Aug. 14, 2009
By Robyn Sidersky
Guest Reporter
The engineering technology program may have been cut from the University of Central Florida, but it has found a new home at Daytona State College.
Ron Eaglin, UCF engineering technology department chair, said the program will begin its move to Daytona in fall 2010 and will be exclusively at the new location within two years.
"Daytona will accept all the students who want to complete the program in engineering technology," Eaglin said. "The program will be much bigger over there than at UCF."
The engineering technology program is one of four programs the UCF Board of Trustees voted to eliminate at their July 23 meeting. A fifth program has also been suspended.
The cuts affect 1,025 students and 37 faculty and staff.
"Our priorities have been and continue to be the students," UCF President John Hitt said at the meeting.
Eaglin said all but two of the faculty members in the engineering technology department have committed to the move to Daytona State College, and all students currently enrolled in the program will be accepted into the new program.
If the students decide not to continue their work in the program they are currently in, they will have to change majors, or finish their work at another college.
Eaglin said they received several offers from other colleges about the movement of their program and that his department trusts him with his decision of going with Daytona State College.
He said he doesn't understand the logic used to select the programs being cut.
"This could have been avoided. I think there was a lot more to this than the sheer basis of cost," Eaglin said.
Not every program suffering the recent cuts has responded in this way. Aaron Liberman, professor and interim chair of the Department of Health Management and Informatics, which lost two programs within its College of Health and Public Affairs — cardiopulmonary and radiological sciences — said he supports the university's decision.
"It was deemed to be a necessity because of our operating budget shortfall and that's very difficult to argue with," Liberman said.
The program eliminations came after the state imposed $77.2 million in cuts to the UCF's budget or 27 percent of university's state budget.
"I do not believe it could have been avoided," Liberman said of the program eliminations.
According to the budget resource center on UCF's Web site, the university will save 2.5 percent — about $3.3 million — from the administrative budget and another 2.5 percent — about $4.6 million — from the academic budget as a result of the cuts.
The money UCF was granted from the federal stimulus — about $17 million — will run out in 2011, said Terry Hickey, UCF provost and executive vice president.
Liberman said the final classes of students have been admitted into the two College of Health and Public Affairs programs being eliminated — 21 students in cardiopulmonary sciences and 16 in radiological sciences. Each student received an individual advising session and set a plan to complete their degree by May 2011, when the program will be gone.
Because the programs are being eliminated, students who have not yet been admitted won't have the chance to apply. They'll have to select a new major, or change schools.
All the program eliminations — the cardiopulmonary sciences and radiologic sciences from the College of Health and Public Affairs, engineering technology from the College of Engineering and Computer Science, management information systems from the College of Business Administration — and the suspension of the actuarial sciences program from the College of Sciences will happen by May 2011.
Every member of the Board of Trustees — except Student Body President Brian Peterson and board member Ida Cook — voted in favor of the eliminations.
Before the meeting of the full board, the education committee met July 13, and the public came to air their concerns.
"No matter how you look at it, these are very difficult times," Hitt told the Board of Trustees.
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