Loyola board approves restructuring

By Gwen Filosa
Staff writer

Loyola University’s board of trustees Friday approved a major restructuring plan in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, cutting a host of degree programs and 17 faculty positions as it prepares for lower enrollment numbers next fall.

The trustees unanimously adopted the plan, “Pathways Toward Our Second Century,” after a private two-hour meeting at the Uptown campus.

Although the trustees made some changes in the original plan’s consolidation of schools, the list of proposed cuts in programs and faculty slots was approved as first presented in April.
Loyola’s leaders predict a drop in enrollment due directly to the fear that outside of Louisiana, the Katrina disaster has tainted New Orleans as a dangerous place to send your sons and daughters.

“It’s about recruiting new students,” said the Rev. Kevin Wildes, Loyola’s president. “These days it’s not just the student you’re recruiting, you’re recruiting their family as well. It’s the mother in Boston who when her child says I want to go to school in New Orleans, says, ‘absolutely not.’ ”

The cuts, shifts and changes aren’t only about the bottom line, Wildes said.

“It is also about strengthening the institution so we can continue to attract students,” Wildes said. “It strengthens us by saying, we’re committed to offering a first-rate undergraduate liberal-arts education. This is a way for us to focus what we do.”

Loyola has done away with the entire education department, broadcast journalism, computer science and a master’s program in communications, and suspended a dozen programs for two years.

Students already majoring in the dropped programs may finish their degrees, Wildes said, and courses in those subjects will likely still be offered.

The Jesuit and Catholic university will consist of five newly established colleges and several schools within those colleges. City College, which serves adults and part-time students, is scrapped.

The School of Law is now the College of Law, while many name changes actually reflect different configurations of disciplines. The College of Social Science will now house the departments of counseling, criminal justice, human and organizational development, sociology and political science, along with the schools of nursing and mass communication.

Loyola, which has 4,000 students and a $125 million operating budget, expects a $10 million deficit for the fiscal year ending July 31. The campus, off St. Charles Avenue, suffered more than $5 million in storm damages, relatively light compared to the devastation at the University of New Orleans’ lakefront campus and Tulane University.

The dozen programs now suspended may reappear someday at Loyola.

After two years, the school will take a second look at the viability of majors and minors in physics, German, Japanese, Russian, music theory, music composition, piano pedagogy and human and organizational development. In graduate programs, three music programs were suspended along with religious studies.

The entire plan is available on the Web, at www.loyno.edu/strategicplan/.

(Gwen Filosa can be reached at gfilosa@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3304.)