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Syracuse University philosophy professor Robert Van Gulick said he’s spent 42 years watching shared governance between faculty and the administration decline. When the university announced it would “sunset” nine undergraduate majors without a faculty vote, he said it was the latest step in a pattern he’s observed for decades.

“It’s definitely shrunk, and administrations have become less and less believers in faculty governance,” Van Gulick said. “It’s sort of a gradual erosion.”

As the university closes and restructures programs following its academic portfolio review, some faculty members say they’ve been removed from any formal role in the decision-making process.

On April 1, SU announced it would ‘sunset’ 93 programs, the final outcome of a university-wide academic portfolio review. The review, launched by SU Vice Chancellor and Provost Lois Agnew in August 2025, directed deans to evaluate programs based on enrollment, resources and long-term viability.

But many of those 93 programs were already closed, inactive or restructured before the review concluded — with some remaining in SU’s state inventory despite being long dormant. Of the 93, 55 had zero enrolled students.

As part of the review, 18 College of Arts and Sciences majors were paused in September, and departments were asked to submit stabilization plans for the majors by mid-December. Associate deans followed with recommendations for “low-declared” majors, and Agnew later extended the deadline for deans to submit their final recommendations to Jan 23.

Faculty across Arts and Sciences, the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and the College of Visual and Performing Arts said the process has revived longstanding concerns over shared governance at the university.

“Shared governance was central to this process,” an SU spokesperson wrote in a statement to The D.O. “The university conducted a campus-wide survey, held extensive meetings with faculty across schools and colleges, and maintained ongoing dialogue with faculty throughout.”

At a Feb. 6 “special meeting” called in reaction to the portfolio review, Van Gulick said Arts and Sciences and Maxwell faculty voted 185-51 in favor of a resolution stating that eliminating any program in the respective schools requires approval through the colleges’ curriculum committee and faculty body.

The resolution, according to its text, was intended to “reaffirm” existing governance practices rather than establish new ones. SU’s bylaws state that faculty, “subject to approval of the Senate and the Board,” hold jurisdiction over their college’s education program, including curriculum and instruction.

“If you need faculty approval to create a major, if you need faculty approval to change a major, why don’t you need faculty approval to eliminate a major?” Van Gulick said.

The spokesperson wrote that program closure decisions are not subject to a faculty vote because they affect the entire institution and require a full “financial and institutional picture” that no single school or college faculty body possesses.

Under the bylaws of the University Senate, the Committee on Curriculum and Instruction is tasked with considering “all requests for curriculum and course changes” and making recommendations on “curricular matters affecting the University as a whole.”

Two days before the March 20 email, humanities professor Harvey Teres addressed the resolution directly at a USen meeting and asked whether administrators intended to submit program closure decisions to the Arts & Sciences-Maxwell curriculum committee for approval.

Agnew said they would not.

“It is not part of the regular process for faculty to vote on program closures,” Agnew told senators.

Crystal Bartolovich, an English professor, senator for the Agenda Committee and president of SU’s American Association of University Professors chapter, said the administration’s defense missed an “important distinction.” Programs have been closed without going to the curriculum committee before, she said, but those decisions were historically initiated by faculty within departments.

“There is a massive difference between faculty in their own departments determining that programs are no longer viable — which has been the usual way program closure has been initiated in the past — and such closure decisions being made solely by administrators,” Bartolovich wrote in a statement to The D.O. “No administrator or even group of administrators can possibly have the knowledge of the faculty as a collective body.”

Concerns of shared governance extend beyond Arts and Sciences.

Kathleen Roland-Silverstein, chair of the voice pedagogy program at the Setnor School of Music in the College of Visual and Performing Arts — whose program is also closing following the review — claimed faculty governance in the process was “really minimal.”

She and her colleagues submitted proposals on how to revise and grow their program after it was placed on pause in September, she said, but did not believe those suggestions were taken into account.

“We were assured that pause did not mean cut … pause meant paused,” Roland-Silverstein said. “And that program could be paused, and then brought back. But it hasn’t been as clear or straightforward as we would’ve hoped.”

Van Gulick pointed to the 2002 closure of SU’s College of Nursing as the closest comparison, when then-Provost Deborah Freund brought the decision to USen as a formal resolution, requiring a vote before it could advance to the chancellor and the Board of Trustees. The senate voted 73-68 to approve the College of Nursing’s closure.

At the time, SU’s administration felt the need to put it to a vote, Van Gulick said. Now, they don’t even put it to a “consultation,” he said.

