The recent decision to release dedicated faculty and staff in the College of Community Innovation and Education at the University of Central Florida has created deep concern among students, educators, alumni, and community members. These colleagues  are mentors, teachers, advisors, researchers, and public servants whose labor sustains academic excellence and expands opportunity. When institutions remove the people who carry the mission, they place programs at risk, weaken student support systems, and diminish the learning experience.

This petition calls for decisive action to reverse these cuts and restore impacted colleagues. We also call for an immediate halt to any additional personnel reductions until a transparent and collaborative review process is completed. Challenges are real, but responsible leadership requires more than subtraction. It requires vision, courage, and partnership.

We further demand that due process and shared governance be fully honored, respected, and protected at UCF. Decisions that shape the future of a university must not be made behind closed doors or without the voices of those who teach, serve, learn, and lead within it. Transparency is not optional. Accountability is not negotiable. Collaboration is not a courtesy. It is the standard.

We call for the creation of a joint task force composed of faculty, staff, students, union representatives, and university leadership. This body should be charged with producing data-informed solutions that protect students, preserve academic programs, strengthen financial sustainability, and uphold institutional integrity. The future of UCF should be built through shared wisdom, not unilateral disruption.

We urge UCF leadership to reconsider this course and choose a path rooted in trust, consultation, and principled leadership. Great universities are not defined by how they respond in times of comfort, but by how they lead in times of challenge.

Sign this petition to stand for educational quality, institutional fairness, and the people who make UCF strong. Together, we can raise our voices, defend what matters, and ensure that UCF remains a place where excellence and opportunity endure. Are demands are shared below: 

1. Reversal of the Current Release Decisions and Retention of Impacted Faculty Through May 2027.
We call on UCF leadership to fully rescind the release decisions affecting the impacted CCIE faculty and staff members, including any related non-reappointment notices, and to continue their employment at UCF, so that students have stability, academic programs maintain continuity, and the college has time to pursue any necessary restructuring through transparent planning and shared governance.

2. An Immediate Moratorium on Further Personnel Reductions.

We urge a clear, public commitment to pausing any additional layoffs. The College needs a period of stabilization to rebuild trust and operational momentum. Further cuts will jeopardize the core academic functions we are all striving to protect.

3. The Formation of a Joint Work Taskforce.

We propose the immediate creation of a body composed of faculty, staff, college administration and union leadership. This group would be charged with developing data-informed, forward-looking strategies to address protecting personnel from major layoffs. That is to say that the work of the proposed committee is not merely a listening session; it must be a working group empowered to identify operational efficiencies and revenue opportunities before considering further impacts to personnel. 

4. A Renewed and Substantive Commitment to Shared Governance.

Decisions that reshape programs and displace colleagues must involve the expertise of those closest to the students and the scholarship and that are also inline with the UCF Collective Bargaining Agreement. We ask that you leverage our collective expertise not as an afterthought, but as a primary resource in shaping the future of this College that might be used as a model for other colleges that may too experience what we are facing in CCIE.