The recent news about Northwestern‘s bizarre reorganization and new Willy Wonka-esque college names may have inspired shock in the community, but little confidence in the university’s future. In fact, it was about as comforting as faculty members having university administrators tell them in termination meetings how lucky they are to be getting out now. Because, you know, the folks who are keeping their jobs will have to be tortured with the wait of not knowing when they might go as well.
Despite developing the Master of Arts in Heritage Resources program into a nationally respected program, my wife ElizaBeth (a tenured, full professor) will be the only faculty member eliminated with that program. Her equally competent counterpart in the Bachelor of Arts in Heritage Resources program, Julie Ernstein, will be the only person to go with that program.
I’ve watched ElizaBeth and Julie work tirelessly over the last six years to develop these programs so their students can enjoy an Ivy League educational opportunity at a state university in Louisiana. The programs have succeeded with many graduates who are doing significant things to preserve our country’s cultural heritage.
If you want to know why this program is probably the most valuable, sustainable and academically viable NSU has going, you can read lots of reasons in the G-Rated version of this post, located on Voices of the Past.
Here on my personal blog, I’m going to vent about a group of folks who’ve outlived their usefulness by a collective 90 years or so.
Yes, I’ve heard many millions in cuts; more coming. All Bobby Jindal’s fault. Sure, Louisiana has room for blame at all levels. But I’ve worked in PR long enough to know when a practiced line is used as an excuse, and nothing makes it less of one, no matter how many times you repeat it or try to deflect your own accountability in a situation. Using a budget crisis as a case to dispose two uniquely sustainable programs and the two people that made them that way–despite organizational offers to fundraise and appeals by state-level officials–makes no sense on any level.
Indeed, the NSU cabinet makes BP look like an institutional PR genius. Throughout this process, we’ve certainly not heard anything by the folks in authority there, or a concrete plan of action, or any way the community can help, even as a platitude. We heard nary a word to calm the fears of the faculty when the La. Board of Supervisors cited NSU as a school likely for closure in the budget crisis worsens.
Perhaps the PR journalism students could have advised them on a positive approach to build rapport and confidence with their employees in troubling times. Oh, wait. That program is gone too. Instead, we get Professor Giggles holding faculty forums where everyone is either too scared to question anything or is supplied with long, baffling non-answers worthy of an old Gracie Allen skit.
If the administration wants everyone to believe the Program Review-AKA-Elimination Committee really made these decisions, they need to buckle down on all the non-tenured junior faculty they placed on it, because that process is rapidly being revealed as a sham. Some of the programs eliminated were not even on their list to review. All the College of Ed programs put on the original list were evidently sacred cows to begin with and never could actually be considered for elimination. Despite repeated requests from faculty, the minutes from their last several meetings have not been posted on the Provost’s site as of this writing.
The inability keep up with the times is the kind of mindset that contributed to this situation above and beyond the punishment the state is now dealing out. For its part, NSU could have saved millions by now just by getting rid of the bubble time sheets and endless quadruplicate forms that went out of style everywhere else 20 years ago. Where’s the accountability for lack of decision making?
For their part, the Heritage Resources programs could teach a few lessons in integrity to some of NSU’s other degree programs — including one that I happen to have a master’s in — that would compare much less favorably in the sunlight of a genuine review process based on academic merit. If this is strictly a numbers game, fine. But at least go ahead rename it Northwestern Community College and not kid the world about potential contributions to scholarship.
By now, everyone has heard the refrain that the administration “just can’t help it. Our hands are tied” (insert tears). If there’s ANY cabinet-level professor from ANY university who can’t make the intellectual leap from slavish reliance on state-run formulas to finding creative ways for keeping a low-cost, nationally recognized program alive, let a computer in Baton Rouge do his or her job. That should free up funds for the salaries of a good two or three professors who are losing theirs. Or at least give the money to someone who has the courage to make a public stand for quality higher education, win or lose. Leaders at other universities are doing this!
Really, what’s to lose at this point?
The thought of leaving my hometown because of some shell game that moves a bunch of people and departments around but does little else to solve the long-term problems of the university is a bit sickening. Then again, I can’t honestly look at my child and say my best hopes and dreams for her future lie in this kind of educational environment. Could you?
That’s a huge realization because Natchitoches and the Cane River region are so core to my identity. I’m proud that there are few places in the U.S. with the diversity of cultural heritage and organizational partnerships that could have supported the heritage resources programs so well in the first place.
Even when things have not been historically good in Louisiana, we could always fall back on pride in our cultural heritage and traditions to get us through the hard times. That’s in jeopardy now with events like the oil disaster. But students and graduates from these programs are on the ground down there right now, safeguarding our heritage resources with the skills and training they’ve learned from these unique programs at Northwestern State University.
The sad fact is that the future of our state and town is evaporating at such a rapid rate that the media and citizenship have been blinded by it and our educational future dies for lack for interest. This will all be a fascinating case study for somebody’s thesis someday, obviously at some other state’s university.
NSU needs to take a cue from UNO, which, before any faculty or program cuts were made, eliminated some of its floundering athletic programs and moved others down from NCAA Division I to Division III, resulting in a tremendous budgetary savings. The Creole Heritage Center and the MAHR program brought revenue, partnerships, and national recognition to NSU and Natchitoches. It’s difficult to justify the money that NSU spends on the sacred cow of athletics when viable academic programs and cultural centers are being cut and the library is begging for donations of used books because it has no budget to purchase them.