brian Walsh is not being renewed for next year.

Jacques Bailly, a professor in the classics department, said that the department has lost 40 percent of its teaching capacity with the changes.

He said the university’s incentive-based budgeting (IBB) model has forced the College of Arts and Sciences to compete with other colleges in the school for resources. But with the cuts, they are not able to offer students the same level of quality as they have been in the past.

“It feels like we are being punished more because we were punished before,” he said. “They’ve built a pit for us, given us a shovel and told us to dig out of it, but the only way to dig is down.”

Falls said that the college’s decreasing student enrollment would have led to faculty cuts under any budgeting system. He said IBB gives deans more of an ability to make budgeting decisions, and encourages them to take steps to attract more students.

“No budget model is perfect, but I don’t think we should lose sight of the fact that this is part of a national trend of declining enrollment in the arts and sciences,” he said.

Falls said the college is working on communicating to prospective students the value of degrees in the humanities and is pursuing other strategies to increase enrollment.

Celine Fraser, a senior art history and classics double major, said that as a person of color on UVM’s campus, she’s felt that professors in CAS have been the most dedicated to trying to understand the experiences of others and encouraging their students to do the same.

“If they really want people who represent a holistic view of the world, they would support the College of Arts and Sciences, and would support the humanities,” she said.