The president of Southern Oregon University announced on Tuesday that the university must take difficult steps to deal with its financial straits and invoked a process, known as “retrenchment,” that allows the faculty contract to be opened and puts potential program cuts on the table.
The president, Mary Cullinan, made the announcement during her “state of the university” address to the campus. The university’s financial problems, she said, stem from years of cuts in state appropriations and enrollment declines over the past two years—a pattern that she acknowledged other universities across the country also face. “I can fairly say that our world will continue to shift—nationally and globally—and our campus needs to be nimble, not just responding but staying ahead of the curve, even if we can’t quite see it yet,” she said.
The university has already gone through a process of setting priorities in its programs and identifying options for reduction or elimination but has held off taking action on the plan. “It’s time to get this done,” Ms. Cullinan said.
Eliminating programs may also mean ending the contracts of some faculty members, the university said in a news release. The retrenchment process, as defined in the faculty contract, begins with a 15-day comment period in which faculty members can weigh in on whether they believe program reductions are necessary to achieve financial sustainability. Any discussions of which programs might be reconfigured or eliminated would take place later.
Correction (11/6/2013, 6:25 a.m.): This post originally reported inconsistently the name of the university. It is Southern Oregon University, not the University of Southern Oregon. The post has been updated to reflect this correction.
