On February 21st, a group of over 200 concerned faculty members released a letter stating that the university needed to make “bold and decisive changes” in order to “right the ship” according to Jon Oatley, an associate dean in the college of Veterinary Medicine and a spokesperson for the concerned faculty.
WSU spokesperson Phil Weiler says that these concerns have been known for over a year. Last February, faculty in this group raised many of these concerns to the university, and the university provided a 24-page report detailing their responses to many of these concerns. Still, some say that changes haven’t been made.
“We tried to work in the system for about a year, to try to effect change and get some bold and decisive action, and we haven’t seen it happen. So that’s why we decided to take this next step,” Oatley said.
The concerned faculty say WSU has seen a campus wide decline of enrollment of 12% since 2016 and the school’s US News and World Report National Ranking has fallen 38 positions in that same amount of time.
WSU created a task force to specifically address the national ranking last year, and the school improved 34 positions since then, according to Phil Weiler.
Marty Dickinson, a WSU Board of Regents Member, says the landscape of higher education is changing rapidly, and that the school is working to adjust.
“Change is hard, I think it can be uncomfortable for lots of individuals, but I think we also know we have to position WSU differently to be able to navigate the future changes to higher ed,” Dickinson said.
Brandon chapman, who works for the wsu department of education, says that while concerns are real, the solution shouldn’t involve drastic changes.
“Yea were concerned about some of the items were talking about, let’s find solutions, lets not jump to we gotta get this guy out and the next guy is going to be perfect. It doesn’t work like that.”
Both Chapman and Dickinson raised questions about the 200 anonymous faculty members and how this letter was distributed. Jon Oatley told Nonstop Local that the survey was not sent through the WSU system to all faculty because it would have been flagged. Instead, it was sent around via email and each person who received it was told to distribute it to as many other faculty members as possible. There is no way to know how many people it actually reached, but Oatley says all groups of faculty members should have seen it.
Both sides agreed that both sides of this disagreement, while having different approaches, are coming from the same place of wanting to see the university achieve at the highest level. Both sides want to see increases in enrollment, funding, and investments into research.
“Thats the good part about this, we might not agree on how to get there, but everyone wants to get to the same place,” Dickinson said.
