Iowa State’s finalized budget cuts include the elimination of some

student services, minority recruitment programs and a number of

classes.

ISU officials are worried the budget cuts will affect the quality of

education at Iowa State.

For instance, the College of Agriculture is eliminating nine classes

scheduled for this fall.

“The nine courses [cut] will certainly have some impact on the

students involved,” said Wendy Wintersteen, senior associate

dean of the College of Agriculture. “That was just one of the

impacts of the cut.”

She said the college prioritized the courses in order to make their

decision.

Although class sizes will be increasing, Wintersteen doesn’t see

that as the biggest problem.

“I think the bigger issues are the numbers of [faculty] positions that

are lost,” she said. “I think if we aren’t able to keep the best faculty

that has the biggest impact on the quality of education.”

The College of Design will cut the most courses, with 15 in all.

“We’re cutting courses that are electives and combining sections,”

said Mark Engelbrecht, dean of the design college. “We don’t think

there’s going to be a problem.”

Engelbrecht said the decision to cut courses shouldn’t stand in

the way of students’ graduations.

“Some of the classes have been rolled into other larger classes or

combined so that we may have one course that may drape over a

couple that we had before,” he said.

The College of Engineering is also increasing class sizes in the

fall.

“It’s obviously a very significant blow to what we think is important

momentum that the college was building in terms of moving

forward a number of educational and research programs,” said

James Melsa, dean of the engineering college.

He said the college is desperately trying to encourage students to

enter the engineering program.

“We’re resisting very strongly . to limit enrollment or restrict

enrollment in any fashion,” Melsa said. “At this time we are

concerned that as tuition is increasing – and I think it has to

increase if we keep the quality that we want to have – we will

begin to exclude certain students.”

He said the increases in tuition will put additional pressure on the

college to raise money.

“It puts pressure on us to try and find more ways to get scholarship

support to help students come to Iowa State so that we can

encourage students to be here,” Melsa said.

The College of Engineering has also been forced to cut certain

faculty positions, including the position in charge of recruitment of

minority students to the engineering program.

Although this position has been cut, Melsa said, the

responsibilities will be covered by other faculty members and the

program will run as it has in the past.

International Education Services is seeing a cut of more than

$14,000. However, the program may not be affected by these cuts

until after this next school year.

“I think we’re going to be OK for this year because of a special

grant from the vice provost for undergraduate programs,” said

Dennis Peterson, director of International Education Services. “But

when the year is out, unless we can find alternative sources, it may

be harmful to some study abroad programs.”

Another change on campus will be the new hours for the computer

labs in the Durham Center. Although the labs were previously

open 24 hours a day, they will now be shut down each night.

Dorothy Lewis, interim director for Academic Information

Technologies, said the shortened hours will have a minimal

impact on students.

“Certainly there will be some that will find these shortened hours a

problem for them especially, when they’re doing those last-minute

projects, but we hope to publicize it well,” she said. “We know

when traffic in the labs begins to drop off so we’ve tried to get our

hours matched to that.”

Labs will now be open until midnight Sunday through Thursday,

and until 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

President Gregory Geoffroy said despite budget cuts, Iowa State

will be able to maintain the quality of education.

“I’m unhappy that we had to make these decisions, but I think that

the team who worked with Interim President Seagrave did the best

job possible under difficult circumstances,” Geoffroy said. “I’m

concerned about our ability to continue to make the kind of

progress that we should be making under these difficult budget

circumstances.”

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