Dear Toulan School friends,
It has been a while since our last Toulan School newsletter. Spring has arrived and the city is in bloom, but storm clouds still hang over PSU.
A lot has happened since last spring. Last September, President Cudd initiated the Plan for Institutional Vitality and Organizational Transformation (PIVOT), which was intended to help the University address a projected $35 million structural deficit. PIVOT promised a systematic review of all of PSU’s academic programs, units, centers and administrative structures. The results of that process informed her invocation last month of the Article 22 Retrenchment clause in the collective bargaining agreement with the faculty union AAUP, which will likely result in faculty layoffs around the university. While the Toulan School was not among the units identified for potential cuts, each of CUPA’s four other academic units were, which is deeply upsetting. It is hard to fathom continued cuts in public service education at a time when our democratic institutions are so profoundly under threat.
As PSU goes through a turbulent period of change, we also consider the prospect of an urban university without an urban college. At a recent Town Hall event, President Cudd laid out a future vision for PSU that would reduce the number of degree-granting colleges from 8 to 6. Part of this vision would involve merging CUPA with Social Sciences and Humanities units from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS).
While there are reasons to get behind a reduction in the University's administrative footprint, this proposal is concerning on the face of it. CUPA was created 50 years ago under the leadership of Dr. Nohad Toulan to drive PSU’s emerging identity as an urban university. While its form and composition have changed over time, CUPA has remained a visible symbol of the University's commitment to “let knowledge serve the city” through public service education and engaged scholarship around the most pressing issues facing the Portland community. Burying CUPA, its faculty, programs and research centers within a college without a clear identity related to our urban university mission would represent a sad retreat from what has made PSU unique and distinctive.
We know that colleges are not institutions to be preserved in amber; they need to evolve in response to the challenges of the time. I welcome the opportunity to consider new possibilities for bringing academic units into CUPA that share our deep commitment to making Portland a more vibrant, just and sustainable place through engaged learning and scholarship. But whatever emerges from this restructuring process must be judged not by how much money it saves, but rather whether it strengthens our collective impact as School, as a College and for PSU as a whole.
If you share my concerns, I encourage you to reach out to President Cudd at president@pdx.edu and let her know why CUPA is critical to PSU’s urban university mission.