500 Meet Deadline for Commenting on UCI Cost Cutting : Education: Specific subjects of the commentaries were still unclear. A final flurry of about 100 arrived Friday.

About 500 people met Friday’s deadline to respond to the recommendations of two UC Irvine cost-cutting task forces by sending letters to the school’s acting executive vice chancellor, Spencer C. Olin, officials said.

A final flurry of about 100 responses arrived Friday, UCI spokesman Scott Nelson said. Letters began arriving at Olin’s office after the task force recommendations were finalized Feb. 16.

It was unclear how many letters had been written about the most controversial recommendations in the task force reports: “disestablishing” the departments of education, comparative culture and physical education.

But as of late Thursday, Olin’s office had received 408 letters, Nelson said; of those, 239--or 59%--responded to the proposed closing of UCI’s education department.

That percentage has remained fairly constant since letters started streaming in to the office, he said.

The academic task force has also suggested that other departments and programs be consolidated. A task force on non-academic issues recommended that some university services, such as the bookstore, might be cost-effectively handled by outside companies.

A 20-member Academic Planning Council will read the letters and submit its own recommendations on trimming the budget to Chancellor Laurel L. Wilkening by June 1, Nelson said.

Some of the letters pleaded to save departments and assailed reorganization.

“We find the recommendations of the ATF (Academic Task Force) inconsistent and uninformed,” wrote Dickran L. Tashjian, professor and interim director of the comparative culture department.

Tashjian opposed the task force’s suggestion to close his department, as well as the recommendation to merge the Spanish and Portuguese department with interdisciplinary programs in Chicano and Latino studies and Latin American studies.

Carol Olson, director of the 15-year-old UCI Writing Project, criticized the task force for its “unawareness.”

“I was surprised the task force seemed so unaware of the level of activity that the department of education has currently going with Orange County schools and the really strong and positive relationship between the surrounding (educational) community and the university,” Olson said, summarizing her written comments to the vice chancellor.

The project, an offering of the department of education, has trained 538 writing teachers in Orange County and at least 400 Garden Grove students, Olson said.

I a joint letter, education department faculty members told Olin of the department’s new doctoral program for school administrators and new programs addressing diversity in public schools.

They also disagreed with task force recommendations to transfer UCI’s teaching credential program to the Cal State system or UC Extension.

Several graduate students in English and comparative literature disagreed with a proposal that higher-quality undergraduate students could be attracted to UCI if the school made it possible for them to graduate in three years rather than four.