The president of Utica College, Laura Casamento, on the prompting of Utica’s Board of Trustees, has really useful that the college not supply college students the chance to main in philosophy. A petition has been launched to protest the proposed elimination of the philosophy main.
Picture from AAUP-Utica
Utica Philosophy Professor Douglas Edwards writes in with the next info:
On Wednesday January 18th, 2023, the President of Utica University, Laura Casamento, and the Chair of the Board of Trustees, Robert Brvenik really useful the elimination of 15 majors, together with Philosophy, and likewise demanded that 8 different applications wanted to make important adjustments or face elimination.
The method for reducing applications started again in September 2022 when the Board of Trustees of the College charged the College with conducting an Tutorial Portfolio Evaluate, on account of what they referred to as “an unsustainable faculty-to-student ratio”, which requested for suggestions for program deletion. While this was claimed to be for the aim of reducing prices, no info has been given on how any of the proposed cuts will save the College any cash.
The place of the Utica College school union, AAUP-Utica, is that the Tutorial Portfolio Evaluate violates the phrases of the Collective Bargaining Settlement between the College and AAUP-Utica. AAUP-Utica filed a formal grievance in regard to this on January tenth, which is ongoing. Regardless of the continuing grievance, the College went forward with its announcement of the proposed cuts, with the Board of Trustees on account of take motion on the suggestions on February seventeenth.
Utica College (which was ‘Utica Faculty’ till 2022) is a small non-public establishment in upstate New York. It serves a primarily native inhabitants, a lot of whom are first-generation faculty college students. Utica considerably lowered its tuition charges in 2016 in an effort to make a small faculty increased training expertise extra accessible. We consider that the proposed cuts violate the mission of the College, by eradicating key facets of a better training expertise from college students who deserve higher.
Our philosophy division is myself (Douglas Edwards), Christopher Riddle, Leonore Fleming, and John Lawless. We’re delicate to the wants of our college students, and have developed dynamic programs and applications which display the benefits {that a} philosophical training can have, significantly to those that haven’t encountered it earlier than. We’re devoted and award-winning academics and researchers who additionally do important service work for the establishment. Removed from a shrinking division, over the course of the final 11 years our program has developed from 3 college students to a median of 50-70 minors and majors, and from 1 to 4 tenured or tenure-track school, largely as a result of tireless work of our Chair, Chris Riddle, who started the revitalization of the philosophy program when he arrived in Utica in 2012.
The College arrange a two-week ‘commenting interval’ on the proposed cuts, however the commenting system will solely settle for feedback from folks with a utica.edu e mail deal with. If folks within the philosophical group wish to supply their assist, please signal our change.org petition earlier than January thirty first. I’ll then obtain the petition and add it to the formal commenting system utilizing my Utica login.
When you’ve got another feedback you wish to make outdoors of the petition, please be happy to e mail them to me at [email protected], and I can add these too.
The total record of proposed majors to be minimize is: Legal Justice (on-line), Chemistry, Fraud and Monetary Crime (on campus), Geoscience, Healthcare Administration, Worldwide Research, Diet, Philosophy, Physics (BA), Public Relations and Advertising and marketing, Sociology and Anthropology, Spanish, Therapeutic Recreation. We anticipate there being additional petitions in opposition to the cuts typically, and I’ll put up particulars within the feedback as and when they’re accessible.
You may learn and signal the petition here.
