Ohio Board of Regents Chancellor Eric Fingerhut spoke to students, faculty and administrators yesterday about possible changes schools can expect when the University System of Ohio is completely formed.
Although he could not provide specifics because there isn't a blueprint of the plan yet, Fingerhut stressed the need to use resources as efficiently as possible.
Ohio University is re-evaluating its graduate offerings and seeking vision from Fingerhut, OU President Roderick McDavis said.
Tne option that state and school administrators have been discussing is making decisions about which institutions should offer certain programs.
What we're trying to do is create the most effective system we can to achieve that goal
Fingerhut said. [But] it's not going to be the Board of Regents or the governor or the chancellor coming in and cutting programs ... We do not want to plan for you but plan with you.
OU has already begun examining where its strengths as an institution lie. Though McDavis emphasized at the start of the school year that undergraduate programs are OU's core strength, the deans have formed a faculty committee to evaluate the graduate programs and make recommendations about them.
The Taskforce on Centers of Excellence in Graduate and Professional Education will place programs in three categories: enhance, maintain or diminish, based on reports from individual schools and departments.
Though these categories will not determine final action they will inform decisions regarding levels of funding for graduate or professional programs to be determined by the executive vice president and provost in consultation with deans
chairs
faculty members
and the Budget Planning Council
the group's charter states.
Benjamin Ogles, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, is serving as chairman of the group.
The big motivating factor is that we would like to determine for ourselves what our strengths are instead of someone from the outside, he said. We understand that our core strength is in our undergraduate programs and therefore we have to be more selective with our graduate programs.
The committee expects departmental reports by January so it can make recommendations to McDavis and Fingerhut in time for the roll out of what Fingerhut referred to as the master plan at the end of March.
Fingerhut and Ogles both raised the possibility of weaker programs beginning to collaborate with their stronger counterparts at other schools to offer students more opportunities throughout the state. The chancellor suggested this could be accomplished through online courses that cross institutional lines
having more than one institution use a particular campus or having faculty from one institution work with faculty at another to strengthen both programs.
No matter what the final decision
however
administrators recognized the need to make difficult choices.
All of us are going to have the opportunity to have our input, McDavis said. And at some point, we're going to have to make tough decisions.
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