***Below provides ongoing, crowdsourced documentation of the consequences of Academic Program Prioritization for the Ithaca College community. The ripple effects will be vast and immeasurable.***
- Discontinued Departments and their Majors
- Ithaca College Integrated Curriculum
- Communication Studies
- Major in Communication Studies
- All curriculum focused on oral communication (including the basic public speaking course, business and professional communication, rhetorical theory and history, storytelling, literary performance), as well as approaches to human communication studied through social scientific paradigms (interpersonal communication, small group communication, intercultural, gender) will be eliminated
- Will impact thousands of students whose ICC requirements and/or professional interests led them to complement their major in CMST
- Provided alternate location to students who could not access Park school offerings because of enrollment pressures
- Loss of Forensics Program, founded in 1932, which offers opportunities for student interaction across the country and abroad, and itself draws a strong number of international students, as well as domestic students from underrepresented groups, with the cut of Scott Thomson who has been running the program for the past 20 years
- Debate team funding transferring from the department to Office of Student Engagement
- Gerontology Institute will be restructured
- Questions about how the Aging Studies Minor and the Institute activities will be viable without a department or shared home base
- Questions about how the 700+ intergenerational interactions that occur each YEAR through the IC partnership with Longview will be scheduled and recruited for, and how students will be educated and trained for safety, without department and with loss of Partnership Coordinator Prof. Jessica Valdez Taves
- Lost or greatly restricted access to the shuttle between IC-LV, a shared service, without Prof. Valdez Taves
- Major in Therapeutic Recreation
- Major in Outdoor Adventure Leadership
- Immersion Semester Program, one-of-a-kind, 18-credit outdoor excursion, cut
- RLS stewards “the critical importance of outdoor recreation for mental health and physical well–being. Ithaca College has always been a leader in this regard; it would be a tragic loss to imagine IC, and the City of Ithaca, without this important department’s contributions.”
- Loss of swimming experiences between students and members of the Racker Centers; loss of learning for students re: disabilities and therapeutic recreation.
- “Along with their courses, students attend field schools, earn departmental honors, contribute to publications as both students and alumni, present at conferences, give TedX talks, lead public seminars and bring notable speakers to campus. Anthropology majors are routinely selected to represent the Summer Scholars Program and join the National Anthropology Honors Society. Students across the college double major or minor in anthropology, demonstrating its inherent interdisciplinary nature. Moreover, the department provides significant numbers of general education courses through the Integrative Core Curriculum.”
- “Fewer opportunities for seminars, research opportunities, honors, or notable speakers related to anthropology, and faculty research will suffer due to higher teaching loads and funding changes.”
- Question of what will happen to anthropology collection materials
- Anthropology major has been redesigned as "interdisciplinary"
- 116 Full-Time Equivalent faculty positions cut
- This number means more than 116 faculty members will be fired, given that adjuncts do not usually occupy one full time equivalent position. Some cut positions will come from attrition and retirements, but it seems that approximately 75 union members were released in May 2020, so in total, more than 116 human people will be fired from faculty ranks.
- Loss of mentors, researchers, teachers, advisers, role-models, mentors, performers, writers, collaborators, livelihood, goodwill, and friendship
- The ten undergraduate teacher education majors housed in the School of Humanities and Sciences (certification programs in K-12 Art, 7-12 Physics, 7-12 Biology, 7-12 Chemistry, 7-12 German, 7-12 French, 7-12 Spanish, 7-12 English, 7-12 Social Studies, 7-12 Mathematics)
- Three undergraduate teacher education majors in the School of Health Sciences and Human Performance (Health Education, Health and Physical Education, and Physical Education). This program is one of the first programs ever offered at Ithaca College, and has a very long list of alumni.
- Eliminated graduate programs
- Performance grad students lead unique secondary instrument classes
- Conducting grad students run the Campus Band
- Impacts to Theatre Arts (Musical Theatre and Opera)
- Required courses, as well as productions, will no longer have piano support
- Potential loss of NAST accreditation without pianists
- Two FT Staff Accompanists will need to be hired to make up loss of students—(cost difference between $9,000 a year and $45,000 plus benefits a year)
- M.M. in Composition
- M.M. in Suzuki Pedagogy and String Performance
- Lost role-models, GAs, TAs, tutors, programmers, schedulers: “Graduate students and assistants do much of the behind-the-scenes work in the school, including helping conduct ensembles, filling teaching assistant positions, teaching non-major classes, teaching secondary instrument classes, accompanying ensembles and running social media accounts for the school.”
