Fwd: Russian Program at SFSU in Jeopardy

[Katerina Siskron]

Dear Colleagues, This is an appeal for signatures on our electronic petition at
www.sfsu.edu/~russian to save the Russian degree programs (M.A. and B.A.) at San
Francisco State University. We also urge you to write letters to the President
of the University,

Dr.Robert A. Corrigan
President's Office
San Francisco State University
1600 Holloway Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94132

415-338-1381. corrigan at sfsu.edu

Please send a cc to Katerina Siskron, Coordinator, Russian Program
                    Department of Foreign Languages
                    San Francisco State University
                    1600 Holloway Avenue
                    San Francisco, CA 94132

The president has already recieved numerous e-mails and letters of
support for our program. However, our discontinuance hearings are coming up
October 12 and we need as many letters and signatures on our petition as
possible to maintain our degree programs. Please see below for a synopsis of the
events since Spring semester 2004:

At the beginning of this year the State of California found itself in
fiscal difficulties and proposed making large cuts in a number of
sectors, incuding higher education. The proposal was for "deep and
narrow cuts." That means instead of cutting classes (in reality in
addition to cutting classes) the proposal was for cutting whole
programs. In April of this year, there were a number of articles in the
Chronicle and reports on TV on these cuts, especially on the proposal to
cut graduate studies in the School of Engineering.  The School of
Engineering survived, but at the cost of becoming "self-supporting"
which means the students will no longer be subsidized by state funds and
will have to pay full tuition (same as out of state students). At least
that is how I understand the new arrangement.

Initially, in April three Foreign Language Programs were proposed for
discontinuance, but in the end only the degree programs in Russian were
designated officially for termination. The Adminstration immediately
closed admission of new students to the degree programs, even though we
are entitled to hearings before the Educational Policies Committee and
the Academic Senate prior to the closure of the programs.

The reasons sited for discontinuance are budgetary
considerations (in reality, the university would save about $15,000) a
year with their current proposal to keep language classes but to
eliminate the degree. The second consideration is that there is no
"excess" demand for enrollment--that is we meet the minimum enrollment
requirements, but except for the first semester class with 26 students and the
graduate seminar with 18 students, the
enrollments are modest--at or slightly above the required minimum of 13 for
lower division and 10 for upper division.
We are in a particularly vulnerable position--our two tenured professors have
recently retired. Both were
in ill health prior to retirement. Neither was replaced despite requests
three years in a row  to hire new tenure-track faculty. So---here we
are.

So far we have recieved a great deal of support from Russian language media and
from the City Council of San Francisco (the city council passed two separate
resolutions in support of our program). As a consequence of community support,
the University has relented on cutting the entire program and has guaranteed a
minor. However, we feel that with additional support we will be able to preserve
the degree programs as well.

Information and all documents pertaining to AcademicSenate Hearings are posted
on the
Academic Senate website www.sfsu.edu/~senate in sequence starting with
the current posting of the discontinuance hearings calendar.

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