University of Connecticut officials offered more details Monday about how an ongoing review of 240 low-enrollment programs will unfold, as concerns over potential cuts persist.
At a University Senate meeting Monday afternoon, faculty and staff voiced their frustrations as Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Anne D’Alleva worked to assuage fears about a review that could lead to the closure of some undergraduate, doctoral, master’s and graduate certificate programs offered by the university.
The meeting came just days after university deans and their academic units were required to submit evaluation reports indicating whether they wished to suspend, close, consolidate or continue programs identified for review as the provost’s office prepares a summary report of planned program closures for the UConn Board of Trustees at their Dec. 11 meeting.
D’Alleva said she is “not expecting any major terminations or revisions,” at the December Board of Trustees Meeting and that any vote by the board on that date would likely involve only “a handful” of previously sunsetted majors or programs that are “in the freezer” and have not enrolled students for “a number of years.”
“I’m expecting basically housekeeping decisions,” D’Alleva said. “Combining majors, heavily revising a major, terminating a major, nothing like that is going to be ready by December. And there’s no automatic timeline to that. …Those discussions have to take their course.”
D’Alleva said she expects that the Board of Trustees will hold multiple votes at different meetings throughout the year as the process plays out.
She said the provost’s office is “not pre-committed” to any particular resolution.
“I’m not coming into this with any predetermined outcome. I’m not saying we have to cut X number of programs or X number need to be combined,” D’Alleva said. “What I’m saying is let’s make sure we have an active plan to enroll students in all of our programs, so every program is strong, is robust, and is thriving at the university.”
While D’Alleva expects UConn could see a “marginal, minimal budgetary impact,” from suspending or combining programs, she said the provost’s office is “not doing this so we can cut X number of dollars.”
D’Alleva said impacted programs would develop a teach-out plan to allow currently-enrolled students to complete their major and that “faculty would be reassigned to other responsibilities” if their program is terminated.
The review process is not geared towards “eliminating faculty or graduate students in any way,” she said. Additionally, D’Alleva said the provost’s office does not anticipate that the culmination of the review would lead to layoffs or impact union contracts.
D’Alleva said she recognizes that some programs are intentionally small by design and that other departments with a low number of majors may have high-enrollment in general education courses, or a large number of students completing minors.
Some departments may explore creative strategies to boost enrollment, such as creating more general education offerings or early college experience courses to build a pipeline of new students, while others may choose to revise curriculum, combine majors, or close programs. She said “there is is no final deadline” for these decisions.
“It really is a process that has to be led at the school and college level,” D’Alleva said.
“We’re not going to step in and say, ‘(You’re) terminated, (you’re) done, you haven’t met some threshold.’ We need to have discussions around these programs,” D’Alleva later added.
UConn President Radenka Maric, who was present at the meeting and spoke briefly about the Connecticut General Assembly’s Higher Education Financial Sustainability Advisory Board, yielded the floor to D’Alleva for discussion of the ongoing low-enrollment review.
The advisory board, which was established by the legislature this year, is charged with reviewing financial reports from the state’s public higher education institutions and meeting with administrators to “discuss barriers to meeting state workforce needs, developing economic growth, and achieving or maintaining affordable tuition.”
Maric explained that the advisory board has requested that UConn and other public colleges and universities in the state provide several pieces of information, including a financial forecast for Fiscal Year 2026, a “deficiency and mitigation plan,” an overview of “cost drivers and constraints,” and a list of low enrollment programs and “efforts to address” these programs.
D’Alleva said the university’s low-enrollment review is not driven by the advisory board. She explained that the provost’s office “made the decision to undertake this comprehensive review before” receiving the request from the legislature. However, D’Alleva said that because of the advisory board, UConn “needed to have a more detailed set of answers to their questions” about the programs.
“What we want to do through this process is put that low enrollment number in context. What I want to be able to do is to say to the state, ‘Yes, I get it, program X has a small number of majors, but look at the incredible impact in general education, look at the incredible impact in graduate certificates,’” D’Alleva said. “We need to look holistically.”
D’Alleva billed the review as a “normal process” that the provost’s office is “trying to restore” as a “routine” practice.
“When I first became a department head … this is work that happened all the time. It happened routinely every year, and we’re trying to return to a regular cycle of active program review,” D’Alleva said. “This is not an exceptional process.”
University Sen. Elizabeth Jockusch, the head of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology expressed that “it still feels like there’s a disconnect” with the administration in the sense that the review process “feels very top down.”
D’Alleva insisted that decisions to freeze or terminate programs “comes from the school and college and the department,” not the provost’s office.
In a late response to a question about whether the programs identified for cuts would have an ability to appeal the decision, D’Alleva said “that discussion (would) take place at the school or college level” and terminations would not “come to the provost office unless the decision has been made.”
News of potential cuts broke last month as union leaders raised concerns about 70 undergraduate majors that are at risk of consolidation or closure because they failed to reach a threshold of 100 student completions over the last five years. Among those slated for review include special education, philosophy, athletic training, environmental studies, art, music, social work, geoscience, engineering physics, women’s gender and sexuality studies, Africana studies, and multiple languages.
In all, roughly 240 undergraduate, doctoral, master’s and graduate certificate programs — more than half of UConn’s academic offerings — have been identified for the low-enrollment review.
While university leaders have said from the outset that many low-enrollment majors will not be eliminated, some professors said the Nov. 1 deadline left them feeling pressured to make decisions that could jeopardize the strength of their departments out of fear that their programs will be cut through the review process.
University Sen. Jeffrey McCutcheon, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, described UConn’s handling of the low-enrollment review as “a PR disaster for the university.”
McCutcheon said he feels as though the University Senate was “intentionally left out” of the process.
“Last I heard the Senate had jurisdiction over courses and curricula. Last I heard, we had jurisdiction over (the) budget and many academic affairs, but we were completely left out,” McCutcheon said. “You have a brain trust here of faculty, students, and staff that can provide you with a lot of information and perspective that could have avoided some of the pitfalls that have caused (University Spokesperson) Stephanie Reitz to deserve a raise.”
University Sen. Timothy Folta, a professor in the School of Business, said that while UConn’s “administration has to have discretion to take action on many issues,” there are “substantive issues” that should involve university senators.
“I appreciate the fact that you’re reaching out to the deans and the department heads, but that’s not this body,” Folta said. “This is a governing body. And I think we’re going to insist on being involved in decisions that are pertinent to the university.”
“We don’t want to make waves, but I think we will if we’re not involved,” Folta added.
University Sen. Alvaro Lozano-Robledo, a professor of mathematics, said a number of faculty members are “very worried about the future of their programs.” At the meeting, he requested that UConn’s administration host an open forum so “every dean can inform their faculty about what is happening.”
“I’m a professor, I’m a (university) senator, I’m a member of the Senate Curriculum and Courses Committee, and I found about this news from the newspapers,” Lozano-Robledo said. “I don’t know if there (are) no programs being chopped or (if) there are a hundred programs that are under review and possibly being closed.”
Lozano-Robledo, like others who spoke at the meeting, said he felt kept “in the dark.”
“We learned on Oct. 17 that a decision is going to be made in two weeks,” University Sen. Michael Morrell, an associate professor of political science, said. “Even if it’s not my program … as a faculty in this environment, that is very shocking.”
“If it started in February, why did we not know about it in February?” Morrell asked. “Why did we keep this secret?”
