The Chronicle of Higher Education
by Lindsay Ellis
May 13, 2021
The University of Vermont announced cuts in December in its College of Arts and Sciences, arguing that a structural budget deficit exacerbated by the pandemic made it necessary to eliminate programs. But the college is now grappling with a new problem: A surge of incoming freshmen committing to the university has left the college understaffed.
After factoring in likely melt among committed students, administrators anticipate that more than 1,425 freshmen will come to campus, “well above the 1,250 that we built the fall schedule for,” the college’s dean, Bill Falls, wrote in an email to the staff. The university expected around 1,300 deposits by May 1 but received 1,640, a “significant jump,” he told faculty members in the college at a Tuesday meeting.
Now, the college is scrambling to find professors to teach first-year seminars and large-enrollment courses for this wave of new students. College leaders have reached out to three lecturers who were not reappointed in December to ask them to teach and have asked full-time faculty to take on additional work.
“I haven’t yet gone out to the corner and just flagged down cars to see if they can teach, I don’t know, psychological science,” said Abigail McGowan, the associate dean of the college, at a virtual faculty meeting on Tuesday that was recorded on Microsoft Teams. (The Chronicle obtained audio from the meeting.) “We’re all exhausted, we’re overwhelmed, we’re tired. This is a bad year to come back to people” and say, “do you want to do extra work next year?”