EDITOR’S NOTE: LTTEs regarding WVU Academic Transformation
From now until Aug. 31, we will open letters to the editor to WVU alumni and current and former staff and faculty, including those who live out of state, for any who would like to comment on WVU’s Academic Transformation. EMAIL submissions to opinion@dominionpost.com. MAIL submissions to: The Dominion Post, 1251 Earl L. Core Road, Morgantown, WV 26505. INCLUDE your name, hometown and phone number for confirmation. Letters should not exceed 300 words. Out-of-state alumni should include their graduation year and degree. Staff/faculty should include their position and years of service.
WVU reduction decisions aren’t adding up
As a 2009 WVU M.F.A. creative writing alum, I read the university’s preliminary recommendations for gutting its university programs with interest, surprise and horror.
In a statement, university President Gordon Gee notes, “if we aim to improve our enrollment numbers and recruit students to our university, we must have the programs and majors that are most relevant to their needs and the future needs of industry.”
As an alum of a program that is on the chopping block, so to speak, I would like to know how the university determined which programs are most relevant to student needs?
Is the university saying that only STEM programs have value? Because the university is cutting those too, including program and faculty cuts in the math department! How is math not relevant to the needs of industry?
As the university’s statement continues, it only gets worse. After suggesting that WVU should eliminate its entire World Languages, Literatures and Linguistics department, the university goes on to callously note that “the university is exploring alternative methods of [language learning] delivery such as a partnership with an online language app or online partnership with a fellow Big 12 university.”
I’m sorry, what? The university is saying that instead of taking a university-level language class that students could just go sign up for Duolingo?!
Also, the examples that the university provides of universities that don’t require languages aren’t really analogous to WVU. Duquesne is a private religiously affiliated school. Amherst College still offers language classes and language majors, as do the University of Alabama, Johns Hopkins and George Washington University.
If West Virginia University is going to go ahead with these short-sighted changes, then the university has a duty to provide much better data.
Lori D’Angelo
Mount Solon, Va.
Proposed budget cuts threaten WVU’s future
As a third-year student at WVU, I believe the budget cuts proposed by President Gee and his administration are threatening the university’s future and hurting students and faculty alike.
It was recently reported that one of the programs that could be removed is WVU’s language department. If West Virginia public schools can offer foreign languages, how could the state’s flagship university even consider not having them?
From continued layoffs to worsening quality of life issues for all on campus, it is a indictment of the position the school’s leadership has put the school in through years of mismanagement.
Along with that, their refusal to even publicly ask the state or federal government to protect the university’s long, well-earned academic progress shows their unwillingness to actually cultivate an environment that protects their students, professors and the school’s reputation.
We live in a divided world, but protecting our state’s most important public duty — educating its people — is of the utmost importance, and I hope West Virginia’s elected leaders and WVU’s administration will take it more seriously.
Lake Young
Current political science student
Morgantown
World languages dept. offers acceptance, skills
I write as a former young West Virginian who is deeply concerned about the impending cuts to programs at WVU, especially the unconscionable recommendation for full dissolution of the Department of World Languages, Literatures and Linguistics (WLLL).
I could spend several pages describing the numerous accolades, opportunities and robust career paths that this department, specifically the Russian program, afforded me. We know that cutting language programs will severely diminish academic opportunities for students who would not otherwise consider going to college for financial reasons or otherwise.
For many, however, the threat of watching WLLL disappear is especially emotional. The truth is studying Russian at WVU was the only period of my adult life when West Virginia has not been a disappointment to me. And I do not think it is a stretch to say the same is true for many of my peers.
WLLL has been a home for every student who ever opened its doors: for those who felt behind because their rural high schools did not offer a rigorous foreign language curriculum; for those who were scared to tell their parents they identified as LGBTQIA+ and found friendly faces in their language courses; for those whose classes challenged the worldviews taught in their communities or churches. Students have historically turned to WLLL as an accessible space in which they can thrive.
World languages has and continues to provide the quality liberal arts education one could only dream of getting at an enormous state institution, but it also guarantees that students from West Virginia have a seat at their own table.
West Virginians want to attend their flagship institution and become active and engaged global citizens. Foreign languages, literatures and cultures affords all of us — especially young West Virginians — an opportunity to develop skills to leave so that we can return and give back to our fellow mountaineers.
Theodora “Kelly” (Trimble) McGee
Dayton, Ohio
Class of 2009
