Baldwin Wallace University is set to eliminate 64 staff, faculty and executive level positions in its second round of job cuts this year as the university contends with its remaining $7 million deficit.
The cuts, announced Tuesday include full and part-time staff along with tenure and tenure-track faculty positions. The cuts are part of an overarching reorganization that will help the university recover its financial losses, acting President and Interim Provost Tom Sutton said.
"It's really about restructuring to first of all, reduce the amount of administrative overhead," Sutton said. "Second, there's also the opportunity for more creativity and opportunity for new programing possibilities, but it really means that faculty are going to be in a much more active role in those areas."
The cuts include two executive level layoffs, eight staff layoffs and 18 faculty level layoffs, Sutton said. Faculty and staff were offered buyouts that provide severance pay along with the option to teach though the end of the fall semester or through the end of the academic year. The university previously shared Thursday that 36 employees were taking the buyouts.
The position cuts are expected to result in a $4 million reduction in cost, according to the news release, but the exact financial offset remains to be seen.
"For instance, with the faculty, ... they will be teaching with us through the end of this academic year. So they will complete an academic year's worth of work," Sutton said. "It's really not going to be until next summer that we're going to start to see the effects on the budget and on future budgets of these position eliminations."
The need for restructuring at the university was apparent for some time, according to Jaimy Dyer, a professor who was a member of the transformation work group that helped come up with a plan to get the budget in order. She called the loss of her colleagues through buyouts or layoffs an unfortunate consequence.
"It's necessary to right size us as an institution, and we see others have been doing it for a few years and are still undergoing it when we look at our peer institutions and our sister schools and things like that," she said. "I think it's necessary, but it's horrible."
The university will also phase out 10 academic programs, as part of the overall reorganization at the university, including music history, jazz, visual/studio art, communication studies, film studies, public relations, public health, master of public health, digital marketing-to-MBA graduate program and leadership in higher education M.A.Ed.
Current students in these majors will be able to finish their degrees without being effected, Baldwin Wallace Vice President of Operations Greg Flanik said, but the programs will no longer accept new students.
"Those programs were selected to better allocate resources across campus and reduce some personnel expenses that go into those," he said. "Academics is going to undergo a major shift, including the reduction of those programs."
Though graduate enrollment at Baldwin Wallace fell by nine students compared to last year, the university reported an increase in undergraduate enrollment earlier this month.
This increase is encouraging, but does not solve the university's problem on its own, Sutton said.
"We still need to make these changes in order to make sure that we have a sustainable future," Sutton said. "So, one of the things that we have to anticipate is we had a good year this year, but to be wise about enrollment, we have to address the possibility that that may change next year."
The university announced 23 job cuts in February. Sutton said the university does not anticipate further cuts at this time.