- Grad students are accompanists for students across campus; offer music lessons to non-music majors
- Loss of Graduate Recital impacts performance and production opportunities for B.F.A.s in Theatre Arts
- Overall loss of capacity and enrollment opportunities for Music and Theatre Arts
- “If IC can not attract students at a high enough standard to fill their ensembles, the quality of the ensembles diminishes, the reputation of the quality of IC lessens, this leads to fewer qualified students applying and the cycle continues to spiral downwards.”
- Loss of musicians for local productions, i.e. Hangar Theatre
- Impact on IC’s founding music conservatory reputation
- Lost co-curriculars, extracurriculars, and community service
- Will lose cocurricular funding through Comm Studies, making acquiring budgets/funding for tournaments difficult
- Will lose large draw of international and underrepresented students
- Cutting Prof. Arroyo means potential termination of the Model United Nations and Model European Union
- “UN has been repeatedly cited by alumni and donors as one of the major experiences binding them to IC. Before IC cancelled the activities due to COVID-19, there were a total of 31 students participating in both programs (22 in MUN and 9 in MEU).”
- IC Intercambios (ESL Teaching to Local Farmworkers) will likely be gone; with loss of Prof. Sergio Pedro
- Big Brothers Big Sisters (mentoring at-risk youth) with lose Prof. Sergio Pedro
- Ithaca Outing Club, housed in RLS, recommended to be cut; loss of Prof. Matt Vosler
- Student Alliance for Israel (SAFI) will lose faculty member Jennifer Herzog
- Image Text Ithaca Press (iTi), a press that publishes work from national and international artists as well as thesis work from students in the program, will be dismantled along with the Image Text MFA
- International, peer-reviewed online journal (Alluvian) and student-led online environmental communication outlet (Roots) will lose IC base; with loss of Prof. Fae Dremock
- The Racker Center’s Swim Program “partners children with disabilities with [RLS] students at the college, playing “an important role for the children in their development, and the Ithaca College students as they learn to work and communicate with people with disabilities. Removing this crucial program will be detrimental to our community, IC students and Racker.”
- ⅓ of Ithaca Youth Bureau employees are alumni of RLS
- Sandara Steingraber will be leaving IC with large grant for innovative center
- “I could no longer honestly assure my grantor that the climate initiative it was funding had the broad and deep support of the IC faculty, staff and administration.”
- Both faculty co-chairs of Climate Action Group slated for lay-offs; nine professors in total who teach on climate change
- Compromised educational diversity
- The school has opted to discontinue its sponsorship of the Ithaca City of Asylum International Visiting Scholar position--a partnership that specifically sheltered writers/artists from across the globe who are facing censorship, imprisonment, or threat of death in their home countries. This year’s scholar was Pedro Molina, a Nicaraguan political cartoonist. ICOA is now scrambling to find him a position at Cornell or elsewhere, since returning to Nicaragua with his family is not an option.
- “In addition to U.S. Politics, Prof. Moon teaches core courses in the subfield of U.S. Politics and Political Theory, including: Constitutional Law, U.S. Supreme Court, Black Political Thought, Theory and Practice of Race, Theory and Practice of Punishment, Political Theory of Conservatism, Radical Social Criticism: Rousseau, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Foucault, Contemporary Political Theory, Theory and Practice of Toleration, Transitions to Modernity: Social Theory and the Persistence of Religion, and others... Every year, Professor Moon adjusts to Department needs via intense reading, research, and calibration of lesson plans. Recently Professor Moon has stretched into Legal Studies (Foundations in Law, LGST 10100)....Removing this position affects the capacity of students to be guaranteed a place in the class as needed in their freshman year.”
- “Prof. Arroyo teaches courses that have always been well-enrolled and in high demand in European Politics, Politics of the European Union, International Organizations, and Food and Water: The Challenges of Sustainability (Integrative Core Curriculum course, Social Science perspective), all of which have policy content and cover important and current global and national themes. Students graduating with a degree in Politics/International Politics will lack an understanding of the areas such as International Institutions, the European Union, and Politics in Europe. Prof. Arroyo offers advanced level courses such as Catholics and Politics, Comparative Welfare States, and Practicum in International Governance. These courses are crucial to the department’s International Politics Concentration. Dr. Arroyo teaches Exploring the Options for the Exploratory Program at I.C., and the Food and Water course that covers topics that are urgent and that discuss current global topics like water privatization and food sovereignty).”
