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A.U. Center Schools Make Cuts

CAU furlough 100, Morehouse and Spelman make cuts

BY STAN WASHINGTON

The dire effects of the economy reached the Atlanta University Center last week with three of its member institutions announcing staff reductions and suspension of some programs

Clark Atlanta University led off with the bad news on Friday releasing100 staff and faculty members and dropping physical education classes for the remainder of the semester.

To accommodate in the reduction of its 650-staff, classes will be consolidated.

Following in its fellow institution’s footsteps, Morehouse College announced that 25 adjunct professors did not have their contracts renewed for the spring semester. None of the full-time professors or staff was affected, officials said.

On Monday, Spelman College released a statement saying it was cutting 35 jobs and dropping its education department. Twenty-three positions are staffed and the other 12 are vacant.

In addition to the education program, Spelman is discontinuing its continuing education and its long time children’s dance programs. It will also cease funding its Edelman Child Care Center.

Spelman is working with Morehouse and CAU to create an Atlanta University Center teacher certificate program.

In an exclusive interview with this reporter, CAU President Carlton E. Brown said the reduction of 70 full-time faculty and 30 staff employees was an “enrollment emergency” due to declining student enrollment over the years and not because of some immediate financial crisis.

The staff reductions have to be made according to policy, Brown said.

“Our police structure basically says that any sudden or long term continually drop in enrollment that cannot be addressed budgetary by ordinary means one would declare an enrollment emergency and engaged in a systematic reduction of force in order to maintain proper solvency,” he said.

The reductions do not in any way affect CAU’s accreditation nor is the institution about to close, he said.

Added Brown, “We have federal contracts and grants that are on a reimbursement basis so we have to maintain a certain kind of cash position. We have bonds and obligations that we have to meet and they require that we maintain a certain kind of financial stature and that’s exactly what we are doing. The difficulty is that the economy has tanked below any expectations.”

Clark Atlanta’s endowment of $40 million last year lost between 25 to 30 percent of its value, which was what the average institution of higher learning lost, Brown said.

Spelman’s and Morehouse’s endowments also suffered significant losses last year when the stock market took a deep dive. The school’s coffers were not the only ones that took a hit, but so did their alumni and donors, Brown pointed out.

Since 2001, CAU has seen its enrollment dropped from 5000 to its current level of 3900. “Quite frankly, we had not done all of the faculty and staff adjustments we should have done over that time period,” he said.

The reductions, Brown pointed out were only a “step in the process and not the process.”

“The next step we have to do is some administration re-organization to streamline, to create more efficiency and to save more money. That’s going on now and some of that is more difficult than others,” he said.

“Unfortunately for us, we have a lot of great people here,” Brown said. “It would be easy if all we were doing was removing unproductive people. That’s not where we are. We have to remove some really, really good people in order to keep the place functioning the way it needs to and moving forward.”

“It’s not like I have a unit with 10 faculty members and five of them aren’t that good. They all are good, but I can’t keep them all,” he added.

Classes were closed on Friday and Monday at Clark Atlanta University. Anxiety was high Friday as the deans of the four schools and department heads were delivering the separation notices to the employees. The released employees had to clean out their offices that day or make an appointment to return and finish moving out.

When this writer visited the Mass Media Arts department late Friday afternoon following the interview with Dr. Brown, they were still waiting on the dean to arrive with the bad news.

Rumors of who had been released were heightening the tension because it had become clear that length of service was not protection from being dismissed.

And it was not as two of the three faculty members released had over 10 years of service.

On Monday afternoon, Dr. Brown discussed the layoffs and its

impact at a packed town hall meeting with undergraduate students. The following

day, he held a similar meeting with graduate students.

(This writer is a graduate of Clark Atlanta University formerly known as Clark College.)