As $27.5 million in cuts loom over UNL, students hope to save programs

Rayne and Lizzie Aurit have a lot in common — they share a last name as siblings, they both play in marching band at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln… and both of their academic programs are facing elimination.

Rayne is a junior double majoring in computer science and statistics & data analytics. Lizzie is a freshman double majoring in geography and meteorology & climatology.

On Sept. 12, UNL officials announced the statistics department and the earth and atmospheric sciences department were two of six academic programs proposed to be eliminated. The memo includes four other departments that could merge along with other funding cuts across the university to address a $21 million budget deficit and an additional $6.5 million in proactive cuts.

Programs up for elimination are:

• Statistics
• Earth and atmospheric sciences
• Educational administration
• Landscape architecture
• Textile, merchandising and fashion design
• Community and regional planning

The four proposed to merge are:

• Entomology with plant pathology
• Agricultural leadership, education and communication with agricultural economics

Rayne said they always loved math in high school, and it made sense to major in statistics near home at UNL.

“This is what I want to do,” Rayne said. “I want to do statistics. I want to apply this math because I really love math.”

The Aurits grew up in Elkhorn, and both chose UNL because of the scholarships they earned. Lizzie is a President’s Scholar, meaning her expenses are fully covered with some additional spending money. Rayne also received several scholarships, including a career scholarship meant for degree programs in “high wage, high skill and high demand fields,” according to the UNL admissions website.

“I'm essentially going here for free, debt-free, which is huge,” Rayne said. “It really sucks that I might not be able to do what I came here to do.”

Lizzie shared a similar sentiment, especially since she’s just starting her college journey.

“As a freshman, it's confusing and concerning, because what's it going to look like in four years if the program gets cut?" Lizzie said. “Who's going to be teaching the classes? What classes are [we] going to be able to take?”

In response to the potential cuts, Rayne started an Instagram page for those impacted to share their thoughts. Rayne created posts that spoof a UNL social media campaign. That UNL campaign had highlighted Rayne’s younger sister for her work when she went to UNL’s weather camp throughout high school.

“You're using her for outreach, and then you're also on the back end being like, cutting your program, so it feels very hypocritical,” Rayne said. “I was like, I'm gonna take this, parody it and have people be able to share their stories. That's what the Instagram account was for.”

Using quantitative and qualitative metrics

Chancellor Rodney Bennett said in a video message the day the cuts were announced that the university has to think creatively to address the challenges it is facing.

“UNL has been faced with declining revenues in several key areas, including reduced net tuition revenue, changes in state appropriations and campus allocation models, and sharply rising costs for health care, property and liability insurance and utilities, resulting in a structural budget deficit that compounded over time,” Bennett said.

Earlier this year, state legislators approved a smaller-than-expected increase for the University of Nebraska. NU President Jeffrey Gold requested a 3.5% increase for each year over the next two years. State senators approve a 0.625% increase for each year instead.

Since then, the university system announced a voluntary separation program for tenured faculty 62 and older with at least 10 years of service. University employees also did not receive raises this year, unless raises were previously negotiated or are related to promotion and tenure.

Mark Button, UNL executive vice chancellor, said the university did both a metrics review and spoke with each program to get a full picture before making the budget cuts proposal.

“We have to make sure that we're thinking carefully about how this university serves all of Nebraska, and that was a significant part of our conversations with all these units,” Button said. “Underneath it all was an attempt to understand, well, the data might be telling us one story, but why is the data telling us that story? What else is happening in a particular unit? What other contributions are they making in terms of public engagement, public service and so on?”

The statistical analysis covered areas in research and instruction. Button said on the instruction side, the university looked at metrics like how fast a program was growing, what the demand is, how many degrees are awarded and the amount of credit hours students are taking.

On the research side, the university used criteria from the Association of American Universities, which NU has been trying to regain membership in since it was removed in 2011. Those metrics included research expenditures, book publications, fellowships, awards and how UNL compares to other programs across the country.

Those metrics were then weighted based on how much emphasis a program put on each metric.

“That statistical analysis, that quantitative-based analysis was one measure,” Button said. “It was also combined with a comprehensive, holistic review of every program, because we are very mindful that the data can't tell you everything. It can't capture all the things that a unit does, and it wasn't designed to do so.”

Button added that the holistic review included speaking with leadership in each college about the unique value each program brought to the university.

