After half the faculty left, students at a prestigious University of Arizona program are worried that the school won't replace their professors.
Course offerings are leaner, admissions are lower and workloads are up for the remaining faculty members at the Center for the Study of Higher Education.
College of Education Dean Ron Marx said he doesn't know if he can hire new professors. For a year, the UA has been in a hiring freeze - not filling vacant, state-funded jobs because of state budget uncertainties.
Anxious students made a plea to the Arizona Board of Regents last week to support two new hires at the center.
"Our students are preoccupied over whether our faculty will be there next year," said Danielle Miner, a doctoral student and president of the Higher Education Student Organization.
People are also reading…
The situation at the center is indicative of the kind of difficult decisions that are coming for the UA if the state continues to cut its support. The UA has been cut by $100 million in two years.
Professor John Cheslock, whom Marx described as a rising star, left for a job at Penn State last spring. The UA unsuccessfully counteroffered.
Cheslock said he wasn't looking to leave the UA and had turned down other recruiters, but he couldn't pass up the chance to move close to family members.
Assistant professor Alma Maldonado-Maldonado is leaving at the end of the semester to work for a research center in Mexico City, her hometown.
She's leaving for the opportunity, but she said the climate at the UA was a factor. Budget cuts have hurt, and the message is that worse times are coming, she said.
"I feel a lot of anxiety from people here, from my junior colleagues," Maldonado said. "Every year it's one more crisis, one more budget cut."
Additionally, professor Gary Rhoades is on a two-year leave of absence working for a professional group. And another assistant professor was recruited by Harvard, but the UA's counter- offer persuaded her to stay.
It's unclear whether either Cheslock or Maldonado will be replaced, said doctoral student Russel Potter, who appealed for answers from Provost Meredith Hay at a Graduate and Professional Student Council meeting.
The college plans to ask the provost for an exception to the hiring freeze, said Jeff Milem, an associate dean at the Education College who also teaches one class at the Center for the Study of Higher Education.
He said he understands students' concerns.
"Their fear is with the loss of faculty, it's going to be difficult to maintain the level of good work that we do," Milem said.
He called the program a gem at the UA and said the school must find a way to hire and move forward. "I'm not going to accept that this program is going to fade and go away," he said.
The center, which is more than 30 years old, has been ranked among the top programs for higher-education studies nationwide. Marx said research has doubled this year compared with past years.
Marx said he could temporarily rely on more part-time faculty members, but the center needs to hire people to do research as well as teach.
Already the school has cut administrative costs. The College of Education reorganized to four units from six. In that process, the center was combined with the Educational Leadership program to form the Department of Educational Policy Studies and Practice.
About 100 students, mostly part time, attend the center.
The faculty members who are left have twice the advising load, and some students have changed advisers four times in a year, said Potter, who added that he planned to study issues in international higher education, but there's nobody left to teach that topic.
If the UA doesn't hire, he said, "I'll either have to completely change the focus of my research or I'll have to go to another school."
Mary Venezia, a former student regent who is working on a master's degree, urged the UA to continue to support the center at the Board of Regents meeting last week.
"I was blown away by the faculty I got to work with last year," she told the board. But with the departures, "the future of the center is in jeopardy."
On StarNet: Becky Pallack writes about all things related to the University of Arizona in her blog at go.azstarnet.com/ campuscorrespondent
Contact reporter Becky Pallack at bpallack@azstarnet.com or 807-8012.