- “...we will lose the ability to attract exploratory students and students who major or work in Journalism, PCIM-Independent Media, Documentary Studies, TVR, Business, Health Policy and Management, all of which strongly encourage U.S. Politics for the foundation it gives them for future careers in those industries.”
- “...far-reaching effects on our degree programs because each one of us represents specific specialty areas.”
- “The elimination of Dr. Fae Dremock’s position means that students would lose her invaluable expertise in writing, science communication, and environmental humanities, as well as life experience in environmental advocacy and resilience as a first generation BIPOC (LatinX) woman.”
- “The elimination of our part-time faculty members Mr. Tim Drake and Mr. Jed Jordan will result in the loss of irreplaceable expertise and teaching skill in experiential environmental education. Mr. Drake has been a leading force in contemplative pedagogy and in the formation of the Nature Rx program at IC.”
- A reduction for the available sections that COMP105, Intro to Web Development, can be taught a year from 8 - 9 sections down to one 1. COMP105 is a requirement for the Web Programming and Graphic Design minors. COMP105 is also an elective for Emerging Media majors, an ICC Creative Arts course, a communication skills course for Culture and Communication, a tool/skill course for Environmental Studies, and a media creation course for the Media Literacy minor. All four sections of COMP105 currently offered in the Spring of 2021 are full in one section and the most number of seats open in other sections are 3. The reduction of sections of this course will also limit opportunities for students to become TA’s, which is a very impressive job for anyone looking to enter a technical field. The amount of TA hours will also reduce from being offered 5 days a week to 2 days a week and will overwhelm the one TA on this course.
- Overloaded existing faculty and staff
- Curricular: “These cuts will force immediate and drastic curricular changes upon a greatly reduced faculty. The remaining faculty will have to scramble to cover courses taught by released colleagues, and in some cases, they will be forced to revise majors and minors.”
- Will require part-time support and overloads immediately and consequently during faculty sabbaticals and leaves, or following retirements
- Faculty will need to take up extra advising load, even NTENs who aren’t fired and are teaching full 24-credit load/yr
- Staffing to organize for key courses, programs, and accreditation will require dramatic increases to compensate loss
- The APP-recommended shift to 4-credit courses as standard = need for departments to rethink and revise curricula (particularly in H & S). This will create a large, overwhelming workload in order to meet APP-stipulated target of fall 2022.
- Accelerated severance of staff
- Reduced students means reduced need for facilities and services from dorms to dining halls to admission
- Reduced transdisciplinary scope; increased siloing
- Course sections across the college will become limited to majors based on availability
- Capacity for restricted electives in other departments will likewise become strained
- The closure of the ICIC program, by its design ‘interdisciplinary,’ removes certain multidisciplinary learning and team-teaching opportunities from the campus.
- It also removes systems thinking from the curriculum, opportunities for students to learn in low-stakes, high-impact one-credit courses.
- This will also impact the Integrative (fka Planned) Studies students, who are expected to enroll in ICIC interdisciplinary courses as part of their degrees.
- It will impact the casual community of professors in the ICIC program, who were regularly invited to engage with each other to discuss the ICIC courses and facilitation guides.
- Diminished intellectual campus vitality
- Lost research, publication, talks, classes, events, visitors, and collaboration as a result of cut faculty members, departments, and programs
- Low morale, increased workload, and collective grief = less ability and willingness to provide service and outreach of this sort (e.g., invited speakers, symposia, etc)
- Diminished committee membership
- Fired faculty spearhead and serve on school-wide committees such as Faculty Development; ICC Diversity and Inclusion; ICC Writing (Proposal); IC Natural Lands; Residential Education; and IC College Mindfulness, as well as the Contingent Faculty Union
- Contingent Faculty seats on certain school-wide committees will be difficult to fill (e.g., Council, Faculty Development) with fewer contingent faculty working at IC.
- Suspended growth potential and immediate revenues
- Cuts were made before growth areas were identified
- This is the opposite of ‘strategic’ and anything ‘well-planned’; Growth (Phase III) and Reorganization (Phase II) should have preceded cuts (Phase I).
- Ex: Politics is forced “to suspend the plans to move ahead with the policy minor/concentration persistently requested by students and identified by the external assessment as critical to our program; both Prof. Arroyo and Prof. Moon were to play significant roles in this minor/concentration.”
- Massive budget deficits forecast for fiscal year 2021-22 are not addressed in the current plan/APP.
