ECSU may cut history program

As UNC-system schools continue to make tough decisions in a difficult financial climate, Elizabeth City State University is considering discontinuing its history program — a move that could be virtually unprecedented for a public university.

Earlier this fall, system General Administration staff directed the 16 system universities to recommend low-productivity degree programs for discontinuation by November. ECSU, a historically black school with an enrollment of about 2,400 students, received a nearly 10 percent cut to its state funding this year.

Ten programs at the school fit the system’s criteria for low productivity. ECSU administrators determined that three of them — middle grades education, special education and a master of science in biology — are central to the university’s mission and will not be considered for elimination.

Seven programs — history, political science, physics, geology, studio art, marine environmental science and industrial technology — are still in limbo. If the seven are discontinued, some coursework in each area will still be offered at ECSU, said Ali Khan, provost and vice chancellor of academic affairs, in a statement.

UNC-system policy deems that degree programs must have at least 20 graduates in the last two years and at least 26 majors to avoid the low-productivity designation.

ECSU history professor Ted Mitchell sent an email Thursday to inform UNC-system’s history department chairs that ECSU’s program might be eliminated.

“Really, one would think history would be central to (ECSU’s) mission,” Mitchell said in an interview.

He said he thinks ECSU’s history program could have fallen into the low-productivity category by mistake. He said that due to a possible glitch in the ECSU computer system, some students majoring in history might not have been accounted for — by his estimates, there are more than 30 history majors.

Still, some UNC-system history faculty were troubled that ECSU’s history program could fold and did not know of a four-year public university that has discontinued its history major.

“There’s a message that you’re sending when you say, ‘I’m not even going to have this here,’” said Jim Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association.

Grossman said there is irony in a historically black university lacking a history degree.

“You’re talking to students whose parents in many cases went through a period of history that’s very important to the black experience — they went through that transformation from Jim Crow,” he said. “That experience, it’s absolutely crucial to any understanding of where African-Americans are today and what they can do.”

Fitzhugh Brundage, UNC-CH’s history department chairman, said in an email that he understands the burden a small school like ECSU faces given systemwide budget cuts, but said cutting a liberal arts staple is not a good solution.

He said the proposal might imply a shift in focus at ECSU to vocational studies.

“No single discipline is essential, but at the same time, I have a hard time imagining a complete education that did not include some exposure to history,” Brundage said.

Jurgen Buchenau, history department chairman at UNC-Charlotte, said he knows of a couple of small private universities who have considered eliminating their history programs, though he said the move is rare. Buchenau said he’s surprised that system universities are held to the same standards as far as discontinuing programs, given large differences in student population.

Until last year, ECSU had a department of history and political science, though the two were separate degree programs. Budget constraints caused the university to combine the two programs with three others, all under the umbrella of a department of social and behavior sciences.

The history and political science faculty at ECSU made a recommendation last week to the provost to combine the two majors into a history and government degree program, which would allow students to study the disciplines while cutting costs.

Eric Thomas, ECSU’s associate vice chancellor for academic affairs, said any recommendations for program discontinuation have to be approved by the faculty senate, several committees and the school’s Board of Trustees before going to General Administration — a process he said is beginning this week.

Buchenau said cutting any university history program could have far-reaching effects in the long term, perpetuating worry among humanities departments throughout the system.

“It’s not going to stop at history,” he said.

“If there’s any movement to save the program, I would hope that support would come from somewhere.”

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