The Student Collective Volume VII Issue I

The changes to the academic
portfolio and general education
package “will impact adjunct teaching
assignments,” according to the
announcement. The university will
also “be evaluating the full impact of
staffing changes in the next few weeks.”
Students within affected programs
were notified by their departments on
Monday, coinciding with the universitywide
release of the new plan.
After a department meeting, one
humanities faculty member noted that
“morale is really low right now [among
faculty].” Some faculty members have
felt passed over during the consulting
process, though Scott told The Crescent
that administration “invited input from
all relevant constituencies including
students, staff, faculty, and alumni.”
George Fox’s current governance
system gives the administration and
board the authority to eliminate
programs without approval from the
department chairs, program directors,
or the faculty senate.
The Crescent was unable to
confirm whether students and alumni
were consulted or what this process may have looked like. When asked to provide details for this process, the provost said that
the request for input was informal and that there is no list of students or alumni who were spoken to. “Students over time have
communicated most clearly by their enrollment choices over time,” she said.
According to one department’s chair, after the administration and board decided which majors to eliminate or
“reimagine,” the department chairs and program directors were able to influence how the changes were carried out, but not
whether the programs were eliminated or not. At time of publication, The Crescent cannot confirm whether students and
alumni were consulted or what this process may have looked like.
In the wake of the announcement, students are asking, if the university continues to gut its liberal arts programs, can
it still call itself a “liberal arts university?” Yet, the university’s new education package reduces the number of credit hours
required to graduate and promotes a 13 course liberal arts curriculum “that develop[s] the virtues of wisdom, patience,
creativity, and intellectual humility among others.”
While the new education plan promotes a focus on liberal arts, the way it’s packaged may be deceptive. “Sure, we will still
get a generic education that throws in some liberal arts,” Burgess said, “but this [plan] is just an attempt to make the cuts to the
humanities more palatable.”
The liberal arts education track aims to replace the individual liberal arts programs, but it’s not exactly an even exchange.
Students and faculty will still experience the removal of six majors and significant cuts to other programs—and not all of
the eliminated programs will make it into the repackaged liberal arts courses. As a single effort, the cuts indicate an overall
shrinking of the liberal arts education at GFU.
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