The Nevada Sagebrush

Students gather March 11 to protest cuts to the French department which is scheduled to be eliminated in Fall of 2011. Photo by Jay Balagna/Nevada Sagebrush

Affect the smallest number of students possible: That was the mantra university leaders said they tried to follow when preparing a proposal to eliminate academic programs.

Despite a disparity that shows almost 50 more students enrolled as French majors than administrators originally thought, Provost Marc Johnson said the program is still small enough that its cancellation would meet that idea. The head of the foreign language department said the program is growing and numbers will improve even more in the coming years, however.

The disparity came to light when students at town hall meetings told administrators the French program had 70 majors, nearly 50 more than Johnson and University of Nevada, Reno President Milton Glick previously thought.

The difference arose from the ways double majors and dual degrees are accounted for in different systems.

The inaccurate number of majors makes little difference in  measuring the overall impact of the program on students, Johnson said. What matters more, he said, are numbers that were used to measure the number of credits taught and how many students graduate with French degrees, numbers that are unaffected by any difference in the number of students with a declared French major.
“We do want to use the right numbers,” Johnson said. “But we use many different numbers.”

Johnson said that full-time equivalency numbers, which show the number of credit hours taught, are very low for French, especially with the number of professors in the department. In addition, the majority of those credit hours were taught in lower-division courses, which will remain under the current proposal, Johnson said.

The French program also graduates a small number of students, Johnson said. Last year, eight students, including double majors and dual degrees, graduated with French degrees. Seven students are signed up to graduate this year.

Those numbers make French a small program in comparison to others at UNR, Johnson said.

“The first thing (people) will tell you is that foreign languages are different and can only be taught in small classes,” Johnson said. “Unfortunately, it also becomes a reason you could remove those degree programs.”

Miriella Melara, the chair of the Foreign Languages and Literatures Department, said the French program at UNR is not much smaller than the national average for schools of similar size. It has also nearly tripled in size since 2003, and higher graduation rates should be seen in the next few years, she said.

“We will probably see graduation rates closer to 10, maybe 12 (students per year),” she said. “We just have to give it time.”

Melara said she is working on preparing her department’s response to the cuts. Formal responses from departments are due to the university administration Friday.

Jay Balagna can be reached at jbalagna@nevadasagebrush.com.

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