Administrators told the biological anthropology and anatomy faculty Friday that although the University will support only six or seven faculty positions when the department moves entirely within Arts and Sciences, its financial commitment to BAA will not waver. The School of Medicine will also provide financial support, effectively adding two professors and bringing the department's total size to nine.
William Chafe, dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, and Berndt Mueller, dean of natural sciences, met with BAA faculty to clarify plans for the reorganization of the department. Two weeks ago, a proposed reduction of BAA faculty from 17 to six over the next several years upset the department's faculty, many of whom saw the drastic reduction as equivalent to eliminating BAA.
Since its inception in 1988, BAA has been jointly administered by the School of Medicine and Arts and Sciences. Thirteen and a half of the department's full-time faculty are funded by Arts and Sciences, and the medical school finances the remaining three and a half positions. Most faculty teach and conduct research primarily in Arts and Sciences, but the department has historically taught first-year gross anatomy in the medical school curriculum as well.
Professors were optimistic after Friday's meeting about what many termed "movement" away from the initial cutbacks on the part of the administration. They remained pessimistic, however, about the future of the department.
"Before, I didn't see any breath left in us at all," said Steven Churchill, associate professor of BAA and director of undergraduate studies. "Now, I see us as morbidly sick but not necessarily dead. We probably could still keep up a graduate program and an undergraduate program, but not at the level we have done it. This is, percentage wise, still a pretty big blow."
Chafe maintained that the reduction of faculty positions is not a result of a shrinking BAA budget and that Arts and Sciences' financial commitment to BAA will remain constant at approximately $1 million over the next 10 years.
"[Integrating BAA into Arts and Sciences] means our absorbing some of the expenditures currently being handled by the Medical Center," Chafe said.
The proposed faculty reductions will be mandated, administrators said, by increased expenditures, ranging from administrative costs to renovated facilities for the department. The cutbacks come as medical school administrators plan to phase out the school's financial commitment to BAA and eventually to teach gross anatomy from within.
Faculty expressed concern that the department's interests were being lost in financial quibbling between Arts and Sciences and the School of Medicine.
"I understand the problem," said Carel van Schaik, BAA professor and director of graduate studies. "But this is a University department. It started out as an experiment but because the experiment isn't working, the interests of the department shouldn't be overlooked."
Much of the continuing discussion will probably center around how the money from Arts and Sciences will be distributed within BAA.
"It's really hard to know what exactly everyone means about continued commitment without seeing the money on a spread sheet," said Richard Kay, chair of the department. "I'm pretty confident that we're going to work out some kind of arrangement that will be satisfactory, and the only satisfactory position is one that will enable us to maintain our national reputation and at the same time continue to offer the kind of quality and size of the undergraduate major that we wish to be known for."
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