https://www.uakron.edu/president/news-and-messages/retrenchment-report

Hi everyone,

UA shared a Joint Retrenchment Committee report which detailed the committee's recommendations for the retrenchment process. It is important to note that these are simply recommendations and that this formal (and confusing) process is still not finalized.

Please read the report yourself as there are lots of details which I can't summarize, but the main points related to SPSPE are:

• There is no more talk of cutting half of SPSPE faculty and merging SPSPE 
  • SPSPE, Chemistry, and CBCE were not recommended to be merged
  • Two unrelated faculty separations and two scheduled retirements were mentioned,  and further retrenchment wasn't recommended
• "Given the value of PSPE to the UA brand, the JCR recommends pursuit of deferred retirements and a movement toward R1 workload and graduate assistant policies and practices to allow retention of remaining faculty who can maintain the research output of this unit."
  
  • I believe this means UA wants SPSPE to pay for graduate student tuition from grants rather than UA covering tuition
  • Also, SPSPE faculty could "buy out of teaching" to reduce teaching load

So, compared to November, this is cause for some relief, but we'll have to wait and see how things go.

Thanks for your continued support!

Matt Szigeti