- Concerns with ability to fulfill different departmental language requirements, given cuts to courses and languages
- Ex: Politics-“Students will struggle to take advantage of study abroad opportunities which are profiled during our admissions events and on our college website; this is because they will be forced to take an introductory U.S. politics class in their sophomore year and then intermediate courses in the year they had planned to study abroad.”
- Ex: Nine Theatre Arts requirements are delivered by Communication Studies
- Confusion for students who may have to remain in shuttered majors; how will shrunken or withered depts ‘teach out’ existing majors?
- Registrar’s Office and associate deans should expect an abundance of work re: waivers, substitutions, and fundamental changes to students’ programs so that they can graduate.
- Negative impacts on the student experience
- Also has impacts on remaining advisors, who will potentially have to pick up larger loads, thus diminishing the quality of advising overall
- Staff is taking on double/triple functions, which means less support for programs being touted as models (first gen; exploratory)
- Staff are made subject to “other duties as assigned” clauses in their work agreements in order to be given extra duties to make up for fired colleagues
- Less support and security
- Less educational and extracurricular options
- Less student travel for student research/field experiences
- Those willing to do the work of organizing are being forced out and there will also be less and less funding for it
- Negatively affected admission
- Less attractions/draw for future students
- Negative impact on national and regional competitiveness
- Loss of confidence in IC’s future
- Decreased student retention
- Students from programs impacted will be less likely to stay at IC
- Damaged national reputation
- Diminished degree value
- Decreased competitiveness
- Decreased attractiveness for future faculty and staff
- Damaging precedent and paucity of vision for other schools grappling with prospective cuts
- Less donations
- Less public support for IC
- Reduced recruitment of future students
- Inadequate Alumni Association Board representation
- Faculty members forced to permanently leave academia
- Faculty members losing immigration status
- Faculty members unable to stay in Ithaca
- Worklife strains on faculty members whose partners were cut
- Uprooted lives, networks, teaching, research
- Detrimental effects to local economy (stores, bars, restaurants, hotels/tourism, services)
- IC community are workers, volunteers, and consumers
- Diminished loyalty, morale, and trust in the institution and its legacy
- Potential for newly-hired tenure-track faculty (fall 2020, 2019 start dates) to seek employment elsewhere
- This could create the seemingly latent consequence of leaving some departments decimated by APP-related firings and subsequent voluntary resignations by untenured faculty who seek better environments and opportunities elsewhere
- Newly-hired tenure-track faculty (fall 2020, fall 2019) will have fewer potential mentors (due to stressed, demoralized, overworked senior colleagues) and potentially a bumpier path to tenure, with fewer college resources currently on offer
- ‘Bait and switch’ hiring for fall 2020 tenure-track, as there are no resources for professional development, travel, research course release, internal grants or funds; no retirement matching funds
- Also: departments that do not convert to 4-credit courses as standard will move to a 21-credit teaching load of 4-3 (at 3 credits). Departments that do convert to 4-credit courses as standard will move to a 20-credit teaching load of 3-2. For some newly-hired faculty this will represent growing inequities.
- Lost institutional memory
- The 38 faculty members who disclosed their layoffs represent a total combined 396 years of service
- Retired faculty and staff (May 2020) who will, in many cases, not be replaced, had hundreds, if not thousands of years of service, expertise, and memory (of the Whalen years in particular)
- Missing narratives about why the college’s faculty handbook prioritizes tenure and tenure-track faculty, and employed so many non-tenure eligible notice (NTEN) positions that were easily axed in the APP process
- Eliminate tenure-track lines after retirement, thus shrinking departments and capacity (without consultation of the department or curricular or pedagogical justification)
- Force retirements of faculty and staff
- Intimidate contingent faculty
- Intimidate tenure-track and tenured faculty
- Generate anxiety and paranoia
- Authorize further cuts
- Dilute the strength of programs and majors by requiring them to create smaller majors (example: 10 classes at 3 credits = 30 credits) or interdisciplinary majors (see the proposed new “Anthropology” major)
- Equity?
- Academic excellence?
- Respect and accountability?
- Innovation?
- Sustainability?
- Consequences of cuts to administrative pay, positions, consultants, and perks
- We were told that there were approximately 15 positions cut or not filled ‘in administration’ or/and that report to deans, provost/vice-presidents, and the president, with savings of $2 million. We do not know who was cut.
For news, commentary, and actions concerning the APP:
Contact: smsorentino@gmail.com for questions or editing access