Does this worry anyone?

http://www.missouri-miner.com/media/paper426/news/2006/01/26/News/Extreme.Budget.Cuts.Give.Way.To.Extreme.Changes-1504569.shtml?norewrite&sourcedomain=www.missouri-miner.com

I'm not terrified of the budget cuts, as public services are often the first things to go in economic uncertainty, but what worries me is Chancellor Carney's wording, "I think we should give serious consideration to phasing out our College of Arts and Sciences". He refers to merging, but I've been unable to find what he wants to merge and what he wants left after the mergers.

From how I have understood the Chancellor's plans he wants to get rid of the seperate colleges here on campus and eliminate the dean's. Maybe that is oversimplifying things...but thats been my understanding so far.

I understand how he wants to remove the deans, and I tend to agree, but I'm not a big fan of combining departments...that just sounds bad, a lot of the departments are pretty standard for our type of school; how can a change be made here for the better?

The Chancellor is a douche for wanting to bring an MBA program to campus. It wouldn't be so bad except he wants it to emphasize engineering--sounds like an MS in EMan to me, which we already have. And it's good.

Stupid crap. We should try to burn his house down again.

-jkpq45

Why do we care about emphasizing the nonengineering/science departments? Why on Earth would someone go here for that when they can go to college for half (or a third) the cost? UMR doesn't have a "name" in humanities, does it?

If it does, it's probably not listened to. Though there are some who are weird enough to come here for pre-law, we're a frickin' engineering school.

Get over it--boo humanities, yay beer.

-jkqp45

Actually the history/poly/pre-law department isn't too bad. Quite good actually.

Actually, from what I understand, out history and psychology/sociology departments are actually good/well known (or, at least, better known than you'd think).

As far as emphasizing the other departments, what's so bad about trying to diversify the campus?

The Chancellor also wants to eliminate the School of Mines, Energy, and Earth Resources (SOMEER). Being a member of the school, I think this is not a good idea. UMR owes it's heritage to the school, eliminating it and making it a part of the School of Engineering will make UMR lose some of its identity, and make it easier for the elimination of smaller departments such as GE and PE. You can email the chancellor at chancellor@umr.edu , in the article in the Miner he suggested it. I already did.

Actually he's going with 'what the students want', which means that on a survey two years ago where they asked if we wanted an MBA program a 'statistically signifiant' portion of students said they wanted one. Here's the exact numbers:

http://campus.umr.edu/stuco/minutes/200 ... 70404.html
This means that if we have 5000 students, 484 would want to get an MBA here. But because the people who would want an MBA program here would be the most likely to respond, lets cut that number in half again, which is 242, and still larger than many departments here at UMR.

Now, with that said, do I agree with having an MBA program here? Fuck no. If I wanted an MBA (right now I don't, but someday I might), I'd go to a school that is well known for it's MBA program. Right now I want an engineering degree from a school that is known for producing quality engineers, not for offering every degree under the sun and producing dreck for engineers.

collapsing the 'schools' into one and eliminating the deans is a mistake.

SOMEER got all the classic 'ground' stuff. Mining, Geology, Petro E, Ceramic E, Metallurgy, why is it not a good choice for a department? Many of our REALLY wealthy alumni made their millions with mining, petrolium, and metallurgy. So lets piss off our donors by destroying their major.

Wasn't one of our school administrators responsible for greatly enhancing our social sciences?! We're going backward?!

Don't make me hurt you Kevan...I know where you live.

Humanities make people more well rounded. People leave UMR because the Humanities are not up to par in some areas (English is one I have seen people leave over). Better Humanities = good.

The whole MS in Emann being the same as the new thing...well it prolly is about the same. But after thinking about it...saying we have an MBA program by itself will get us more students. Just a thought.

Our GE program is one of only 15 such accredited programs in the USA and ranked #2 in the nation. PE is one of 14. The elmination of SOMEER could easily lead to the elimination of the majors (GE only has 40 or so undregrads). You can bet UMR won't get a single penny of my money after I graduate if they eliminate my major. To the administration, all that matters is money and the U.S. News rankings (where UMR is #50-something on undergrad engineering schools).

Why do we care about emphasizing the nonengineering/science departments? Why on Earth would someone go here for that when they can go to college for half (or a third) the cost? UMR doesn't have a "name" in humanities, does it?

-jthxv

im sorry but i had the understanding, that UMR is a fairly inexpensive school to go to, lets see your right if i was a nonengeering major, i could prolly go to a school that had its name in liberal arts and pay a shit ton more out of the ass.. on the neighborhood of three to 4 more times what we pay here but hey thats cool cause im a douchebag

Check that number - 22% of 242, or in other words about 50 ppl. True that could be a small department size, but why add more of a substandard program that will just add to the deficit?

UMR is for engineering, and overall its pretty lousy for anything else. I'm moving on to better things in other fields at some other place. But for people that DO want the liberal arts education, there are plenty of schools that, if not cheaper, are at least comparative in cost to UMR and have better liberal arts. So diversifying will NOT fix the underlying issues - and it will add more because we're already in debt.