Parks College of Aviation and Engineering will undergo restructuring in order to reduce the college’s $3.4 million deficit, a process that could include moving Parks departments to the College of Arts and Sciences and outsourcing the flight-training program. University Provost Joseph Weixlmann, Ph.D., and University President Lawrence Biondi, S.J., met with Parks administration and faculty last Wednesday to discuss the reorganization. “Budget information has been shared with the colleges and schools for several years, and a number of those units, including Parks, have made real progress in reducing negative margins,” Weixlmann said. “The gap [at Parks] simply hasn’t closed sufficiently, and the president and I feel that it is unfair for students in non-Parks programs to continue to subsidize Parks programs, especially flight, at the current level.” Wolf Yeigh, dean of Parks College, sent a letter to students last week describing the changes proposed at the meeting. He said that biomedical engineering could be combined with the biology department, and physics could be placed within earth and atmospheric sciences. This reorganization would decrease administrative costs by flattening the organizational structure and it would foster growth of research programs that would attract outside funding, according to Alan Stolzer, Ph.D., associate dean of Parks. In Yeigh’s letter to the students, he said that core and major requirements will not change, there will be no immediate increase in cost for academic programs and students will graduate on schedule. “These changes will have little, if any, adverse impact on your education here,” Yeigh wrote. The Aerospace Engineering and Aviation Safety Management graduate programs are being discontinued because their enrollment has been deficient. Students in these programs will “be allowed to finish their graduate programs within a reasonable time frame,” according to the letter, but no new students will be enrolled. “At this point, we have more questions than answers,” Weixlmann said. “Ideas have been discussed, but no precise course of action has been charted – there is no intention to reduce the number of undergraduate programs or reconfigure curricula, and there is no intention to cut back on the programs’ quality.” The deficit at Parks has existed for several years, but it was brought into better focus recently because of a new budget model that provides a “snapshot” of the overall performance of each department, school and college, Weixlmann said. Costs that fall outside of these units’ operating budgets-such as building maintenance and utilities-were added to the model this year. Financial analysis is provided to individual departments, Weixlmann said, but the University does not make that information available otherwise. He said that more than half of the $3.4 million deficit comes from the aviation science program and that not all Parks departments are in deficit. The aviation sciences deficit is “what we’re spending most of our time on initially, but all of the areas are going to be given appropriate attention,” Stolzer said. Parks had chosen to operate the flight training program at a deficit, although flight fees were introduced last year to help offset the costs-which are about $40,000 per student. As part of the reorganization, Parks may choose to outsource this training, with students bearing the burden of the additional costs. The goal of these changes is not just to eliminate the deficit, but also to improve the “research culture” of the college and bring in outside funds to offset costs. Stolzer said that there are plans to replace the discontinued graduate programs with a masters program in systems engineering and a Ph.D. program in engineering and applied sciences. These will be broader, to increase enrollment, and interdisciplinary, to encourage externally funded research, Stolzer said. It is crucial that Parks become more successful in attracting research dollars, Stolzer explained, because the costs for laboratory equipment, flight training and other technologies cannot be offset by tuition alone. “If you look at our programs [at Parks] compared to other programs around the nation, you will see that you have to establish a viable research program to prosper,” Stolzer said. This is because Parks has been teaching-focused rather than research-intensive, Stolzer said. When Parks operated out of its campus in Cahokia, Ill., the college was on a trimester schedule. The faculty taught year-round, and “there wasn’t much time to develop a research portfolio,” he said. The college moved to the Frost campus in 1997. Moving Parks departments-like Biomedical Engineering and Physics-into Arts and Sciences, where research is historically stronger, will likewise encourage research by “creat[ing] synergies between similar programs,” Yeigh said. THE PROS AND CONS OF MOVING Some have expressed uncertainty about transplanting Parks departments to Arts and Sciences. David Barnett, Ph.D., head of the biomedical engineering department, said that placement within the biology department is “not the best fit” for BME. “First and foremost, we’re engineers,” Barnett said. A better option would be consolidating with other engineering departments, he said, because if the engineering aspects of the program were lost, recruitment would be difficult and their accreditation could be affected. Barnett said that the BME degree would not be changed from a B.S. to a B.A. if it were moved to Arts and Sciences. The biomedical engineering program began at SLU in 1997 and graduated its first class in 2001. They will have the opportunity to earn accreditation from the American Board for Engineering and Technology for the first time next fall. According to the Biomedical Engineering Society’s Web site, none of the ABET accredited programs offer a B.A. degree. Barnett also said that a graduate program was added to BME this year, which presents the department with a new opportunity to earn external funding. The points mentioned in Yeigh’s letter are “part of a brainstorming effort,” to which faculty have responded positively. “It would be premature to be laying out what the plan is now,” Barnett said. Physics department chair Jean Potvin, Ph.D., disapproves of the proposal to move physics to atmospheric sciences. “Already there is a culture of research among several physics faculty members,” Potvin said. “A research culture could be improved further with the establishment of a Parks-wide Ph.D. program [the Engineering and Applied Sciences Ph.D. program] – coupled with a vigorous research experience program for our undergraduate students.” Yeigh said that there is a strong culture of research and scholarship in earth and atmospheric sciences and biology. “On the Frost campus, I believe these two departments dominate research,” Yeigh said. The current physics department offers tracks for a B.S. or a B.A. degree. “The [physics] department would certainly benefit from research at EAS. If the curricula and service courses that our physics department offers are preserved while operational costs are minimized, the benefit really comes out on the research end,” Yeigh said. The Aviation Sciences faculty will submit their recommendations to Provost Weixlmann on Oct. 26. Weixlmann said that decisions regarding flight training for Aviation Sciences will be made by Nov. 4. Other decisions will not be made as rapidly, Weixlmann said, because they will not involve substantial changes to the curricula. Stolzer said that the Parks administration and faculty will meet with the provost again in November. Discussions will continue for several weeks. STUDENTS REACT TO YEIGH’S LETTER Yeigh’s letter was “a step toward improving communication between the administration and the students,” said biomedical engineering student Maggie Phillips. “However, the ideas and suggestions mentioned in his letter have given rise to many rumors that have generated significant student concerns.” Student Government Association senators Nick Varuso and Patrick Richards, who represent Parks students, said students feel that the