Impacting rural communities

Ciara Nelson is a student in the community and regional planning program, which is slated for elimination under the proposal. Nelson said she was confused when she saw her program on the list of potential cuts.

“We're such a small program with a big impact,” Nelson said. “We had just announced our work with Elmwood, and we had just had a video published and created about our impact in Elmwood and doing all that, and then the week later, we're like, oh, our program is getting cut.”

Nelson initially came to UNL from South Dakota for her undergraduate degrees in political science and environmental & sustainability studies, and then she stayed to get her masters in community and regional planning.

She said losing the program could hurt rural towns in Nebraska.

“Coming from a rural area, I can see the value of our planning program to rural communities, I think more than others do, because I can relate what we're doing in Elmwood, what we did in Peru, what we've worked with Ogallala on — I can see that playing out,” Nelson said.

Marvin Planning Consultants, a Nebraska planning firm, has worked with several UNL students on projects over the years in rural communities. Mason Herrman, community planner and GIS coordinator with Marvin Planning Consultants, said the UNL program offers an affordable option for communities to get planning help.

“So many small towns don't have the funding to go out and fix what they need to or what they want to,” he said. “I mentioned in a previous job, I wrote grants, federal and state grants. A lot of times if the community we wrote grants for did not show any interest in planning for the future, they wouldn't get any funding.”

Herrman said the UNL students he’s worked with are just as good as the professionals. He recalled two town hall meetings that Marvin Planning Consultants and the UNL students were a part of. The meetings were fairly contentious for the planning firm Herrman works for, but he said everyone loved what the students had accomplished.

“I didn't go to UNL. I'm not from Nebraska,” Herrman said. “I think just seeing firsthand how impressive that program is, it really is heartbreaking to think it could go away.”

Nelson said in her classes, she’s learned about collaboration and how planners can bridge the gap between other positions in a city or government.

“They're taking the architects and the engineers and the water managers and even the city officials, and they're making the knowledge and the information that those professionals are creating, and then bringing it down and talking to the people in the community and understanding how that is impacting the community, and then taking the community's perspectives back to all of those professional stakeholders and trying to come up with a plan that benefits everyone,” she said.

Nelson will graduate in December. Her peer, Anita Borlak, is also in her second year of the program. She said she came back to Lincoln to study planning because she wanted to make a difference in her community.

“I have so many opinions about Lincoln,” Borlak said. “I love it some days. I hate it some days, but it feels like home at the end of the day. It's where family is. It's where I've grown up, and so I felt this need to come back and kind of just figure out what I could do here, and the easiest stepping stone felt like doing a master’s program in planning.”

While the university has committed to ensuring students can finish out their degrees, Borlak said she isn’t sure how that will look, especially with professors moving on for new jobs if the program is slated to end.

Borlak said the loss of the program would impact future generations of Nebraskans.

“I can read as much as I want about this, but there is no substitute for that kind of knowledge that you gain in the setting of a classroom, and to get rid of that healthy learning space is to get rid of institutional knowledge that is building healthier, more robust planners that will better be able to serve the cities that we want to keep living in," she said.

‘They used statistics’

Rayne, the statistics and data analytics major, said the loss of statistics will hurt research at the university and beyond.

“I just find it ironic that in the methodology of figuring out these budget cuts, they used statistics, they used standardized metrics, so you're using statistics to get rid of statistics,” Rayne said. “There's a bit of irony that I find funny and also confusing at the same time.”

Rayne said without the statistics department, they may drop their statistics and data analytics major and focus on finishing their computer science major early, or they might transfer schools.

Lizzie said she’s waiting to see what will happen to her program and how classes would look if the university ended up cutting earth and atmospheric sciences. She said she loves the people she’s met, so she wants to stay as long as she can. However, some of her classmates are already looking at transferring or switching majors.

“My friend who's super interested in weather is already planning on swapping into software engineering,” Lizzie said. “It disheartens me because that friend who's swapping majors, she went to weather camp, she is so obsessed with meteorology. It's her hobby, it's her passion, it's what she loves to do, but she doesn't want to deal with an unstable program.”

Hearings for the impacted programs, both those proposed for elimination and those proposed for merger, start Wednesday and go through Oct. 10. The full list can be found here. The hearings will be livestreamed but not open to public comment. Each program will have designated speakers.