ABIGAIL JACOBSON
News Editor
DAN QUAGLIANA
Managing Editor
Graphic by SAFFRON LORREA | Special to The Leader
On the evening of Friday, Sept. 13, SUNY Fredonia President Stephen H. Kolison, Jr. sent out an email at 4:01 p.m. to all faculty and staff members and announced that he and the rest of the administration plan to move “forward with plans to adjust our workforce in conjunction with the program discontinuations.”
This is in relation to the 13 majors that were cut last year which will no longer be offered to incoming freshmen. In President Kolison’s words, these majors “are no longer generating student demand.”
While the email does not specifically say that tenure track positions are being eliminated, that is what is implied. According to faculty sources, those actions are already in motion. Attrition is when a faculty or staff member retires or resigns.
President Kolison took care “to stress that these decisions are not taken lightly,” and to ensure that they were made “after very hard and at times painful discussions.”
This comes merely three and a half weeks after President Kolison’s semesterly all-faculty and staff presentation on Aug. 21. At that presentation, Vice President for Enrollment Management and Services Dr. Kathryn Kendall announced that enrollment numbers for this semester had exceeded the administration’s expectations.
According to this presentation, applications for first-year students were up by +7%, applications for graduate students were up by +13% and applications for transfer students were down by -11%.
Acceptance rate was down by -2% with 1,033 new students incoming to SUNY Fredonia as of Aug. 15.
As of Sept. 13, in Kolison’s email, he addresses new percentages than the ones mentioned on Aug. 15.
According to Kolison’s email, “This year, we achieved a 77.8% first-year retention rate…Newly admitted graduate students are up by 30% from last year, and there are a total of 431 graduate students enrolled this fall, which is an 18% increase from the previous year.”
Kolison responded to these percentages by saying, “These are all promising signs…Those trends need to continue to help us get where we want — and need — to be.”
In an additional email sent out on the morning of Saturday, Sept. 14 to all United University Professions (UUP) members on campus, Fredonia UUP Chapter President Chris Taverna said that “we are fully aware of the challenges and concerns that have arisen.”
UUP is the union that represents faculty and professional staff members on campus.
“We are diligently working to address each issue with the utmost care and attention,” the email read. “We will thoroughly pursue all avenues as we represent UUP members. There is a structured process in place, and we will ensure that members are availed of all rights and opportunities within that.”
Taverna further detailed how UUP is “concerned” about Kolison’s claim that reductions can be achieved through voluntary attrition. His email reminds members “that it is not UUP members’ responsibility to accomplish program and cost reductions through their voluntary actions.”
“We will be scheduling several meetings where we can discuss what is going on, answer any questions and dispel any misunderstandings,” Taverna said. “Thank you for your continued trust and cooperation.”
This is all the information The Leader has attained as of Sept. 15.