The following commentary was delivered by Faculty Senate President John Shrader at the Senate meeting on November 4, 2025.
First, I’d like to say again how deeply disappointed I am that we will in the coming months be losing dozens of our fellow faculty members through program eliminations or alterations.
We will lose dozens of our fellow faculty members who are taking VSIP, and we don’t know how many faculty members will leave on their own, possibly because through all the chaos of the last several months that they no longer want to work here.
We will lose staff, and we will certainly lose students – we don’t know how many – who will leave when their programs are eliminated. And we don’t have a clue how many students won’t come here in the future without some programs.
This system is a $3.5 to $4 billion enterprise, and we are damaging it for $27.5 million, that’s about point-zero-zero-77 percent of $3.5 billion.
We can find $1.2 billion to build Project Health, we will find $700-800 million, or more, to renovate the football stadium, but we can’t find point-zero-zero-77 percent of the overall enterprise.
I hope the president of the system and the chancellor of this campus have a plan to keep us as whole as possible.
Some of the concerns: the timeline, the overwhelming amount of money – read: jobs lost – we’re talking about, the remaining questions about the metrics used, and the process. Our friends at AAUP offered a report about the fiscal health of this university. I encourage you all to read it.
I know at least one of our senators may broach this subject later. While I think all those involved in the process applaud the work of the Academic Planning Committee, and especially applaud the work of its chair Clay Cressler, I have questions about the process there.
Four of the 21 members of the committee were authors of the budget cut proposal, and from what I understand they did not recuse themselves from any of the votes.
I’m not sure that’s the way the system was designed. Authors of recommendations that come before APC who are actually members of the APC.
It should also be noted that the university’s grad council voted unanimously to save all the graduate programs that are under threat of elimination.
I will say at least one more time – on the record – i think these cuts are going to be devastating to this campus. So damaging to be irreparable.
At a time when the president of this university asks us to consider the odyssey to the extraordinary …. This campus – and its faculty, and staff and students are being treated as if we are just ordinary…
…. As if we don’t matter so much, as if we’re expendable, as if we are just a ‘branch campus’ in this university. The university that was chartered in 1869, that is the flagship of this university, with the Big-Red-N, will be a branch campus…. The only one of its kind in the Big Ten. We are finally getting to be known for something in this conference. We will be the only branch campus of the 18 schools.
With that having been said – please welcome the chancellor of this flagship, land grant institution, Dr. Rodney Bennett.
