Interim President Alan L. Smith Provides Updates on HB265 and Accreditation

Editor's note: the following message was sent to all USU employees on Friday, April 18, 2025

Dear Colleagues,

Thank you for your engagement early this week with the peer evaluation team that visited as part of our accreditation process with the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. The team shared commendations and recommendations on Wednesday that will be evaluated in early July by the Commission. We received high praise of our work and our strong integration across our vast mission. The team’s recommendations aligned closely with our ongoing efforts and goals, were framed with the understanding of our unique context, and will help us move forward in productive ways. Altogether, I believe the visit was very successful. Special thanks to Jeff Aird, our Chief Data Analytics Officer, for guiding us through the process. And, thank you for your commitment to continuous improvement in fulfilling our mission—this orientation is essential to meeting the needs of students and is of utmost concern to the Commission.

Aligned with a commitment to continuous improvement is an openness to evaluating our structures and programming, considering where our resources are not well deployed and where they could be directed to better effect. This is what HB 265 has tasked us to do, and we have continued to review data, consider ideas, and assess needs in determining what to discontinue or modify as well as where to invest in our academic enterprise. Following on my previous communication outlining college restructures as part of our strategic reinvestment proposal, today I share additional information about what will be submitted to the Utah System of Higher Education (USHE). As a reminder, ultimately our proposal will be reviewed by our Board of Trustees, USHE, and legislative committees and therefore is subject to change.

Specific to department changes, much of the impact here is yet to be determined. This is because some of our reinvestments will create new structures that could draw in existing departments, consolidate programming that is duplicative and spread across units, or foster other opportunities for creative integration. We have not yet finalized reinvestment decision-making tied to our proposal. However, we anticipate pursuing new or amplified structures that foreground artificial intelligence and computing, health disciplines, student success, and graduate education throughout our statewide system. As those structures are built and/or strengthened we will have a clearer view of department and other unit impacts. Please be reminded that our proposal will be a living document and will involve changes over the next three years. It is to our advantage to leave space for us to advance our thinking as a community over that time frame and beyond.

Acknowledging that there are future decisions to be made on department configurations, initial decisions have been made for our forthcoming proposal based on guidance from deans and others in our academic community. Some of these will consist of rightsizing workload distributions and personnel in departments. Others involve consolidating, moving, or disbanding units. To offer some examples, the current College of Humanities and Social Sciences will see the merging of eight departments into six, the Department of Geosciences will move into the new college that brings together Natural Resources and Agriculture, and the Engineering Education Department will be discontinued, with research efforts recentered in engineering disciplinary departments.

As you know, the discontinuation of certain academic programs, degrees, and certificates will be incorporated into our strategic reinvestment proposal. Items to be discontinued are listed and may be periodically updated on our USU webpage containing HB 265 information. Decisions to discontinue educational activities have been based on an iterative process that involved considering the span of data aligned with HB 265, contextual information offered through the deans and your feedback, and our anticipated strategic directions for reinvestment. No single metric determined the activities to be discontinued and no specific algorithm could be generated that would produce the list of activities for us—making decisions in context necessarily requires the application of human judgment. This acknowledged, please know that decisions were data-informed and re-evaluated multiple times by Provost Smith’s team and then by others, including myself, who offered reactions to the work team.

It is important to note that while certain departments or academic activities may be discontinued, this does not necessarily mean that all faculty or staff positions within those areas will be affected. Nonetheless, positions across the institution may have role statement changes, job description adjustments, or otherwise be impacted or vacated. In considering your personal decisions, it is prudent for you to understand structural and programmatic impacts while the VSIP program is open.

With these department and programmatic changes, I am asking deans to engage directly with you as any more detail is available or if you have questions. I recognize that our process is moving at a fast pace and that we often are unable to fully answer questions of a specific or logistical nature. Together, we will remain committed to navigating these changes with a focus on our students’ needs and the long-term health of USU. I encourage open dialogue in your units about these changes, while also asking you to source your information carefully, assume the best intentions of decision-makers, and safeguard the collegial and productive culture that was lauded by our evaluators during their accreditation visit.

I know that my communications of late have been long and densely packed—substantively and emotionally. I also recognize that this particular time of year is incredibly busy with grading, preparing for graduation and special events, and other work tied to the end of the academic semester. Thank you for expressing the stamina, grit, and compassion for one another that we need to navigate toward a stronger USU.

Sincerely,

Alan L. Smith

Interim President, Utah State University