Thursday, September 24, 2009
Jonathan Earle teaches in his Conspiracies and Paranoia in Contemporary American History class. The classroom, held in 3140 Wescoe, is nearly filled to capacity due to budget cuts and fewer instructors.
Recent budget cuts may be slowing some students’ progress because of fewer class sections and fewer faculty members, hindering the University administrators’ goal of graduating students in four years. Additionally, programs sponsored by the University, such as UKanTeach, are having to come up with alternative ways to raise money to fill the previously government-funded gap.
For fiscal year 2009-2010, the Lawrence campus budget was reduced by $17.9 million, resulting in 75 fewer class sections and 55 fewer faculty members. Overall, 121 University positions have been cut or left unfilled, and there are fewer graduate teaching assistants. The cuts require teachers and faculty to do more with less. Anderson said if the budget cuts continued, it could result in a decline in service and the quality of education for University students.
“In some programs there will be larger classes. In some programs, there may be fewer choices of classes,” Interim Provost Danny Anderson said.
He said some students might have a harder time enrolling in a required course which could make it harder to graduate in four years.
“We hope that this won’t last too long, that we will be able to put sections back that we’ve lost but that is one of the main concerns,” Greg Simpson, interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, said, “We’re always making a big push for students to graduate in four years.”
While Simpson said students were responsible for taking the correct amount of credit hours, it was the University’s responsibility to make sure the courses were available to achieve the four-year goal.
Paul Kelton, chairman of the history department, said fewer class sections would “greatly diminish” the educational experience for students.
“We are unable to offer a wider variety of courses at the upper undergraduate level,” Kelton said.
Kelton said that some of the highly specialized sections in history, such as Mexican history, would suffer because the department did not have anyone to teach it.
The reduction of classes and faculty resulted in crowded classrooms, less student-teacher interaction and difficulty getting into popular or required classes, administrators said.
Michael Ralph, Dodge City fifth-year senior, said he benefited from working closely with KU faculty. However, Ralph said he thought the increased class size would change that working relationship.
“We were close to capacity on all three of our intro classes,” Ralph said, “As big as we are now, we are going to be bigger.”
STATE IMPACT
University officials said the cuts could affect not only students but also the state workforce.
Kansas has been in short supply of math and science teachers and the UKanTeach program, run by the University, was created in 2007 to help solve the problem. The program was successful, said Steven Case, co-director of UKanTeach, but the budget cuts hindered the progress being made. The program thrives on large amount of student-teacher interaction but the number of faculty isn’t keeping up with the growing number of students.
“We have two people on faculty teaching on faculty overloads,” Case said. “The master teachers are completely overwhelmed because of the model and the way it works. I need three more master teachers next year. I don’t have any money to hire.”
Master teachers hired by the program are University professors who are very practiced and highly-experienced in classrooms.
“It’s a great problem to have because it’s like our dreams come true; the program is growing,” Williamson said. “We have a commitment to make sure that the students succeed and that we meet our promises to them. So that’s going to happen, but more people would sure help make it happen since there are more students.”
Case said that because of stifled growth there would be a cap on the number of students allowed into the program. Currently 157 students participate.
“If math and science teachers are how we prepare the next generation of the stem workforce and there are not enough out there and that system is collapsing, that’s like giving up on the future of any kind of math/science development here,” Case said.
FUNDING ALTERNATIVES
Meanwhile, colleges and programs seek alternative sources for money. Simpson said three fundraising trips for CLAS are planned for late October and early November.
“In times like this you get very entrepreneurial and we can’t be complacent about where the money is coming from,” Simpson said. “We have to figure out other places it might come from.”
The UKanTeach program was initially funded by a $1.4 million National Math and Science Initiative grant and a $250,000 gift from the Kauffman Foundation. The National Math and Science Initiative also plans to award an additional $1 million if UKanTeach can raise $1 million.
“We desperately need the donations for our million dollar match,” said Danielle Barker, science advisor for the UKanTeach program. “Even a $2 million endowment wouldn’t sufficiently cover all the bases we need to cover.”
Pressure was added as Gov. Mark Parkinson challenged the University to improve its national ranking and Chancellor Gray-Little set a goal to improve graduation rates.
“We’re just at the beginning point where we’re looking at what are ways that we can increase funding to support different kinds of projects at the University,” Anderson said, “The struggle we face is that anything that we are able to do, we have to ask ourselves, are we doing this in the most efficient way possible?”
The Kansas Board of Regents approved a request on Sept. 16 to ask the governor and the legislature for a $17 million increase for the fiscal year that starts July 1, 2010, a request Chancellor Gray-Little supports.
However, the current lack of funding is not helping the goals of the administration or the students, administrators said.
— — Edited by Betsy Cutcliff
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