To help minimize layoffs at NAU, the office of Academic Affairs will increase classroom size, eliminate low-enrollment programs and combine departments in the College of Engineering, Forestry and Natural Sciences.

For FY09 and FY10, Academic Affairs must meet a $6.3 million overall budget reduction: $3 million for FY09 and $3.3 million for FY10.

Four staff members and five non-tenure-track faculty members will be laid off in the next fiscal year. Four staff members will be partially laid off, meaning they will see hours and salary trimmed. 

Liz Grobsmith, the provost and vice president for Academic Affairs, has announced a plan that will help reduce employee layoffs. She has asked deans to work with the department chairs and faculty to increase their teaching load. This could reduce the need to hire part-time faculty and ultimately minimize layoffs.

“There have been relatively few layoffs in the academic division,” Grobsmith said. “We have kept our commitment to retain all tenure-track and tenured faculty. In some cases, we have asked faculty to increase sizes by a small amount in order to reduce the need to add many additional sections of courses.”  

While the class sizes increase, some students, like Samantha Hughes, a junior interior design major, said the new class size will not bother her. 

“I really don’t mind that the classes are getting bigger,” Hughes said. “As long as classes don’t get to be like 500 people, I don’t really care. I mean as long as we’re getting the same standard of education, I think it’s fine.”

Besides making classes larger, Academic Affairs is combining departments to help the budget reduction. The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering is merging with construction management; computer science is merging with electrical engineering; and the Department of Geology is merging with the Center for Sustainable Environments. Majors in humanities, art history and religious studies are combining into a comparative cultural studies major. 

NAU will eliminate the bachelor’s of science degrees in theater education and in theater studies.

“Our theater major remains as it was before,” Grobsmith said. “So these eliminations represent low-enrolled tracks in theater that we no longer need to serve student interests.”  

Michelle Seansel, a freshman hotel and restaurant management major, said these budget cuts will negatively affect NAU’s learning environment.  

“I think the budget cuts are really affecting our education,” Seansel said. “With the classes getting bigger and the professors getting paid less, I think they might not care anymore. You see it in classes now; teachers like the smaller class size, and even if classes are growing a little, they are not going to like it.” 

Grobsmith said while there will be an increase in class size, the addition to classes will be small.

“It has been my goal to limit increasing class sizes by a large number so that we can retain our overall small class size,” Grobsmith said.