Tulane to slash over 200 faculty, five departments

Tulane undergraduates will return to a university coping with huge financial losses, impending faculty cuts and about 15 percent fewer students when classes resume at the newly reopened New Orleans campus on Jan. 17.

Tulane officials plan to cut 230 faculty members and eliminate five academic departments over the course of the next year and a half.

Penn Provost Ron Daniels said that at this time the University has not received any requests from Tulane professors wishing to move to Penn. The University had taken in about 100 Tulane students from the Philadelphia area for the fall semester, but these students were not permitted to stay for the spring.

Despite damage to the campus and curriculum overhaul, the number of applications for Tulane's class of 2010 increased by 20 percent compared to last year, Tulane Vice President for Enrollment Management Richard Whiteside said.

"A lot of the press that Tulane has received and that New Orleans has had in the national media has encouraged a lot of people to apply," Whiteside said.

A committee of Tulane faculty, administrators and university presidents from around the country drafted the post-Katrina rebuilding strategy, called the Tulane Renewal Plan.

According to Mike Strecker -- a spokesman for Tulane -- the school's inability to retain faculty and academic programs is due to the loss of $200 million following Katrina, with operating losses of $90 to $125 million.

Other losses include property destruction from flooding and severe weather and technology failures.

Whiteside said these department cuts are based on a variety of criteria -- including strength, societal relevance and student quality -- and they reflect the limited resources of the university, not the quality of the programs.

"We didn't end up with any bad programs. We simply ended up with some programs that didn't rate as highly as others," Whiteside said.

The civil and environmental engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and computer science, computer engineering and exercise and sports science departments will all be phased out within the next year.

The remaining engineering departments will be consolidated into one school, which will be called the School of Science and Engineering. Many graduate and Ph.D. programs in other divisions have also been consolidated or restructured.

Strecker said that substantial consideration was also given to a program's reputation when deciding which departments to eliminate.

"We decided to focus on those programs where we had national prominence or the ability to gain national prominence in a few years," Strecker said.

He added that the department cuts will affect only 3 percent of the general student body.

Tulane will lose faculty from the eliminated departments as well as from other programs at Tulane. Of the 230 cut faculty members, 26 were tenured professors.

Bill Buckles -- a Tulane professor in computer science -- said that faculty in eliminated departments will remain employed until June 2007.

After that date, faculty members must seek a position elsewhere.

The staff cuts at Tulane include many adjunct professors. These cuts, when combined with the departmental consolidations, mean that more full-time faculty will be required to teach undergraduates, according to Whiteside.

"We wanted to focus the attention of faculty on the undergraduate students," Whiteside said. He added that this restructuring had been discussed in the past, but "Katrina was the opportunity that allowed us to do this."

Additional changes at Tulane include a revamped curriculum requiring public service and interdisciplinary study that will take effect in September 2006.

Tulane is also collaborating with three other major universities in New Orleans -- Loyola, Xavier and Dillard -- in an effort "to broker talent and resources to make sure that all the four schools can provide quality programs for the students," Whiteside said.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.