Interim Dean Luiza Deprez has asked the Communication and Media Studies (MES) programs to evaluate their majors and consider merging. The Geosciences and Environmental Science and Policy (ESP) programs are also being targeted for a merger. With over $450,000 cut last spring from the academic affairs budget and $200,000 of it from CAS colleges within the University have had to make concessions to meet shrinking budgets The faculty of these programs are in the initial stages of brainstorming what these mergers could look like.
When budget cuts are made there are several approaches to reigning in spending: reducing the budget through salary expenditures, which oftentimes means freezing faculty hires, increasing revenue, which comes from raising tuition and fees, and decreasing efficiency spending which encompasses travel and conferences expenses. While tuition was raised 4.3 percent for instate-undergraduate students, a hiring freeze was also put into effect last spring. Other options to overcome budget obstacles include a university wide restructuring approach according to Provost Joe Wood. Deprez said the aim of the restructuring is to better utilize resources. She said that if the targeted programs can create a critical mass by merging they would be more likely to warrant new hires.
“The request was for us to talk about merging,” said Associate Professor of ESP Samantha Langley Turnbaugh. According to Deprez these programs have inherent commonalities that lend themselves to possible overlap. Turnbaugh would like to see other programs involved in the process. She feels there are degrees outside of GEO that overlap more with ESP. “We would like there to be many options but there has only been one presented.” Senior ESP major Sarah Coombs echoed her professors sentiments: “We have more in common with a lot of other departments…why did they pick geosciences.”
In the case of MES, which has over 200 majors, many elements came into play to put this process into action. Wood said MES wasn’t complying with Board of Trustee governance policies. Though MES was approved as a degree program Wood said that does not constitute the same independence as a department. “They have pretended they are a separate department…and that’s not approved, so figure out how you’re going to work together.” Deprez and others have said faculty numbers have been a problem for both communication and MES, with each program housing over 200 majors. “They’re trying to deliver a major and there’s no faculty,” said Communication Professor Richard West. Two of the faculty listed under media studies were hired as and remain communication professors.
One of these, Communication Professor and former Chair of MES Dan Panici is on sabbatical and could not be reached for comment. The other, Kathryn Lasky, also an MES professor, did not return phone calls. Interim Chair of MES David Pierson is the newest faculty in the program and was appointed to the chair position last semester.
Pierson said of the merger “I think it would be beneficial…I’m for what everybody agrees.”
Both Wood and Deprez have maintained that it is not their plan to cut any degrees from the curriculum. Wood said his request is that the entities begin to review their majors requirements and see if the inherent overlap of the disciplines might constitute some shared courses. “A little cross-fertilization wouldn’t be bad, he said.”
Media Studies senior Amy Bickford said it’s important that the current media classes continue to be offered because it’s more of a preparation for a career than the theory focused communication courses.
Irwin Novak, chair and associate professor of geosciences, agreed with Wood and Deprez and said that both ESP and geosciences are committed to maintaining their degrees. He also commented on the communication/MES situation: “they just got divorced and now they’re getting remarried.” Geosciences, which has four faculty and 17 majors this semester, was not allowed to finish their search for a fifth faculty member last spring due to the hiring freeze. Though their number of majors is small, they are able to maintain their degree because a large percentage of the courses they offer fulfill general education (core) requirements. Many of the sciences “got degrees on the coattails of serving the core,” said Novak.
Wood alluded that both communication and MES have requested additional faculty be hired. “What we are asking is legitimate…the answer to me is not just give us more faculty.”
Before MES broke away from communication becoming its own degree program in the fall of1997 it was a track within communication, which means they shared introductory courses. Since then the program has moved not only theoretically further (no sharing of intro courses) but also physically further away from the communication department to the point that the two entities are no longer housed on the same campus. The communication offices are on the Gorham campus and the MES offices are in Portland.
Christy McKinnon can be contacted at [email protected]