Due to declining enrollment and Oregon’s long-term lack of investment in higher education, Portland State University faces a serious budget shortfall of $35 million. To close the deficit, the University proposes to cut up to 200 full time employees, with layoffs named over the next several months.

Although the administration has not shared many details, they have let us know that the School of Earth, Environment, and Society (SEES) faces potential reductions. We feel that divesting in our combined sciences would undermine our capacity to serve students and would harm the University, city, state, and region. 

SEES came into being in September 2025 after a faculty-led, multi-year planning process. SEES incorporates the former Departments of Anthropology, Geology, Geography, and Environmental Science and Management. Faculty in SEES work hard to prepare students to be scientists, researchers, practitioners, and changemakers to take on the planet’s most pressing problems. We  currently have 568 undergraduate students and 133 graduate students enrolled across our majors, minors, graduate degree programs, and certificate programs.

We are excited by the possibilities of SEES, including interdisciplinary research and teaching,  the power of collaborative endeavors to address the “wicked problems” plaguing our city, state, and region, the potential for creative transdisciplinary curriculum, the potential to introduce students to applied sciences, and the exciting community partnerships that we already undertake and plan to grow as a collective. The proposed program reductions threaten to jeopardize our ability to attain our potential in all of these areas.  

We are already doing important work to integrate our curricula and craft simpler, more flexible paths of study for our students and to improve workforce readiness of students graduating from SEES. We are also exploring new areas of teaching, including expanding introductory level offerings for undergraduates, collaborative teaching, and field studies. We engage in meaningful, impactful research, often involving community partners. In short, the School of Earth, Environment, and Society and its faculty are an integral part of moving PSU towards its goal of training the region’s students and “letting knowledge serve the city.”

We, the undersigned, believe that budget reductions for the School of Earth, Environment, and Society would undermine PSU's capacity to serve students and would harm the University, city, state, and region. 

We urge PSU President Cudd and the PSU Administration to maintain funding for SEES and avoid layoffs that threaten our ability to serve our students and the broader community.