After facing backlash from students and faculty, IU-Purdue University Fort Wayne backtracked on plans to slash the women’s studies program while still seeking to make budget cuts in the coming years.
The majority of the program, chaired by Professor Janet Badia, will be absorbed by the Department of Political Science but will keep autonomy on matters of curriculum. In a radio interview with 89.1 WBOI-FM Badia said she thought about leaving the school but plans to remain for the students.
“I am so inspired by our students,” Badia said in the interview. “Their outreach, their advocacy, their activism — it motivates me to want to stay at IPFW.”
The backtrack comes after weeks of discourse both in person and across media platforms. A protest on the Bloomington campus in October was organized by members of the IU Department of Gender Studies to show solidarity with the then-threatened department in Fort Wayne.
Since Purdue announced the department’s reinstatement under the political science’s home department, the academic offerings have changed.
Effective Jan. 1, a women’s studies degree is still offered to current and future undergraduates, but many of the responsibilities of the original department are now being taken on by faculty in the political science department.
A press release from the IPFW dean’s office Dec. 12 included a message from Badia, who said, “The preservation of the Women’s Studies major at IPFW is a victory for the entire region.”
According to the release, Badia has seen students from the program go on to work in fields such as violence prevention and victim advocacy and have great influence on social justice in their communities.
WBOI reported a salary cut for the director, along with one faculty member being let go as part of the revised proposal.
The program cuts are part of a slew of other cost-saving measures proposed as IU and Purdue move to split administrative control of the school.
According to the school realignment proposal from December, plans to split the schools were set in motion Jan. 15, when the state’s Legislative Services Agency, with the help of representatives from both schools, published a report recommending that Purdue take over administrative duties from IU.
The two schools have history of collaborating on curriculum and dividing programs up between the two when deemed necessary. IU-Purdue University Fort Wayne is one of three schools, the others being IU-Purdue University Indianapolis and IU-Purdue University Columbus, shared.
Exceptions to the proposed realignment were nursing, dental education, radiography, and other future health programs, which were deemed beneficial to IU’s focus on maintaining its health science major offerings.
The collaboration between the two schools and the realignment plan are guided by IU’s and Purdue’s Academic Mission standards, which dictate strengths and goals of each school and how the two can work around each other.
The proposal said the realignment will take place once the board of trustees from each school votes on the measure.
The IU Board of Trustees opted to vote on the realignment proposal at the next meeting Feb. 2, and the Board of Trustees at Purdue approved the measure Dec. 16 in the last meeting of 2016.
