Tucker, now in her first year at MSU, is pursuing a linguistics degree, offered by the College of Arts and Letters (CAL), and is also enrolled in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities (RCAH), which describes itself on its website as offering "all the benefits of a small college — with the myriad opportunities of a Big Ten university like MSU."

"A big school is scary, but RCAH made me feel safer and closer, and had that small community that I wanted…," Tucker told The State News on a recent afternoon, sitting in a lounge area in the Snyder-Phillips residence hall. The building houses RCAH students, the college's administrative and faculty offices, and college-specific amenities like an art studio and theatre.

But less than a semester into her time at MSU, RCAH — founded in 2007 and the smallest of MSU’s three residential colleges — is likely on the precipice of a restructuring. RCAH students were informed in mid-October by college leadership that university administration is considering consolidating RCAH with the larger, but similarly humanities-focused CAL, a development that worries Tucker and several of her RCAH peers. (It also prompted the Associated Students of MSU to pass a resolution against the move and several students to address the Board of Trustees during its meeting last month.) 

Students are concerned that RCAH becoming a department or school within CAL means it will lose the tight-knit feel that makes it appealing, along with its unique curriculum. They also worry that RCAH faculty and staff might be demoted or let go in the process.

Administrators are attempting to quell those concerns, arguing that the academic mission of RCAH, and its staff, would be preserved in a consolidation. Ultimately, they say, consolidation would make MSU’s humanities education stronger and more cohesive.

The consideration comes at a time of heightened sensitivity around the extent to which the humanities are prioritized at universities across the country. Several have slashed humanities programs in attempts to balance budgets, justifying the move by arguing those programs don’t hold as much value as degree programs that translate more directly to specific career paths, like engineering and business. 

Interim Provost Thomas Jeitschko spoke of the value of a humanities education in an interview with The State News, and said he believes it's "under threat" at American universities. In the face of such a threat, he argues the consolidation will help keep MSU’s humanities education viable by rectifying a "clunky" and "fractured" current administrative structure. 

"Those that think the humanities are under threat, I agree with that," Jeitschko said. "So it’s 'what are you going to do about it?' This is what I’m doing about it."

With RCAH and CAL united, Jeitschko said it will become easier and more affordable to market the humanities at MSU, recruit students and faculty into it, and boost enrollment. All of that, in turn, will grow the college and its revenue. 

"You can realize administrative synergies and get more bang for your buck," he said. 

When RCAH was conceived, Jeitschko said, it was expected to grow to the size of the two other residential colleges: the math and science-focused Lyman Briggs College, and the public affairs-focused James Madison College. Although the college has grown marginally in recent years, it's not reached the size it was intended to. (RCAH had 46 incoming students this semester, whereas James Madison College and Lyman Briggs had 217 and 515, respectively, according to the university's registrar website.)

CAL, the humanities-focused college RCAH would be joining in a consolidation, had 326 incoming students. 

"This is not an area where you make more money so that the shareholders will grow wealthier," Jeitschko said. "This is a situation where we have resources, and all those resources that we deploy for something means we’re not deploying them for something else... Is it more important for you to have a cumbersome, clunky administrative structure around it, or should we use those resources to strengthen the program and strengthen what we’re doing in these spaces? And for me, I think it’s an easy answer." 

The specifics of any consolidation would need ironing out, and eventually the approval of the Board of Trustees. A working group of faculty from both CAL and RCAH has been convened and is currently working on a set of recommendations that it will present to Jeitschko.

Jeitschko said he doesn’t expect approval of the consolidation to be on the agenda for the board’s December meeting, but that he may provide an update on any developments to the board then.

Curriculum concerns

Though RCAH and CAL contain many of the same broad areas of academic discipline, RCAH’s curriculum particularly seeks to "(re)imagine possibilities for social justice," emphasize "community engagement," and incorporate the "radical reciprocity" of teaching and learning.

In one class, for example, senior RCAH student Abigail Rodriguez said she and her classmates would visit the Ionia Correctional Facility where they collaborated with inmates to write poetry. In another, Rodriguez’s class went to the Ingham County Youth Center, where they helped kids to make art projects.

"It’s stuff like that that’s so fundamentally RCAH that I’ve genuinely just come to love," Rodriguez said. "Everything we do is just focused on community."

If RCAH becomes a department or school within CAL, rather than its own completely autonomous college, Rodriguez said she fears "some of these values might not translate." 

But several administrators said they don’t share that concern.

CAL Interim Dean Yen-Hwei Lin said that’s partly because her college already incorporates many of the components RCAH students may feel are uniquely inherent to their college. She cited "community participatory research" being conducted by students and faculty, the Citizen Scholars program, and the fact that CAL students are eligible for the living-learning community in the Snyder-Phillips residence hall that houses RCAH’s administrative offices and students. 

"It’s no problem to really preserve the kind of unique features of RCAH," Lin said. 

Jeitschko echoed that sentiment, but added that "in the longer run, the pedagogy that is in RCAH will be informed by also other things that are going on in the college and vice versa." 

"There’s a cross-fertilization there," he said.

If RCAH is brought under the umbrella of CAL, it "might open up some of its classes to other people, and that might be really exciting" said Jeitschko, who earlier mentioned his desire for the college to grow its enrollment.

In any case, the uncertainty around exactly how RCAH will change appears to be a source of anxiety for students.

"It’s the future students, the current freshmen, who still don’t know whether or not their curriculum is going to change, or if their stuff is going to be grandfathered," Rodriguez said. 

Concerns over cuts

At a recent ASMSU meeting, Jeitschko told students that courses won’t be cut and faculty won’t be fired as part of any consolidation.

But such concerns among students have apparently persisted.

RCAH sophomore Scout Seltzer questioned if people like RCAH’s head of advising or dean would be demoted if the college were to become a department or school. 

"I do know how money works…" Seltzer said.

Tucker, the RCAH student studying linguistics who is a friend of Seltzer's, then chimed in, "We know there’s no guarantee that all these negative things are going to happen, but there’s not a guarantee that they’re not going to happen." 

Lin, the CAL interim dean, said that if a dean were to become a department chair, they would technically be demoted, but their day-to-day operations would remain virtually the same.

Asked if someone’s salary would be affected if their title was changed from college dean to department chair or college director, Lin said "a little bit, not a whole lot." (It's unclear who would become the unit leader or RCAH if it were to become a department or school within CAL.)

RCAH Interim Dean Glenn Chambers said he has heard concerns from faculty and staff in the college over staffing cuts. 

"I think any time you talk about bringing units together there is that fear," Chambers said. "But everything I’ve been told at the provost level is that won’t be the case, and everything I’ve been told in my preliminary conversations with CAL is that won’t be the case."

Navigating distrust

Jeitschko said getting students to trust that cuts aren’t being considered — and, more generally, that he’s operating with good-faith in his consideration of a consolidation — has been a struggle. 

"I would love to better understand where this skepticism comes from," he said, adding that it sometimes seems there will be an "inherent" distrust in MSU with any change it makes and a belief that it’s "nefarious."

That might be "because of some of the idiosyncratic history we’ve had at MSU with administration," Jeitschko said.

Danielle DeVoss, the chair of CAL’s department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures and a faculty senator representing the college, said that distrust in MSU administration is, in some ways, understandable given institutional turmoil over the last several years. But, she encouraged people to move beyond critiquing MSU, and instead play an active role in advocating for the change they want to see. 

"Critique is something we’re comfortable doing, it’s what we’re trained to do," DeVoss said. "But to move critique into, 'OK, how can we leverage critique for positive change and start thinking about positive and start thinking about opportunities and affordances?' I think that’s really exciting."