Jean Jonassaint, French and Francophone studies graduate advisor, said he’s seen the level of faculty involvement in decisions decrease over the last 15 years, citing the appointment of new chancellors, provosts and deans. He said he stopped attending faculty meetings because he didn’t feel his opinion was being heard.

“It’s not transparent, because you are not part of the conversation,” Jonassaint said. “They will never listen to you. I’m not happy with this administration, and unfortunately, I’m stuck here.”

Gareth Fisher, chair of SU’s Department of Religion — one of three Arts and Sciences majors slated to be “re-envisioned” — said his program’s experience differed.

The department had already begun restructuring its major before the pause was announced, he said. It was able to demonstrate engagement and a plan for growth, which he said the administration recognized.

Fisher said the department’s faculty input was adequately reflected in the final decision. He added that while faculty governance remains essential, he understands the challenges administrators face in making swift institutional decisions.

“I think there are ways that the administration can think about including faculty governance more in these kinds of quick decisions,” Fisher said. “But I also sympathize … it is not really easy to run a large institution like this in a climate that is changing as fast as ours is.”

When the resolution came up a month earlier at the February USen meeting, outgoing Chancellor Kent Syverud acknowledged the faculty vote but said closures cannot be subject to a faculty veto.

“I also believe it’s not the case that no program can be closed if the faculty in that program vote against it,” Syverud said, “Because as a practical matter, that would be quite a problem for the university as a whole and historically hasn’t been how it’s worked.”

At the same meeting, Bartolovich said the faculty’s concern was about the process, not about preserving programs regardless of merit.

“What we are suggesting is that elected faculty bodies … engage in these processes, as we are enjoined to do by the faculty control over the curriculum in the shared governance procedures that have been in place for ages and ages,” Bartolovich told senators. “They’re there because faculty expertise actually matters to these decisions.”

In October 2025, 81% of senators passed a resolution affirming faculty’s “primary control” over curriculum and calling for a formal USen role in the review. A subcommittee of the curricular committee, discussed at the Feb. 25 USen meeting, is now gathering information from schools and colleges about their procedures for pauses and closures.

The university spokesperson said the AAUP calls for early and meaningful faculty involvement in program closure decisions, “a professional standard (they) met and exceeded,” and that final authority typically rests with administrators.

Jeffery Carnes, a classics professor, said it was clear to him that the university had already made its decision to sunset the classics and classical civilizations majors when the original 18 Arts and Sciences programs were paused. He said because “sunsetting” is a new term, the senate has no established precedent for handling the closure of such programs.

“We’ve never really been a faculty-driven, faculty-run institution,” Carnes said. “There are certain limited things that we do, but I think there’s mostly lip service to shared governance and an illusion of it, and occasional real input from the faculty and things like curriculum. But you know, now they’re taking that away from us too.”

Faculty concerns about shared governance extend beyond the portfolio review.

In November 2024, Arts and Sciences Dean Behzad Mortazavi and Maxwell Dean David Van Slyke overrode a faculty vote approving a Liberal Arts Core curriculum revision that included a foreign language requirement, citing financial feasibility.

Over 220 faculty members signed a petition warning the move set a “dangerous precedent.”

In recent USen discussions, faculty also flagged issues with changes to the Renée Crown University Honors Program, revisions to the university’s IDEA curriculum requirement, the appointment of Provost Agnew without senate input and the university’s handling of the Graduate Student Organization, including its deregistration.

Agnew, at the February senate meeting, said recent changes reflect the university’s responsibility to adapt to shifting conditions in higher education, adding that the current moment calls for “seizing opportunities to realize our educational mission in ways that are appropriate to an ever-changing world.”

Van Gulick said SU is not alone in facing pressures from declining enrollment, cuts to federal research funding and a drop in international students. The trend, he said, reflects what he considers a nationwide shift toward a “management ethos” where universities are increasingly taking on the outlook of a business operation.

Mark Rupert, a political science professor who retired from SU five years ago, said that shift predates the portfolio review. In an email to The D.O., he cited what he called “the pervasive tendency” to view the university as a “business and students as customers” as one of the developments that ultimately contributed to his decision to retire from the faculty.

“I regret the diminished role of faculty in what we used to refer to as a system of ‘shared governance’ on campus,” Rupert wrote.

For faculty who have spent decades at SU, Van Gulick said, the change is more difficult to accept.

“Most of us have been here at least 20 years, and some of us much longer,” Van Gulick said. “And that’s why it bothers us, because we say this isn’t the way it has to be, because this isn’t the way it was.”

Published on April 9, 2026 at 2:02 am