Faculty from the departments of community and rural sociology, German, sport management, and theater and dance took the podium during Tuesday’s Faculty Senate meeting to argue that eliminating their programs would be detrimental to students and would harm WSU’s long-term strategic goals.
Their comments and the comments of faculty senators and others in attendance will be incorporated into feedback that senate leaders planned to present today to Provost Warwick Bayly. Bayly and President Elson S. Floyd were present at the meeting to hear the discussion, but did not participate.
Community and Rural Sociology
Raymond A. Jussaume, chair of community and rural sociology, said his department brings in more grant money and educates more students than the budget materials give them credit for.
According to Jussaume, faculty in his department which offers a minor in community studies, but not a major or postgraduate degree are intensely involved in interdisciplinary research, particularly with the School of Economic Sciences, but other departments as well. Grant money and students shared by CRS faculty tend to be counted in the other departments even when CRS faculty are crucial to the success of the grant or the educational program, he said.
Kent Keller, professor and assistant director of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, also spoke in support of the CRS department, saying he was chair of a committee that has recommended bringing the CRS faculty into the SEES, along with faculty from natural resource sciences, to create a multidisciplinary unit focused on sustainability and the environment.
“The key point for this discussion is that societal agency is part and parcel both of the environmental problems of the past and the emergence of future possibilities,” he said, and by eliminating the CRS, WSU loses much needed expertise in that area.
German
Eloy Gonzales, chair of the department of foreign languages and cultures, said even while his department has recommended increasing course offerings in Asian languages, it never intended to sacrifice German. In fact, he said, part of WSU’s strategic vision is to increase global education and require more students to study foreign languages.
“German must remain part of the curriculum at WSU,” he said.
Rachel Halverson, associate professor of German and one of two full-time faculty members in the program, said eliminating the program would be a significant loss to WSU students, not only for those who want to major in German, but for those in other fields who want to enhance their career prospects in business, engineering or the sciences.
As one example, she said, Germany is a leader in green technology and the German government has money to invest in bringing U.S. students to Germany to study.
“I’ve worked very successfully with our students to secure that extramural funding,” she said.
Retaining a minor in German would be better than eliminating the program entirely, she said, but a minor is not sufficient to give students the ability to compete at a high level of fluency and cultural competency.
In addition, she said, 72 high schools in the state of Washington offer German language instruction; if German is eliminated at WSU, those students would need to go elsewhere to continue their studies.
Sport management
Cathryn Claussen, associate professor in sport management, said sport management was cut because it is considered an outlier in the College of Education; but, she said, many sport management majors do find careers in athletic departments in high schools and colleges.
Responding to the argument that the department is not accredited by its national accrediting body, Claussen said sport management accreditation standards were in a state of flux for the past several years and her department decided to wait until the standards were agreed on before applying for accreditation. Those standards were finally set in July 2008, making July 2009 the department’s first opportunity to apply for accreditation.
But, Claussen and others said, the main reason to keep the major is because it offers a program that students want and that is not available at any other public university in the Pacific Northwest and possibly the West Coast, even while there are numerous programs in the east, southeast and Midwest.
Typically the department admits 50-55 undergraduates each year, Claussen said, but in recent years the dean of the college asked that they admit only 30 new students annually. In a survey she took recently, Claussen said, 85 percent of sport management students said they came to WSU specifically to study sports management, and nearly 50 percent said they would leave if the program were cut.
According to Claussen, the cost of the program is $300,000 annually, but tuition brings in more than $1 million.
John Wong, a faculty member in sport management, said there is no school in the region, public or private, that has as strong a program in sports management as WSU.
“Potentially we can grow and we can monopolize the whole West Coast,” he said.
Theater and Dance
Laurilyn Harris, chair of the department of theater and dance, began her presentation by responding to two rationales given for cutting the program the department is not accredited and faculty do not publish scholarly research.
First, she said, theater and dance has historically been a program within a larger department; it only became an independent program and so eligible for accreditation in 2007. In 2008, the department was able to hire a professional costumer, a requirement for accreditation, and now needs only to hire a half-time set designer to be fully qualified for accreditation.
Second, Harris said both she and Terry Converse, the other tenured faculty member in the department, do publish scholarly work, and every member of the department is engaged in creative, scholarly work. But, she said, like other artists, their most important scholarly works are their performances.
“To evaluate this kind of work you need to see the work that we do,” she said. The department produces five plays and two dance concerts every year.
Further, Harris said, eliminating the theater program damages WSU’s stature as a top-tier university. Not only does every AAU university have a theater department, she said, but so does every one of WSU’s peer universities.
“What kind of academic world do we want to live in and, for that matter, what kind of world do we want to live in?” asked Converse.
