In November 2020, Guilford College underwent a leadership change, appointing Carol Moore as the interim president. This resulted in 19 majors and 27 faculty positions cut from the college, including 16 tenured professors which was approximately 30% of the college faculty at the time. The cuts were part of an effort to address a $7 million budget deficit.
The majors that were most heavily affected by this were philosophy, math, political science, history, geology, economics, peace and conflict studies, chemistry, religious studies and physics.
Now, five years later, Guilford is facing another $4 million budget deficit and students are on edge wondering if their department or major may be next on the chopping block.
When asked, Acting President Jean Bordewich’s response to this question was lukewarm.
“We haven’t really looked at that yet, but that’s part of what we will be addressing,” she said. “I know that Maria (Rosales) and others have been working on an academic strategic plan. There’s a group of faculty — and I assume they’ve been talking with students — who are coming to us, probably next week or the week after, with proposals for some restructuring in the academic area.
“We want to be led by the community,” Bordewich continued. “So, I think, you know it’s a little bit premature. I don’t want to say no because I don’t know.”
Many students believe that cutting any more programs at the college would be costly to the students and the community. Will Beardsley, a history major, was one of these students.
“But things like cutting our small classes? Well, I completely understand that’s a huge part of making sure that we can pay and get enough money to run a school,” he began. “Those of us that are in this room are overwhelmingly in humanities and are in classes that are going to be cut.”
While this may be easy for a student to say, Beardsley was aware of the situation at hand.
“I know you guys are here because there’s an urgency, but they (the students) are the critical part of what makes this school operate,” he said. “Without those students marketing this college and without them leaving happy, there is not going to be a college.”
For students concerned about majors and minors being cut while they are already enrolled, when asked about what would happen to students enrolled in programs that might be cut, Coordinating Committee member Carla Brenner responded, “When you enrolled at the college, you enrolled with a specific catalog of courses. When we enroll you, we are bound in contract, so, as a board, we are obligated to ensure your degrees are met even if that means other arrangements are made for classes away from campus.”
While there is no confirmation about majors or minors being cut at Guilford, we do know there have been talks involving restructuring how the academics look. While we do not have any current updates as to what that will look like, we know that Interim Provost Kami Rowan is working with a group of colleagues to look into some ideas.
When a professor asked how to get involved, Bordewich said, “Well, it won’t be a top-down decision,” and instructed them to follow up with the interim provost.
It appears that Bordewich is attempting to be as open and transparent with the community as possible and is willing to work with the systems already in place.
“All of us are on a fast track because our timeline with SACSCOC (the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges) is very short,” Bordewich explained.
“Fortunately, indecision has benefited us in one way, which is to say that people are doing a lot of work, a lot of brainstorming, and a lot of ideas, but now we’re in the action phase. So, you know, we’re not trying to reinvent everything that everybody else has already been doing — we’re trying to take what’s there, and then make some final choices.”
At this time, there are no further updates on Guilford College’s academic plan moving forward but we are expecting updates in the coming weeks.