Five majors at Wichita State were flagged for review at the Oct. 18 Kansas Board of Regents meeting.
These five flagged majors, listed below, are all housed in the Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Science:
- Women’s, Ethnicity, and Intersectional Studies
- Geology
- Philosophy
- Physics
- Forensic Science
In a document submitted to the Kansas Board of Regents (KBOR) earlier this academic year, all five of the programs were listed by Wichita State as “mission critical with low enrollment” or as programs “needing enhancements/improvements.”
Programs were pulled for review because they did not meet two of four criteria: student demand, degree production, regional employment and graduate salary on average after five years.
Shirley Lefever, provost at Wichita State, suggested that looking at the student credit hour production as part of the criteria in the future could “illuminate that program review process.”
Lefever, along with the other provosts at the six KBOR-run state universities, were allowed to explain what the next steps with their flagged programs could be and where they were already seeing improvements.
Across the six state universities in Kansas, there were 32 programs flagged for universities to review.
The full academic affairs committee meeting can be viewed here.
Each provost will take their respective list back to their universities and create recommendations to create an action plan for the program, merge the program with another, or phase out the program. These recommendations are scheduled to be submitted on April 20, 2024.
In May, the academic affairs committee will review the recommendations and advise the board on their final decisions, which will be made in June.
