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CHARLESTON - Despites outcries from students, professors and academics from around the country, the Board of Governors of West Virginia University approved today a slate of program eliminations and faculty cuts meant to help reduce a $45 million budget deficit.
The WVU Board of Governors met at the Erickson Alumni Center on the Morgantown campus for a meeting to consider the recommendations made by the WVU Provost's Office as part of phase two of its Academic Transformation.
The Provost's Office recommended eliminating 28 programs, 10 undergraduate programs and 18 graduate programs, and the merging of three other programs into existing degrees. Another 13 programs will see reductions in faculty.
Board members voted on each recommendation by raising hands, though the vote was interrupted at the start by protests by students and other attendees.
The board approved each of the recommendations, though the votes were not unanimous with three board members voting against many of the individual recommendations. The board approved motions amending the recommendations for WVU's schools of Music and Art/Design to add back one faculty member to each school and increasing the number of foreign language faculty from five to seven.
The chopping block included most of the world languages programs except for Spanish and Chinese programs, master's and doctorate programs in mathematics, the master's program for public administration and master's and doctorate programs for higher education administration, among others. Among programs seeing reductions in faculty include the College of Creative Arts, the School of Public Health and the departments of English, Communications Studies, Chemistry and Computer Science.
The recommended program eliminations and faculty cuts could affect as many as 143 faculty members, or more than 5% of the total faculty at WVU. The university will notify affected faculty by Oct. 16, with layoffs to begin in April.
University officials say WVU will still offer more than 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs. They also say the proposed program will only affect 329 undergraduate and graduate students, or 1.35% of the student population.
WVU is working to fill a $45 million hole in its fiscal year 2024 budget approved earlier this summer. After the Board of Governors approved a $1.2 billion budget in June, the university cut 135 positions, including 38 faculty members.