Faculty Members Call On U. of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Chancellor to Resign Over Proposed Program Cuts

Updated (11/29/2018, 5:11 p.m.) with response from the president of Stevens Point.

More than 100 faculty and staff members at the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point on Thursday called for the campus’s chancellor, Bernie Patterson, and provost, Greg Summers, to resign in a letter to the system’s Board of Regents.

The letter followed the university’s revised plan to cut six liberal-arts programs, mostly in the humanities. Administrators had originally proposed cutting 13 majors.

“Rather than a forward-thinking strategy, Patterson’s strategy proposal arbitrarily singles out low-cost programs to cut,” the letter says. “It fails to address our dire financial emergency, which results from years of mismanagement by Patterson’s own administration.”

In March the university announced that it would close 13 academic programs to deal with a $4.5-million deficit and declining enrollment. As a way to reverse that enrollment trend, the university proposed adding 16 programs “in areas with high-demand career paths.”

Faced with criticism of that proposal, the university then reduced the number of programs to be eliminated to six, sparing seven majors. Summers, the provost, said in an interview with The Chronicle that administrators had found savings in the budget and had worked with committees and advisory boards to cut fewer programs. In an essay published in The Chronicle, he said demographic and other shifts had demanded change of regional public universities like his.

Faculty members criticized that committee work in the letter, writing that the groups had possessed “an embarrassing shortage of relevant data; and a negligible influence on the chancellor’s eventual proposal.”

“Rather than serious consideration of strategic alternatives, these groups’ months of labor amounted to an empty charade,” the letter says. “Only a handful of administrators contributed meaningfully to the recent proposal.”

The letter also states that Summers hired too many new faculty members and that the institution’s Title IX policies were not properly enforced.

In an email to The Chronicle, Patterson said the letter’s signers are a “small percentage” of the faculty and staff. But he “respects their opinion,” he said.

“They have reached a conclusion before decisions have been made, as the proposal is just being considered by our shared governance,” he said. “What I didn’t see in the letter was a specific recommendation of what to do. We are looking for solutions to serious problems.”

Patterson said he wanted the signatories to devise alternative solutions to the problems his administration is attempting to solve.

“Most faculty and staff members are confident in the leadership I have provided and are ready to move forward, to innovate, and to make the kinds of changes we’ve discussed for years,” he said. “These changes are difficult, but will position UW-Stevens Point to better serve the students and communities of central and northern Wisconsin.”

Follow Andy Tsubasa Field on Twitter at @AndyTsubasaF, or email him at andy.field@chronicle.com.