administration has taken the right steps by being receptive to student input. “Through some work that the student leaders [Richards, Varuso and Mike Farmer] have done with the administration, they’ve opened the floor to the different departments in Parks and are going to allow them to outreach to the students on the situation,” said Richards, who is a junior studying aviation sciences. Students in each department will meet with the head of their respective major as they draft their recommendations to the provost. The senators said they are confident that faculty and students are on the same page at this point. However, the students are concerned about the ambiguity of Dean Yeigh’s letter, and wariness stems from poor communication in the past, the senators said. The disparity of the deficit and the disparity of communication between administrators and students are unacceptable. The students are working to rectify both. Richards said that the flight fees, announced last year for all aviation sciences students, and the discontinuation of the King Air in September are two situations that caused students to distrust the administration. Having no additional cost for flight training and the opportunity to fly on Parks’ own airline were two major points of recruitment for the aviation program. “There was already a sense of the flight program being picked apart,” Richards said. “This recent message caused these concerns to [grow].” The students are “truly hoping that the administration will be considerate and respectful … toward the people that these career-altering and life-altering decisions will affect,” said Varuso, who is a senior studying mechanical engineering. He hopes that the administration will communicate the changes in a manner respectful of the students. When there was speculation about flight fees and when the King Air was discontinued, “decisions that have a major effect on people’s lives were communicated in a way that was impersonal,” Varuso said. “The students want an open and honest line of communication between the administration and the students,” Richards said. Establishing this line of communication was the focus of a town hall meeting held by the Association of Parks College Students on Tuesday evening. At that meeting, APCS President Mike Farmer said, “We are trying to build trust between the students and the administration.” That trust “seemingly doesn’t exist right now,” he said. However, because of the “outrage” over flight fees last year, “I think they [the administration] are making an effort to keep things open,” Farmer said.COMPUTER SCIENCE TRANSPLANT The last major revision to a Parks department took place after the 2003-2004 school year. In January 2004, Parks announced that their computer science department, which offered a B.S. degree, would be combined with the computer science program in Arts and Sciences, which offered a B.A. degree. The two programs were combined into a single mathematics and computer science department in Arts and Sciences, which would continue to offer both a B.S. and a B.A. option. The purpose of the change was to eliminate multiple program administrators and duplicate course offerings, according to the letter that Yeigh and then-Interim Dean of Arts and Sciences Michael May, S.J., sent out to Parks students on Jan. 23, 2004. Now, May is the chair of the mathematics and computer science department. “The current structure is confusing, costly, inefficient and does not provide the opportunities for students and faculty that a larger, stronger department would afford,” deans Yeigh and May said in the letter. The letter said that the change would be transparent to students, and that the most immediate change that would affect the students would be the relocation of some Parks faculty and advisers. The core and degree requirements would not change for the B.S. and B.A. tracks, and students in Parks at the time would remain in their current college. Students would retain their current advisers. Three faculty members-Drs. Asaithambi, Sukhodolsky and Valev-were moved to the new department in Arts and Sciences, while Drs. Bouvier and McNamara would remain in Parks as members of the electrical engineering department. A computer science student from Parks, Maggie Leisner, said students were aware that changes to the computer science department were being considered. One of her instructors discussed “possible changes,” and students wrote letters to Yeigh and the provost about their concerns. At the time, there were approximately 80 students in the Parks program and 15 students in the Arts and Sciences program. “[We] were assured that nothing would change and, if anything, it would be better for us,” Leisner said. Within a week of these discussions, she said that the formal letter was sent out detailing the definite changes. Based on the letter, she said that students expected that they would return in fall 2004 with the same professors as before, but with a new administration. Leisner said that Bouvier was denied tenure that semester, and would have one year left at Parks. She also said that a similar announcement had come at the end of the 2002-2003 school year: Dr. Blythe, another computer sciences professor, was denied tenure and would leave Parks in May 2004. Asaithambi, chair of the CS department in Parks, left during summer 2004 to take up a position at another university. Sukhodolsky and Valev are still professors of CS. McNamara, who also remained on Parks faculty, is conducting research this semester and is not teaching. The result, Leisner said, is that no Parks faculty members are teaching in CS currently. Kim Druschel, Ph.D., head of the consolidated CS program in Arts and Sciences, said that the transition of the program has gone remarkably well, and enrollment of declared freshmen, as well as upperclassmen, has increased. “Since we were also asked to move the B.S. to A&S, we have taken that opportunity to re-craft both the B.A. and B.S. in CS, and add new courses. Those programs were approved last fall,” Druschel said. “We did significant research to put those programs in alignment with national programs and accreditation.” Sukhodolsky said that the move to Arts and Sciences has had positive results. “At A&S, the number of CS faculty is larger than Parks ever had,” he said. “The department chair and faculty are very enthusiastic about developing CS programs.” He said that other departments at Parks had never expressed interest in joint research or curriculum with CS. “I will have more opportunities for research and course development that, I believe, will materialize very soon,” Sukhodolsky said. May said that all of the ground rules set forth in the letter sent to students regarding the CS changes were followed. The same ground rules will apply in the changes that Parks faces now.