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Full-Text Articles in Educational Leadership
Closing Up Shop: Meditations On The Departmental/Programmatic Elimination Experience, Susan Beth Donoff
Closing Up Shop: Meditations On The Departmental/Programmatic Elimination Experience, Susan Beth Donoff
UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones
Departmental and programmatic eliminations represent a new paradigm in the history of American higher education. Hastened by a national economic recession and competing state funding priorities, public post-secondary institutions have turned to academic attrition as a solution to continuous budgetary shortfalls. As a means of addressing the lived experience of faculty members and department chairs, the following qualitative case study explores perceptions of implementing departmental and/or programmatic eliminations.
Utilizing uncertainty reduction theory as a conceptual framework, interviewed faculty in saved units experienced considerable strategic uncertainty, failing to understand why they had been selected for elimination. Guided by a college-wide strategic …