SDSU Adds Classes in Departments Slated for Closure

About 90 classes have been added to the fall semester course schedule at San Diego State University so that seniors can complete their majors in nine academic departments slated for elimination due to budget cuts, campus President Thomas Day said Saturday.

The move carries out a promise made by Day late last month to retain for at least a semester between 26 and 30 professors with layoff notices in the nine terminated departments so that they could offer the classes.

Day said he would be using money in equipment and library budgets to cover the costs of the 90 classes, despite his longstanding reluctance to sacrifice what he calls the university’s infrastructure for short-term solutions.

He called it his “minimum gamble” to help affected seniors despite the lack of a state budget for 1992-93, and continued uncertainty over whether the California State University system will be cut more than the 8% to 10% now anticipated by Day and other campus presidents.

To save an estimated $11.5 million, Day has sent layoff notices to 145 tenured and probationary-tenure professors and plans to eliminate these nine departments: anthropology; religious studies; family studies and consumer sciences; industrial studies; health sciences; aerospace engineering; Russian and German; natural sciences; and recreation, parks and tourism.

If the state budget holds CSU cuts to 10% or less, and if it includes a generous incentive for older faculty to take early retirement, Day has promised to retain for at least a semester up to half the number of tenured layoffs to allow the affected professors time to find other positions.

But Day said Saturday that the state budget picture remains so uncertain that the “bigger part of his gamble” is still very much in doubt.

“All we’ve done so far is to keep on a skeleton crew, so to speak,” to help the seniors, Day said.