Concerns about the future of some of the College’s programs took center stage at last Wednesday’s Student Government Association (SGA) meeting.
Billy Plastine, executive president of the SGA and senior political science and marketing double major, and Jen Hill, vice president of student services and senior women and gender studies major, attended the most recent meeting of the Committee on Planning and Priorities (CPP) and relayed a summary to members of the SGA general body.
“(The College) is going to have to start cutting programs as a result of the budget cuts,” Plastine said. “For example, it might become a reality that (the College) is going to take out the entire entity of Career Services, or an overarching group of programs. That might be reality, that we have to close an entire program, but we are also talking about levels underneath.”
No cuts will occur until after the 2010-2011 fiscal year.
The College may make cuts from the tutoring center or athletics, Hill said. “We’re trying to figure out what the criteria are for what’s worth it and what’s not.”
“CPP is not charged with making the decision of what programs stay and what go,” he said. “We’re in charge of coming up with the
principles for program closure, looking at the current ones that we have and seeing if they’re still relevant. Year after year after year of budget cuts make us say that we are going to investigate and recognize program closures as a viable opportunity.”
Despite the possibilities of program cuts from CPP, Brian Skwarek, SGA’s speaker of the general assembly and senior accounting major, recounted the results of the Committee on Academic Programs (CAP) meeting he attended, saying a new minor, Holocaust and genocide studies, may be instated.
“That is still under consideration,” he said.
He also advised students to check their final exam schedules and grading systems, as finals regulations were a topic of discussion at the CAP meeting.
“Final exams cannot be worth more than 50 percent of your grade,” he said, reminding students to discuss this with their professors if the final exam was marked as such on syllabi.
Gina Lauterio, junior political science major, who also attended the CAP meeting, urged students with more than three exams scheduled per day to take advantage of the College’s policy against this and reschedule.
“If you have three exams in one day, you are allowed to move one,” said Lauterio. “It’s school policy.”
