To:                  The Loyola University Board of Trustees

From:              Concerned Members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (78 attending)

Date:               May 15, 2006

Since the announcement of the Pathways Plan, the faculty has been requesting criteria, data, and the vision driving the proposed plan.  The data provided to the Standing Council for Academic Planning was incomplete and inaccurate.  The Provost’s Office has acknowledged this fact.  Furthermore, faculty were not involved in the formulation of the plan nor were we given sufficient opportunity to provide meaningful feedback about the plan.  As this plan will shape Loyola’s future, we the faculty voted on May 12, 2006, and unanimously approved the following motions. 

Motion #1:  The faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences urge the Board in the strongest possible terms to table the Pathways Plan until November 2006.

Rationale: 

1.         The prudent stewardship of our university is in the hands of the Board of Trustees.

2.         The current plan is reckless, ill-conceived and bound to do irreparable harm to our university for many years to come.

3.         Criteria for restructuring have not been approved by SCAP or by the University Senate. There has been no vision put forward to guide any sort of wise restructuring plan. There has been no clear rationale put forward to justify the proposed cuts.

4.        The current plan was not reviewed by the deans or the faculty before it was put

forward on April 10, 2006, therefore we have not had sufficient time, or access to complete data, to allow for reasonable deliberation and joint planning among administrators and faculty. 

5.         Severe and serious cuts to departmental majors and of tenured faculty members as proposed by the Pathways Plan should not be chosen as the best strategy to

ensure the future health of our university, especially when these

recommendations are based on inaccurate compilations and misinterpretations

of data from just the 04-05 fiscal year. 

6.         The attrition of both students and faculty that has been caused by the mere announcement of the plan has not been assessed.

7.         Alternative cost-cutting measures have not been proposed and explored by the whole university community.

8.         Although the data revealed more inefficient programs in the College of Business Administration             and the College of Music, only programs in the College of Arts and Sciences -- all of which produce positive net revenue -- were proposed to be cut.

Motion #2:  The faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences recommends the following actions.

1. Eliminate Assistant Provost positions and any unspecified administrative positions in the Provost and President’s office and return those people to their respective departments or colleges.

2. Elect representative of the faculties from Arts and Sciences, Business, Music, and City College to help the Provost review the Pathways Plan in the light of the new or corrected data. Those faculty members should not include any faculty who are current assistant provosts or administrators.

3. Create no New Administrative positions (i.e. Director of QEP, or FYE, etc,) until all necessary faculty openings created by resignations, retirement, etc., have been filled as needed.

4. Give the Board, the President, the Provost and the faculty helping with the plan the number of faculty members that have been lost since Katrina (to resignations, retirements, phased retirements, etc). That information should be used in reexamining the plan.

We do not endorse the plan and we urge the Board not to accept it at this time.

The postponement until November 2006 will allow time for publication of all the criteria and all the data used to make these decisions as well as an opportunity to implement these actions.

In the spirit of Justice consistent with Loyola’s mission, we hope that the Board will agree that clear criteria and accurate information are essential to planning for Loyola’s future.