Allegheny Student Government began their general assembly this week with a presentation by Provost and Dean of the College Ron Cole, ’87, about the academic program review.

ASG commenced this week’s meeting at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 28, in room 301/302 of the Henderson Campus Center. Cole cleared up misinformation about staffing plans and departments closing that many students had been concerned about within the past two weeks. He also addressed the petition made by students advocating against faculty layoffs by stating that the process of evaluating faculty staffing has just started and decisions have not been made, so the petition was based on false information.

“I saw the petition and I was incredibly proud of the students who decided to take it down after recognizing that whatever their preamble had in it was basically misinformation,” Cole said. “The note the student left on Change.org made me very proud and that to me signals who we are as a community.”

Provost Cole informed ASG that there have been no decisions made regarding staffing and the shutdown of programs. He explained the current situation with enrollment and how it relates to staffing using graphs that explain the decrease in college enrollment nationwide.

“There are simply going to be fewer high school graduates across the county,” Cole said. “If you notice this decline here, the high school graduates from 2014 to 2015 decreased and that year we missed our enrollment and it can be attributed to that The issue is that we should expect an enrollment decline simply because there are fewer high school students.”

According to Cole, the college is dependent on tuition from students, and a decline in enrollment means there is less revenue which means that the school needs to have less staff as well. He explained actions taken preliminarily in 2017-18 to prepare for the decline in enrollment.

“We needed to think forward and be proactive and prepare ourselves for the future,” Cole said. “So we decided to launch new academic and co-curricular programs. We tried to increase visibility through marketing strategies, advertising and branding. We also had a plan to proactively recruit fewer students on purpose and not wait until there are fewer students out there.”

Cole said the college, from 2017-18, invested in retirement incentives which were accepted by 23 faculty members and 22 staff members. The actions taken were in response to the decline in high school graduates.

“We now need to figure out a way to have further reductions in faculty staffing, and that’s wrapped around this concept of an academic program review,” Cole said. “The reason for the academic program review is that it helps identify strengths and also areas for improvement in the curriculum. It helps us prioritize the resources by looking at our strengths and weaknesses while also promoting innovation in the curriculum.”

According to Cole, there are a lot of schools across the country who are and have gone through academic program reviews because of reasons such as enrollment trends. Cole mentioned that schools like Howard University, Ithaca College and the Pennsylvania State System have also acted similarly.

Cole’s presentation outlined the criteria the academic program review will be looking at before taking action. According to the presentation, some of the things the school will be looking at are trends of enrollment, credit hours, graduates in a program, program costs, prospective student interests and projected areas for student outcomes.

“We literally just started this in August,” Cole said.

The timeline shown in the presentation confirmed the start of the program review to be last August and outlines the next steps.

“They’re going to prepare a report with recommendations on academic programs and that goes to me, the president and the faculty council,” Cole said. “It will be shared broadly and I will use that data to prepare an academic plan and faculty staffing. There are no decisions made yet. I urge you to please if you hear any rumors or assumptions about the academic plan that’s taking place, please let people know that this is a process that’s happening right now and nothing has been decided.”

Provost Cole said that decisions about programs being discontinued will be based on how many students are participating in those programs among other riteria.

General ASG business began with announcements from the cabinet about current plans and swearing in James Mosey as a senator for the class of 2022.

Director of Finance Lucas Biniewski, ’23, announced the budget spending for the week.

“We are spending $180 for the International Club’s Spanish food night, the surplus is $89 from the soccer club for inventories such as soccer balls,” Biniewski said. “From the speaker fund, $500 went to the Student Art Society for a design workshop and just hiring two members of the community to teach them things.”

Chief of Staff Genesis Pena, ’22, announced the winning genre for the Major Concert this year as pop. The artist for the concert was not announced.

President of the Class of 2024 Kristen Cadham updated the progress on the social media goals for the class page.

“We are continuing to reach out to people to complete our platform goals and continuing to mobilize the Instagram page,” Cadham said.

Vice President Sophie Adams, ’22, announced a surprise giveaway at the next football game for students. The item was not disclosed.

President Noah Tart, ’22, announced goals of increasing ASG communication with the administration.

“One of our goals is to get more members to come speak about the college campus,” Tart said. “Some names we would like to see here are (President. Hilary) Link, (Vice President for Enrollment Management) Ellen Johnson and (Vice President for Institutional Advancement) Matt Stinson.”

The meeting adjourned at 8:17 p.m.

CORRECTIONS: In the original issue, the Campus inaccurately printed Provost Cole indicating “that the college, from 2017-2018, invested in retirement incentives which were accepted by 43 faculty members.” The correct number of staff members who accepted the retirement incentives is 23. The Campus also misquoted Cole as saying ” ‘The reason for the academic program review is that it helps identify sprints and also areas for improvement in the curriculum.’ ” The story has been updated to reflect that Coles said “strengths,” not “sprints.” The Campus also indicated in the updated version that programs will be “based on how many students are participating in those programs and other criteria.”