Letter bashes PSU Altoona cuts

Professors’ association asks for reversal of branch program, faculty losses

Recent faculty and program cuts at Penn State Altoona violate provisions of the university's strategic plan, serve no financial imperative, are taking place without teacher and student input and will damage donor relationships, according to a scathing open letter from a systemwide professors' association.

The university is eliminating $4.3 million from the local college budget, resulting in losses for integrative arts, mathematics and statistics, science, political science and languages; and it isn't renewing contracts for 12 faculty members -- cuts seemingly deeper and broader than at any other Penn State campus, according to Michelle Rodino-Colocino, president of the Penn State Chapter of the American Association of University Professors.

"We appeal to you to reverse these cuts immediately and restore Altoona faculty contracts and programs," states the letter, which was addressed to top university officials and approved by all association members who voted on it, according to Rodino-Colocino. "The costs outweigh any benefit," Rodino-Colocino said in a phone conversation after sending the letter late last week.

"All units across the University have been subject to budget rescissions and are tasked with finding areas within their units where reductions in expenditures can be made to absorb them," wrote university spokeswoman Lisa Powers in an email response to a request for comment -- reiterating a prior university response. "This is an annual budget planning process to look at anticipated revenues expenditures across the University and find the best way to accomplish our mission."

For this year's budgeting, "all units, colleges and campuses were asked to contemplate and submit a unit-level plan for a potential 3% budget rescission for the 2022-23 fiscal year, so that the University can understand the full range of scenarios and potential impacts in determining a budget," Powers wrote. "The final approved budget may not include any Universitywide rescission, or it may include a smaller rescission," Powers added.

The cuts at Altoona run counter to provisions in the university's strategic plan calling for support of the arts and humanities, advancement of diversity, global engagement, sustainability and adherence to core ethical values, according to the association's letter.

Those cuts will thus reduce the university's contribution to the formation of "educated, empathetic and globally engaged people who can, in turn, drive improved quality of life, inclusive community growth, and beneficial economic development," the association letter states.

The cuts will also tend to "disproportionately hurt (Black, Indigenous and people of color) and (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual) students, whom performing arts majors and minors attract," the letter states. And "in another blow to diversity, the cuts at Altoona eliminate faculty and key courses in three non-European languages -- Arabic, Korean and Russian," the association letter states.

The cuts also damage the local dance community, including some small businesses, by eliminating a source of graduates from the college dance program, according to the letter.

And the cuts will render "obsolete" the local campus' performing arts building, which was expanded 16 years ago through a $1 million gift from the late Tony Misciagna, according to the letter.

Such actions "threaten prospective donors' trust," the letter states.

The letter ought to help launch a unified effort to oppose the cuts among faculty, students, alums and community members, where there are Penn State campuses, according to Rodino-Colocino.

The letter and the protest it embodies represent faculty members simply doing what administrators ought to expect of them -- standing up for academic programs and for their colleagues, based on the principle of "shared governance" promoted by the association and the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, according to Rodino-Colocino.

Under shared governance, faculty should be primarily responsible for academic decisions and should contribute to financial decisions, according to Rodino-Colocino.

Under shared governance, faculty members shouldn't need to fear for their jobs for speaking up, she said.

And while she has not heard of any threats from the administration, she has heard that some faculty members are concerned -- based on the "climate" created by the administration, she said.

"I understand why people would be afraid," she said.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.