One Ball State University program is already feeling the effect of expected state budget cuts.
Since the departure of Women's Studies Program director Kim Jones Owen nearly three years ago, students and faculty in this academic area have wondered what their fate would be within the university. With an interim director during that time, many involved were hoping the program would become a department. The students and faculty have received their answer and many of them are not happy about the decision.
Women's Studies program Interim Director Julee Rosser said the upcoming changes are a result of Ball State's preparation for the proposed state budget changes that will take effect next school year.
Gov. Mitch Daniels announced Monday in his budget proposal for the next two years that he would like to cut funding in several areas, including a 4 percent decrease in funding for higher education. The state legislature is expected to pass a budget, through a special session, by the end of June, when the current budget ends.
Michael Maggiotto, dean of the College of Science and Humanities, said he had a task force of 12 colleagues with a history of women's issues involvement advise him on what direction to take the Women's Studies Program.
He said they made the decision to change its name to Women's and Gender Studies "to better reflect the issues and intellectual context in which women's studies is currently situated."
The proposed mission statement for the program says it embraces "a wide variety of academic approaches relevant to the study of women, gender and feminisms in contemporary and historical societies."
The committee also made the recommendation that the director of the newly-named program should be a faculty member with tenure or on track for tenure. In addition to changing directors, Maggiotto made the decision, using his committee's advice, to broaden the program into one with more of an interdisciplinary academic focus to "strengthen the academic focus of the program."
Additionally, courses that make up the Women's Studies Program will be based on the decisions of the interdisciplinary faculty members who will be teaching them.
"Courses evolve and change as disciplines themselves evolve and change," Maggiotto said.
Rosser said the committee was made up of people outside of the Women's Studies Program, and her input was a five- to 10-minute presentation on the history of the program.
She said that the university's decision is removing the activism and outreach components of the program, which is making the focus more narrow. There won't be internships offered, the director position and administrative coordinator positions have been cut to half-time, the assistant director position has been eliminated and the office space the program has right now in Burkhardt Building Rm. 108 most likely won't be there for them, she said.
Additionally, students are worried the scholarships offered may be done away with and that Women's Week will no longer exist.
"They are going to hire the new director, the program will then go to that person's original department," Rosser said.
She explained that the new director's department will absorb the program as it becomes the Women's and Gender Studies Program.
Maggiotto said he has already sent out applications for the Women's and Gender Studies Program director position within the College of Science and Humanities.
Rosser explained that the faculty who teach the women's studies classes right now will have to apply to the new director to become affiliate faculty, but the decision about who will teach the classes will be up to the new director and an advisory committee. Her last day as interim director will be July 24.
"I feel tremendously thankful to work in the Women's Studies Program ... it's a fantastic group of people," Rosser said.
Rosser said she would ultimately like there to be more communication to the students majoring and minoring in women's studies.
Some students seeking degrees in women's studies have been disappointed by a lack of information regarding the classes that will be offered in the fall when they return.
Sue Cupka Head, senior women's studies and English literature major, said the changes to the program are "detrimental to many students' academic careers." She said she is concerned that there will be too few seats and classes for students interested in taking women's studies classes, which she says totaled nearly 400 people last year. There were about 80 students seeking a major or minor in women's studies before the Spring Semester ended.
"This committee attempted to make the program more 'academic,' but in doing so are losing the essence of what women's studies is striving for: turning learning into practice," Cupka Head said. "My degree in women's studies from Ball State will be less respected by my future employers if the program continues to be devalued by the university."
Hallie Adams graduated in December 2007 with a bachelor's degree in communications and a minor in women's studies. During her last two and a half years at Ball State, she said she was involved with the Women's Studies Program. The recent decision made by the university to change the program led her to start a Facebook group called "Protest for Women's Studies Program."
She said that the program has been growing and receiving more donations in order to expand projects and scholarships.
"If we were any other program besides [women's studies], we would have been a department already," Adams said.
Maggiotto explained "the changes are designed to strengthen the program and to broaden its interdisciplinary scope, while emphasizing it is a rigorous and evolving academic program."
Adams said she is disappointed no women's studies students, alumni or faculty were on the committee that recommended these changes.
"Reorganization of the department is kind of a slap in the face," Adams said. "To take it away denies the women of the future the opportunity to learn about these things."
She emphasized that having a more academic focus in the program is not a bad thing, but "this is not about academic, it's about opportunities."
"This is 2009," Adams said, "This shouldn't be happening. It's already a small program and they're making it smaller. I don't know what they're thinking [possibly] having a history professor teach a women's studies class.
"Now I have a minor in 'we definitely got screwed over,'" Adams said.
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