Merger talk reopens Family Life debate
Faced with $12 million in budget cuts, speculation is rife that Utah State University administrators are considering another reorganization — a merger of the College of Natural Resources with the College of Agriculture.
Provost Stan Albrecht said the two colleges are not in the process of merging but did not exclude the possibility.
“Everything is on the table,” he said. “We’re talking to faculty and deans and looking at every possible kind of idea.”
If the merger takes place, it will be the second significant change in the university’s academic setup since the closure of the College of Family Life last year, bringing the debate surrounding that college’s demise into sharp focus yet again.
More than six months after administrators announced that it would be reorganized, five faculty and staff of the now defunct college argue that the breakup of the 104-year-old institution was an act done in haste.
All said and done, the college was history in a couple of months — unusual, if one considers that a routine departmental review — conducted once in seven years and dictated by Board of Regents policy — takes at least one full year, according to the provost’s Web site, www.usu.edu/provost/academic_initiatives/review.htm.
President Kermit L. Hall initiated the move to review the college at a Faculty Senate meeting in early April 2002. According to a reading of the minutes of that meeting, he asked Provost Stan Albrecht to form a committee “to examine and make recommendations with regard to the future” of the college.
The following month, a May 22 article in The Salt Lake Tribune brought to light certain irregularities perceived by the faculty as signs that the college’s days were numbered. Nutrition and food sciences (NFS) professor Deloy Hendricks voiced concern about faculty receiving a fair hearing.
“We’re the only college where the search for a new dean has been put on hold. Some worry that the president has already decided to eliminate the college,” Hendricks told The Tribune.
On June 5, 2002, the three-member review committee, appointed by the provost, comprising faculty members from Penn State University, Florida State University and Purdue University in Indiana presented their “thoughts and impressions” in a letter to Albrecht, noting that their two-day campus visit was “not intended to be a comprehensive or systematic evaluation of the faculty, students and programs” in the college.
“These are initial impressions that may or may not be confirmed under more intense scrutiny,” the letter stated.
That same month, an article in the Utah State Magazine — an administration-sponsored newsletter — declared that “after months of review” the president and the provost had announced their recommendation to reorganize the college.
The matter was over and done with in two months.
Assistant Provost Sydney Peterson disagreed.
“[The Family Life review] was a reorganizing-restructuring review,” she said. “There is not a prescribed procedure for this. The instructions actually came from the president. It was a different kind of review for a different kind of process.”
Albrecht pointed out that the discussion on whether to merge Family Life’s two departments with other colleges had been going the rounds for 30 years.
“This had been discussed at various points. We just went ahead and did it last year,” he said.
Peterson explained the college had just been through a compact plan.
A compact plan is an annual, bilateral, written management agreement between an academic or administrative unit and the university administration.
“That process would have taken a year, so it’s not like it all happened in a few months,” Peterson said.
Family Life insiders — who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of job threats — beg to differ.
“Compact planning was for something entirely different. In fact, when the review team came to us and asked us, ‘Where do you want to go if you are reorganized,’ it caught us off guard. We were not thinking about being divided,” one faculty member said.
What’s more, the college’s compact plan would have recommended growth, the source added.
“We needed resources. We needed at least one more faculty member,” the source said.
Faculty and staff point to statistics and observations included in the external reviewers’ letter to the provost.
“External support has grown in a fairly consistent manner, thus continued future growth is likely as long as key faculty are retained and new faculty with the potential to attract external funds are hired,” the letter stated.
The review committee also noted that some areas of the college — specifically, the departments of nutrition and food sciences and family and human development — had developed “impressive levels of external funding,” meaning grants. Campuswide data submitted as part of the review suggests Family Life performed impressively before its reorganization.
* The college offered 1,081 majors in fall 2001, compared to 862 in the College of Agriculture and 482 in the College of Natural Resources.
* Family Life conferred 304 degrees that same year, as opposed to 119 by the College of Natural Resources and 293 by the College of Engineering.
* In terms of student credit hours for fall 2001, Family Life students gained 15,502 credit hours compared to 13,756 for Engineering and 13,344 for the College of Agriculture.
The college’s reorganization has hurt its ability to attract funding, faculty and staff point out.
“Three of our donors have pulled funding,” a faculty member said.
Albrecht said he knows of the problems but advises patience.
“These changes are not made without some bumps,” he said. “Give us some time. We’ve created synergies that will soon show results. Come back in two years.”
At the heart of the contention are economic claims offered as justification for the college’s closure. Administrators said last year that the reorganization would save the university an estimated $350,000-$500,000 on administrative positions.
“But that has never been documented,” a faculty member said.
“He [Hall] saved less than $300,000,” Hendricks pointed out. “The $11 million we were down in budget cuts at the legislative level — even if they eliminated all the colleges in the university, there is no way they could get that kind of money.”
Albrecht disagreed.
“If we were sailing along all fat and sassy, we wouldn’t have had cuts,” he said.
Hendricks is concerned about the way the university may be perceived in the state.
“I think we’ve lost a lot of credibility,” he said. “Both President Bush and Gov. Mike Leavitt have made the family a priority, and now we get rid of family programs.”
Family Life departments and programs are now spread out across various colleges on campus.
–leon@cc.usu.edu