SDSU Plans Deep Cuts in Academic Programs : Budget: Estimated $11-million shortfall forces campus to eliminate several core departments.

San Diego State University officials, struggling with an estimated $11-million funding shortfall, disclosed Thursday unprecedented and sweeping plans to eliminate several core departments, including anthropology, German, Russian and religious studies.

In what were called “deep and narrow” cuts aimed at trimming 100 faculty positions, several other departments were notified they would not be eliminated by the fall semester but cut back severely, including French, sociology and chemistry, deans said.

The layoffs would mark the first ever of SDSU’s tenured faculty, and the first of such magnitude in the financially troubled California State University system. The cuts are designed to help compensate for the projected 8.5% SDSU is required to trim from its budget for the next fiscal year.

University administrators declined to confirm details of the cuts, which were disclosed by professors and the deans of several affected departments, and the full scope of the cutbacks remained unclear, fueling rumors that tore across the campus Thursday, the last day of spring semester classes.

Word spread of rallies to protest the cuts and a possible student strike. But confirmation remained elusive.

“We have a lot of unhappy people and rumors spreading like wildfire,” said university spokesman Rick Moore. University officials plan a formal announcement next week, after Thomas Day, SDSU’s president, meets Monday with the executive committee of the Academic Senate, Moore said.

SDSU has 31,000 students, 1,200 full-time faculty members and 4,400 class sections. Day had announced Tuesday that trims would be forthcoming at the university, still reeling from last year’s $20-million budget cut. But he said Tuesday it would be June before letters are sent informing employees they were being let go.

Stressing Thursday that he would not confirm or deny particular cuts, Day said he was personally involved in a wide-ranging plan to meet the 8.5% shortfall. No decision on any of the departments targeted for cuts or elimination is final, he said.

“They’re not final until I say they’re final, and I’ll say it Monday, to representatives of the university,” he said.

“One message I want to stress is we are trying to do this in a way that preserves the integrity of the institution, does it in a way where most parts of the institution will not be touched by these very terrible cuts.

“Some departments will be hurt badly,” Day said. “But most, the overwhelming majority, will not be touched at all. And I wish the media would stress that.”

Some deans considered the possibility that news of the impending trims was part of an elaborate political pressure ploy, a scheme to force the state Legislature to cough up more cash. But that scenario was deemed remote.

“We have to treat it as real,” said James L. Wood, chairman of the sociology department. “There’s no other way to approach it as other than a highly real situation that we have to contend with. I know various faculty looking for jobs right now, already, treating it as that real.”

The heads of several departments said they found it hard to believe that a university highly regarded not just in California but across the nation could, in one stroke, do away with the staples of academia, no matter how woeful the budget.

“It’s incredible to imagine a university without an anthropology department,” said Dan Whitney, the department chairman. The department has 14 tenured professors and 150 undergraduate and graduate students.

“One of the missions of a university is internationalization, diversity, cultural pluralism--and that’s what we teach, that’s all part of what anthropology does,” Whitney said. “There was never any indication this was going to happen. This took us by complete surprise.”

Several professors also registered personal despair. “After 26 years, to be told, ‘That’s it, buddy, not even a gold watch,’ well, it’s pretty tough,” said Julian Wulbern, 63, chairman of the combined Russian and German department.

Students, too, said they were shocked. Christa LaFlam, 20, a junior majoring in anthropology, said she learned at 8 a.m. Thursday that her major was vanishing--in class, from a professor.

“The first thing out of the professor’s mouth was something like, ‘In case you haven’t heard, they’re talking about eliminating the anthropology department.’ You might as well have had the earth open up and swallow everybody,” LaFlam said.

“I mean, to these people, that’s the whole focus of their lives, anthropology. To have it suddenly go away, I can’t describe it very well,” LaFlam said. “It is not good.”

Moore, the university spokesman, said officials planned to turn to student concerns next week, “as soon as we get the faculty issues under control.”

He added, “That’s going to involve a lot of careful negotiation with individuals, a lot of personal one-on-one attention, to figure out what to do with this one person who might be a senior six units from graduation, then another who might be a sophomore with 50 units to go. You have to sit down with a variety of different people.”

SDSU is divided into seven colleges, and the proposed trims cut across the entire university, deans and professors said.

However, cuts projected for some colleges and the numbers of professors due to be lost to some individual departments could not be confirmed, largely because of deans and professors who remained uneasy Thursday discussing a plan that university officials had not officially confirmed.

In the College of Arts & Letters, the German and Russian, anthropology and religious studies departments were targeted for elimination. French, Italian and sociology professors were marked for cuts. In all, 45 professors in the college are due lose their jobs, deans said.

In the College of Sciences, the natural sciences department is due to be eliminated, chairman Robert Metzger said. The chemistry department is due to lose 14 of 20 professors and the mathematics department eight of 62.

Those eight, math chairman James Elwin said, are the younger, probationary faculty members. “In effect, it’s our future,” he said.

In the College of Professional Studies & Fine Arts, the departments of family studies, of industrial studies and of recreation, parks and tourism were marked for elimination, professors said.

Gene Lamke, chairman of the recreation department, with nine tenured faculty members serving some 275 students, said he had been at SDSU for 24 years.

“It’s a terrible situation,” he said. “It’s a tragedy. And I’m not sure anyone here at the university has control over it. The budget is short dollars. They have to look at retaining the quality of the university, and in my opinion that quality is of paramount importance.

“No, I don’t want my department eliminated,” Lamke said. “We’re excellent. We’re one of top one or two at what we do in the state. But what are you going to do?”