Save Social Sciences at WCSU
Western President Paul Beran
On October 6, 2022, the Provost and Vice-President for Academic Affairs at Western Connecticut State University recommended to the University President to eliminate or “park” from the Department of Social Sciences all of our majors and eight of our eleven minors.
If taken into effect, this would eliminate the study of Anthropology, Economics, Geography, and Sociology as well as threaten Political Science. It would cut a combined major in Anthropology/Sociology, and majors in Economics, Social Sciences: Social Justice & Policy, and Social Sciences: Global Studies; plus, it would freeze our major in Political Science. These terminations have been recommended on the basis of misleading "low completer" and enrollment figures.
The elimination of Social Sciences, a mainstay of general education as well as encompassing four disciplines at the core of any university curriculum, will set a chilling precedent for others and irreparably harm the value of an education at WCSU.
Most disturbing, therefore, is that this initiative poses a serious risk to our students, not only in terms of the integrity of a liberal arts education for whom credentialing and advancement in a diversity of career tracks depends upon exposure to more than lower division introductory curricula. It also jeopardizes the futures of other departments and their programs (for example: AACSB accreditation for the Ancell Business School, whose students fill the vast majority of those taking our classes in Economics).
Please join your colleagues in demanding that the Provost rescind the recommendation, for the benefit of our university and community and to preserve the quality education we provide our students.
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To:
Western President Paul Beran
From:
[Your Name]
Dear President Beran:
The recommendation to eliminate most of the Social Science majors and minors at Western is detrimental to our institution and the students we serve. The purpose of a public state university is to offer students, who cannot afford it otherwise, a university education that used to be solely the purview of a wealthy elite. By not offering the fundamental programs that every single private college would offer, we undermine the very purpose of a public state university. Basing decisions on programs on the “popularity” of said programs is short-sighted. We need to offer the education our students need, not just the education they, at the moment, want.
We demand that this recommendation be rescinded, and that you work collegially with members of the Social Sciences department and your faculty to resolve this short-sighted agenda. Unilateral action inherent to these recommendations is detrimental to the morale of students and faculty, and serves to make Western a shell of itself.
This move will not save money, and it will fundamentally weaken the university and the liberal arts education we provide.
By avoiding such a mistake, reversing these decisions and working collegially with faculty, students, and the AAUP, we must arrive at a more coherent and transparent solution to our university’s continuing fiscal challenges.