Bellarmine College school members have voted no confidence of their president, provost and senior vice chairman.
“The president has made poor monetary selections in response to the dire fiscal realities that Bellarmine is going through and doesn’t encourage confidence in main the college out of the state of affairs,” says the decision on President Susan Donovan. The School Meeting’s resolutions had been offered to Inside Greater Ed after The Courier-Journal beforehand reported on them Wednesday.
Amongst different issues, that decision additionally says Donovan has embraced strategic visions that partly “undermine our historical past as an impartial liberal arts college within the Catholic custom,” together with by way of the “elimination of majors and applications that help the liberal arts core and consequently the variety of adjunct school instructing throughout the core.”
That decision handed 58 to 46, with two abstaining. The 2 different no-confidence resolutions handed by increased margins in favor. These outcomes had been shared with school members late final month.
Donovan informed Inside Greater Ed Thursday that there are 165 full-time school, so the votes expressing no confidence in her represented 35 p.c.
The college is phasing out 9 undergraduate majors, together with philosophy, physics and theater, and two graduate applications in athletic coaching and medical laboratory science.
“None of these have greater than 10 within the main,” Donovan stated of the liberal arts majors.
Jason Cissell, a college spokesman, stated these enrollment figures solely embrace those that had been enrolled in Could however not set to graduate. He stated the figures additionally don’t embrace those that plan to newly declare these majors by the top of August, the cutoff.
Donovan stated, “We’re not eliminating any of these disciplines, we’re persevering with these, however we simply can’t proceed small enrollments in upper-division programs.”
Cissell stated the college hopes layoffs gained’t be obligatory. College leaders didn’t present numbers for what number of positions they’re in search of to shrink the college by, or what sort of funds deficits they might face in the event that they don’t make these adjustments.
“There’s actually applications that we don’t have or applications that we began which can be rising that want sources,” Donovan stated. “Public well being, neuroscience … laptop science—there’s nice pupil curiosity in these.”
