(3.2.17) By Maggie Ganley – Three task forces have been created to help the college move forward with long range planning. The college’s goal is to cut $2 million worth of expenses yearly.
Morningside created these task forces to look at long range planning and find ways to improve the college for the future and provide students the best experience possible.
There is a senior staff task force chaired by Deeds, and an academic task force chaired by Chris Spicer, in addition to Faculty Senate, also chaired by Spicer.
The senior staff task force is composed of all of the vice presidents, not including the president himself. The goal of this task force is to prioritize administrative programs and identify specific areas where they can free up funds.
Program cuts
As a result of prioritizing programs and finding ways to reallocate expenses, it is likely that some programs will be reduced or eliminated. If this is the case, current students would be able to finish the program so they would not be negatively impacted by the change and faculty impacted would get advanced notice.
With a new piece of legislation that was approved by faculty, the president has been given the power to eliminate programs in the bottom half of a priority list unilaterally.
As Provost of the college William Deeds said the college is “going through an exercise looking at prioritizing both the academic and the administrative programs that we have with the goal of finding at least $2 million in reallocatable expenses.… This isn’t about cutting as much as it is about moving the institution forward.”
The academic task force looks at all of the academic programs on campus and evaluates and prioritizes them. The Faculty Senate looks at everything else academic related (things that aren’t considered a major or a minor).
All of the task forces are kept up to date on what the other task forces are doing every week and the faculty have the opportunity to hear about what is going on through the minutes or at regularly scheduled faculty meetings.
Strategic plans
Once the task forces have gathered all of their information, they will report back to the president, who will then issue the next foundation for a strategic plan. This will ultimately determine what the college is going to do differently in the future.
Morningside has gone through these kinds of changes before, and majors and minors have been added and eliminated throughout the years to keep up with the needs of today’s students.
For example, Deeds noted there used to be a criminal justice program, an environmental studies program, an economics major, a sociology major, and many other majors or programs that have since been reduced or eliminated.
As a result of this, the college is able to provide new programs that students are interested in such as an accounting major, a social and behavioral sciences program, an applied agricultural and food science program, and so on.
The goal of reallocating the $2 million is to provide students with the best experience possible and to continue to grow the college.
Deeds quoted the president by saying he wants former students “to be jealous of the experience the students that are following them are going to have, because it’s going to be better.”
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