The departments of Communicative Sciences and Disorders and Geological Sciences were included in the recommended cuts, as well as 30 additional majors, specializations and programs.

MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon said at the board meeting recommendations will be discussed further in Academic Governance.

“There (are) no easy programmatic decisions,” Simon said at an Oct. 30 MSU Board of Trustees meeting. “We understand that all of the programs we offer are important … that makes this task even more difficult.”

Kristi Sneed, a licensed veterinary technician and professor in MSU’s Veterinary Technology Program, said she sometimes questions the effort she puts into teaching when officials will decide whether her program — and potentially her job — is important enough to save.

“There’s times when I’m preparing for the next day’s lectures on my own time and I stop and think, ‘Why am I putting this effort forward?’” Sneed said. “They’re going to potentially take my job and my career away. Why do I want to put this effort in? Then I realize it’s for the students.”

Veterinary Technology Program

Sneed thought she knew how her teaching career would end.

She said she hoped to retire one day from MSU, where she earned a certificate in veterinary technology in 1993.

Those plans changed Oct. 28 when Veterinary Technology Program Director Helene Pazak came into Sneed’s office.

“Director Pazak came to my office in tears and said, ‘They’re getting rid of us,’” Sneed said. “I was shocked. I had absolutely no idea. I thought the program would stay forever.”

Now, Sneed is unsure whether there will be a place for her at MSU if the program she joined 13 years ago is dissolved.

“I’d love to stay with the university, but who knows,” Sneed said. “There’s a demand for technicians. I’ll find a job. That’s not a concern. … But this looks, in my eyes and in my opinion, definitely poor for the college and MSU.”

Sneed joined the Veterinary Technology Program’s staff in 1991 after she realized she wanted to work with animals, but did not want to become a veterinarian. Sneed said she believes MSU is one of few veterinary technology programs in the U.S. housed within a veterinarian school and offers students in the program an experience they can’t get from other veterinary technology programs.

Although faculty members in the program worry their jobs at MSU might not exist in the future, Sneed said she worries more for the profession’s future if the program is eliminated.

“If MSU doesn’t see worth in the program, what are some of these other small struggling community colleges going to think?” Sneed said. “We’re worried. We don’t want to take a step back. It’s taken so long to get where we are now.”

Geological sciences

Thomas Vogel retired from teaching at MSU in 2006, but the former professor of geology said he is an active participant in the battle to save MSU’s Department of Geological Sciences.

Vogel maintains an active research program within the department and said he believes university officials made a mistake when they selected the department for elimination.

“I think it’s almost unthinkable that a major university, especially one that defines itself as the green university, wouldn’t have geology at its core,” Vogel said. “It’s kind of a shocker for me.”

Vogel spent more than four decades teaching in the department after he joined the faculty in 1968. He said the department’s closure will impact future and past students.

“People who graduated (from high school) recently will not have an opportunity to major in geology at Michigan State or all these jobs that are out there,” Vogel said. “One of the few things in Michigan growing … is the number of people working for environmental firms. People working in fossil fuel all have fundamental training in geology.”

He is joining forces with geology faculty, students and alumni to find alternatives to the program’s recommended closure.

“One thing that upset most of us is they never gave the department a chance to respond to what we could do to make things better,” Vogel said. “I haven’t done anything except (work) on this closing for the last three weeks. I have other obligations for people in my laboratory, but the last three weeks, I have spent 100 percent of my time on this.”

American Studies Program

A Wednesday meeting between American Studies graduate students and officials from the College of Arts and Letters left Ben Dettmar with more questions than answers about his future.

If a recommendation to eliminate the American Studies Program is approved, Dettmar, an American studies doctoral student, said he would lose his tuition waiver, health care benefits and graduate teaching assistant stipend of about $1,400 a month. But the cuts could be deeper for Dettmar compared to others in the program.

Dettmar originally is from Britain and his F-1 visa allows him to work up to 20 hours per week at MSU. If the university’s program is cut, Dettmar said he would not be able to pay his educational costs because he would not be able to secure another job in the U.S. under his current visa.

“If there’s not an American Studies Program, I’m not going to get paid anymore,” Dettmar said. “I can’t go to a bank and get a job there. I’m only allowed to work in what I get my visa for, so I wouldn’t be able to work in the U.S. anymore. I would have to start the process again.”

Although Dettmar said he expected the program to see cuts in its funding, he did not imagine officials would propose cutting the graduate program.

The shock of learning that his program’s fate remains undecided still is setting in for Dettmar, who said his effort to save the program is overshadowing his course work.

“I know I’m getting behind in my homework,” Dettmar said. “Something has got to give if I’m trying to teach, support the program and focus on my Ph.D. work. At the moment, it’s my Ph.D. work.”

Retailing

Patricia Huddleston loves her job.

Huddleston, a retailing professor, prepares students in MSU’s retailing program for careers in one of the largest industries in the U.S., but her role at MSU could change if Wilcox’s recommended elimination of the program is approved.

“What our focus is right now is working with the students that we have and making sure they’re successful in completing whatever their degree is,” Huddleston said. “I love working with the students. I love what I teach. When I go into the classroom, it’s really easy to focus on (teaching) because when you love what you do and really enjoy teaching I think that’s really a very helpful thing.”

News of the program’s recommended elimination came as a surprise to Huddleston, who received her master’s in retailing from MSU in 1982 and joined the staff in 1987. Faculty members thought the program found a permanent home inside the College of Communication Arts and Sciences after it relocated from the dissolved College of Human Ecology in 2004.

“It was a complete surprise,” Huddleston said. “It actually was shock and disbelief because we have an excellent reputation for both graduate and undergraduate degrees in our program. We have some really excellent students. It was just a real shock for us.”