A Message About Community
Karen R. Moranski, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs
To: Academic Affairs Faculty and Staff
From: Karen Moranski, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs
RE: A Message About Community
The beginning of a new semester is an occasion for excitement about seeing students, starting classes, and reaffirming our joy in our educational community. I hope that joy is there this spring as it would be any other semester.
This week is, however, particularly difficult for our community, and I want to acknowledge that with this message. Not only is our American democracy at risk, particularly for our undocumented and immigrant friends, neighbors, students, and coworkers, and for our vulnerable BIPOC and LGBTQ communities, we also face risks to higher education in general and to Sonoma State in particular. Today we share a budget plan that has an enormous impact on our campus community and indeed on so many of our campus community members. You can find detailed information about the instructional budget reduction plan on the Budget Deficit Resources webpage.
The campus budget reduction plan forces us into layoff discussions and loss of work for faculty and staff, into the closure of our intercollegiate athletic programs, into cuts that impact our ability to function in the same manner we have previously. The cuts we are making will affect the way we do our work together and who we work with–as hard as we have tried in recent years to not reduce our academic core. The actions we take today hurt, and I wish we didn’t have to do it.
We have been scrutinizing our academic program mix for the last two years, with the Academic Master Planning process and the analytical work of the Current and New Programs (CNP) Working Group. Although this year poses even more challenges than anticipated, our campus has been given a mandate to fully address the budget deficit this fiscal year. Thus, we have relied on the metrics and reviews of CNP, as well as on Market and Economic data available through Gray Decision Intelligence, internal Tableau dashboards, and Academic Resources analysis to help us make the decisions reflected in the instructional budget reduction plan. The plan represents a measured and full analysis of multiple metrics, while keeping in mind the strategic priorities and values of the University’s Strategic Plan 2025.
Today, I offer a message about compassion and caring and the hope that lies in a beloved community, an appropriate remembrance for the work and words of Martin Luther King, whose birthday we celebrated on Monday. As we face the hard decisions, let’s take time to breathe, to center our thoughts in both individual and collective good will. I encourage you to reach out to people who are hurting and experiencing loss. Have compassion for students who are confused by what is happening to their campus and their goals for the future. Take time to notice who is feeling deeply, and offer your help and support. Sharing our experiences, concerns, and ideas with each other will help us all.
Many of you have heard me say time and again the only thing I know to do in hard times is to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. That is what I, our Interim President, and all our leaders will do today and every day. We will stand, we will be here, we will do the best we can to make the best decisions to help this university thrive. Sonoma State is here, serving our students and our community. It stands. And it will continue standing while we find the ways to move forward.
I hope we can process our feelings, our needs, our sense of loss, and our nascent hopes in community. Our Senate Chair, Emily Acosta Lewis, and CTET Director for Teaching and Learning, Matthew Paolucci Callahan, will be hosting a gathering today from 11:00am to 1:00pm in the Senate Conference room (Stevenson 1001b). I hope you will attend. In addition, Matthew and CTET will host “Helpful Practices for Terrible Times” in CTET on Friday at noon. Over the next few weeks, we will host other opportunities for gathering in community, answering questions, and discussing our challenges. Shared governance will also give us the chance to think about impacts as we work through our policies and processes in the Academic Senate and its committees. Academic Programs will develop a discontinuation proposal for consideration. To ensure we have an appropriate schedule available for students for next fall, we will need all feedback on the impacts of the budget reduction plan by March 17, 2025.
I am here on campus and thinking about each of you. Thank you for the contributions you have made to the Sonoma State community and the caring and concern you bring to every aspect of your work with students, each other, and our community. Let me know what questions and concerns you have, and we’ll work through these tough times together.