Hello everyone,
For starters: thank you for signing. We appreciate your standing by UNCG Physics & Astronomy!
I am Holly Buroughs, aka Concerned Student aka maker of this petition; I don’t know how to address mass emails so bear with me, but I want to provide an update and the next steps the best I can.
February 1st we received the update we were dreading. They cut our program along with 20 others (the Ph.D. in Computational Mathematics was added after the original recommended list came out on January 16th).
Since then, students have received zero communication from the administration on the next steps. No talks, listening sessions, Q&A’s, or the meeting we were promised have happened. From the email that was sent to students in the affected departments:
“No changes to programming, faculty, or staffing are in the near future.”
“More immediately, you’ll hear from the team in the College of Arts and Sciences, who will preview listening sessions where you’ll receive more detail and can ask questions.”
- Andrew Hamilton, Dean of Undergraduate Studies
So what has happened since the announcement? The administration has moved to implement changes to faculty and staffing, something we were told wouldn’t be happening. More senior faculty are being asked to take a lump sum buyout and leave, with the stipulation that they aren't able to be employees of the state of North Carolina if they accept the deal. What else? General Education classes, including both introductory Astronomy courses, are being discontinued, despite huge interest in these classes and them being oversubscribed every semester.
Unfortunately, this is illustrative of what lies beneath the facade of their “pretty darn close to perfect” process: administration doesn’t care for students, faculty, the university community, or the core values they are charged to protect. Instead, what the community who dedicated blood, sweat, tears, and so many years to got was a process riddled with inaccuracies one after another, communication that was unclear, untrue, or sometimes downright unprofessional. (For those who haven’t seen the campus forums, we were responded to with: rolling eyes, stomping feet, laughing, bragging about being plagiarized, resorting to name calling, telling one of my fellow students–an undergrad physics major–“I have published A LOT peer-reviewed papers..so I think I maybe know about data…when you do that let me know” etc.)
UNCG is still hiring Tenure-track faculty in bigger departments as of 2/14/2024, planning major renovations and updates to tour spots for aesthetics while forcing departments to fight not only the administration to continue existing but also to fight one another to stay here at this university.
So…what can we do now? We need your time to sign more petitions, spread the word about what’s going on to bring as much attention as possible, and keep the memory of UNCG’s core values alive (R.I.P.)
For people here in GSO and the close-ish area:
There is a funeral TOMORROW 2/15 at 1 p.m. in memorial of discontinued programs and discontinued campus values. Meet at the EUC lawn (Address here for those who may be coming from nearby areas but aren’t familiar.)
For everyone, no matter where you are:
Here are links to the other departmental petitions; all the impacted programs are standing together to try to reverse these decisions. Please sign the others and leave a comment if you feel so moved:
PhD Program in Communication Sciences and Disorders
Russian, Chinese, and Korean Languages
Computational Mathematics MS and PhD
For those of you watching for updates and hopefully a resolution that can leave the University proud–or maybe you just want to know how you can help out and learn more– check out an anonymously created savetheg.com.
If you read to the end, thank you! I appreciate your time and your support for our university community.
With hope and determination,
Holly