Penn State Behrend English professor John Champagne remembers the shock that his friend, a Rutgers University professor, had as Mr. Champagne showed him around the Erie campus.
“He said, ‘Oh, my gosh, you know your students. You know your students’ names,’” Mr. Champagne recalls. “That kind of experience — the small liberal arts college experience — you can't really get at University Park.”
It’s that environment — the close-knit community of students and professors — that tops the list of things that Mr. Champagne will miss as he exits his 31-year career at Behrend and enters retirement.
Mr. Champagne took Penn State’s buyout package that was offered to some commonwealth campus employees who wished to retire or pursue other jobs. In leaving his tenured position at the Erie campus, he will receive a lump-sum payment equal to a year of his base salary.
Eligible full-time faculty, staff and administrators had until Friday to decide if they would accept the voluntary separation incentive package, which was introduced in early May as Penn State faces a multi-million-dollar deficit that school leaders hope to balance by 2025.
The 20 branch campuses, many of which face enrollment and financial challenges, are slated to bear the brunt of anticipated cuts. School leaders said in January that they intend to ax $54 million in funding — or 14% — from those campuses in 2026.
Buyouts are one way that Penn State hopes to manage its budget, Margo DelliCarpini, vice president for commonwealth campuses and executive chancellor, told the Post-Gazette in a previous interview. It’s still unknown whether layoffs or campus closures could eventually hit the branch campuses.
The university does not have a target number of employees that it hopes will voluntarily leave, said Ms. DelliCarpini. The commonwealth campuses currently employ more than 1,600 full-time faculty members and over 1,800 full-time staff and administrators.
The Post-Gazette spoke with five commonwealth campus professors in Western Pennsylvania about their decisions on whether to take the buyout — and how they think faculty and staff departures could affect these campuses.
‘Frankly excited to get the offer’
Gib Prettyman already had retirement on his mind when Penn State announced the separation program.
“For me, it wasn’t such a huge decision,” said Mr. Prettyman, an associate English professor at Penn State Fayette. “It was, pretty obviously, a desirable thing... This is a chance to get paid for my final year and not have to grade all of those papers.”
After teaching at Fayette for 28 years, Mr. Prettyman said he’ll miss his connection with a place where he felt like he was “making a difference.”
Mr. Champagne was also already planning to retire before Penn State announced the buyout opportunity. He was on sabbatical this past year, and planned to teach classes for one more year.
“I was frankly excited to get the offer,” he said.
It will be disappointing, though, to miss out on one last year in the classroom, Mr. Champagne said. He enjoyed the smaller class sizes at the commonwealth campuses, which enroll significantly fewer students than University Park.
And, of course, he’ll miss interactions with students.
“Especially students who have not had a lot of breaks — students who come from struggling economic backgrounds, students who have been in the military and then decided to come back to school,” Mr. Champagne said. “Behrend has been really pleasurable to teach at for that reason.”
Some students finish their entire education at these satellite campuses, while others enroll in the university’s 2+2 program, completing half their studies at a commonwealth campus and the remaining portion at Penn State’s main campus in Centre County. These campuses typically draw more first-generation, lower-income and Pennsylvania-native students than University Park.
Though Mr. Prettyman doesn’t doubt that Penn State administrators understand the value of the branch campuses, he wonders if they realize the complexity of these campuses and their communities.
“I'm not sure they understand how closely we work with our students to help them succeed,” Mr. Prettyman said. “Our students have various challenges — financial, cultural, personal — and they come to us because they have those sort of needs. It takes a lot of emotional labor and careful guidance and one-on-one help to help those students succeed.
“Unless you’ve spent time at a campus, I’m not sure if you understand that.”
‘The thought of leaving is not a happy one’
To other professors, there was no question that they would remain.
“I am still early in my career as a researcher and faculty [member],” said Julio Palma, an associate chemistry professor at Penn State Fayette. “It’s not appealing to me because I would be giving up a tenured position at Penn State.”
Other professors pointed to the university’s land-grant mission and cordial campus communities as reasons to stay. Those were big draws for John Craig Hammond, an associate professor of history at Penn State New Kensington.
“I’m a first-generation college student and I'm committed to Penn State's land-grant mission,” Mr. Hammond said. “I appreciate what we're able to do on a small campus with small classes — that we’re able to serve so many first-generation college students, so many students who [come from] underserved communities.”
Similarly, Penelope Morrison, an associate professor of biobehavioral health at New Kensington, cited her students and coworkers as her motivation to stay. She described her campus community as a family.
“It's an environment that I think often is not present in other institutions of higher education,” Ms. Morrison said. “I have some of the most passionate, amazing colleagues …The thought of leaving them is not a happy one. My students are some of the most amazing, kind, brilliant, young people who may not have opportunities elsewhere.
“That's hard to walk away from and turn your back on.”
What’s next?
As some professors and staffers choose to leave Penn State, that will undoubtedly impact the faculty, staff and students who remain.
Mr. Hammond, who also works as New Kensington’s assistant director of academic affairs, expressed concerns that departures will put strain on branch campus faculty and staff who will be left to deal with vacancies. He said he gets pains in his stomach thinking about what the upcoming summer months will look like.
“If you plan on offering classes in the fall to students at the commonwealth campuses, certain things have to be done in a timetable,” Mr. Hammond said. “[This decision] makes it incredibly difficult for us to do what we're supposed to do.”
When posed a question earlier this month about whether the voluntary separation incentive program could impact the educational quality at the commonwealth campuses, Ms. Dellicarpini told the Post-Gazette that Penn State has contingency plans in place. Once school leaders know who is voluntarily leaving, they plan to “leverage the resources of the university to ensure that there are no interruptions of services,” she said.
But Mr. Palma is concerned that, after the buyouts, faculty and staff will become even more overworked than he says they already are.
Mr. Palma also worries that, by offering separation incentives to tenure-line faculty, Penn State will see a reduction in the number of tenured professors at its commonwealth campuses — and therefore see a drop in the share of faculty members who feel comfortable practicing academic freedom.
“As someone that is very interested in the protection of academic freedom and freedom of expression, this is very concerning,” said Mr. Palma, who serves on the Faculty Senate Advisory Committee to President Neeli Bendapudi. “It feels like the administration is trying to kill tenure in the commonwealth campuses.”
He feels there are growing inequities between University Park and the commonwealth campuses.
Because the branch campuses “serve an entirely different population” of students than University Park, Mr. Hammond believes that Penn State must “decide whether or not serving first-generation college students from underrepresented communities is an important part of their mission or not.”
But regardless, he said commonwealth campus faculty, staff and administrators are committed to providing the best educational experience possible.
“Everybody who's remaining on my campus is going to do everything we can to make sure that these students get a quality, world-class Penn State education,” Mr. Hammond said, “even if we have to deliver it with greatly diminished resources.”
First Published: June 2, 2024, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: June 3, 2024, 5:26 p.m.