MORGANTOWN – Wednesday marked the first day of classes at WVU. As students poured across the campus, Dean of Students Corey Farris talked with members of the local press about Welcome Week and student morale as the university undertakes its Academic Transformation – preparing to cut majors and faculty.
“What I’m hearing from students is they’re thrilled to be back,” he said. “If you were at FallFest last night [Tuesday], you saw 12,000 students having a great time. They’ve been participating in all of our welcome activities, as well as our returning students in some of the other programs. They’ve been happy. They seem to be excited to be here.”
Following 128 program reviews, the provost’s office has proposed discontinuing 32 of 338 Morgantown campus majors and cutting 169 faculty positions. Following an appeal process, the Board of Governors will vote on final recommendations on Sept. 15.
Asked if students have inquired about that, Farris said, “I have not had many questions from them. I’ve been right in the middle of the students every single day.” Before this week, he’s had only one question, posed during summer orientation, he said.
“I think they understand that the university is going to continue to teach them,” he said. “We’re going to offer high-quality education. And we’ve got a lot of majors for them to choose from. It’s just a handful of students that are being impacted.”
For those that will be affected – the estimate is about 2%, according to Farris – WVU has made outreach to them through their academic advisors.
He’s also heard nothing from returning students, he said. For upperclassmen in programs affected by transformation, there is a planned teach out. “We’re going to follow and be with them until they get their degree. We’re going to help every student find that path to completion. We’re not going to say to a student, ‘Sorry, you have to leave.’”
Based on his encounters during Welcome Week, Farris said, the transformation has not impacted student morale. At the activities so far, “students were fully engaged and were having a fun time. That was not a topic of conversation with us.”
Ask Us Anything tents are set up around campus, and students have been coming up and asking great questions, he said. “They’ve just been very engaged and very happy.”
Farris was asked if the budget deficit has affected Welcome Week activities. He said that because Student Life is operating on a limited budget along with the rest of WVU, “we certainly did things in a different way to save money.” But they still made sure they had a robust Welcome Week to provide for the best student experience, he said, and made internal adjustments that wouldn’t be visible to students.
We asked Farris is he was familiar with the change.org petition – with 1,469 signatures as of late Wednesday afternoon – calling on President Gordon Gee and his staff to consider voluntary pay cuts to help mitigate the budget issue.
He said he hadn’t seen it. But, “I support people who want to sign a petition. That’s free speech. They can make whatever comments they want.”
He also was asked about belt tightening at the senior management level. For Student Life, he said, “We’ve always made adjustments as our enrollment’s gone up and our enrollment’s gone down.”
In his own area, the said, there are a number of positions they’ve not filled. And they’ve made other cost-saving adjustments. For instance, Lyon Tower closed, which requires less staff and less power-consuming indoor temperature control. “We’ve been adjusting, and I’ve been adjusting for years. I’m driven by the students who are here.”
Farris also addressed a couple non-transformation topics. One of those was Campus Carry – new state law allowing students with concealed carry permits to carry in certain specified areas and store their weapons in specified spaces – which takes effect July 1, 2024.
“It’s not having an impact this year,” he said. “Given the effective date, it’s too soon to start educating students about Campus Carry – they’d forget by next July. They are putting committees together now to plan that, and they’ll begin the education process during spring semester.
Email: dbeard@dominionpost.com
