Seattle Pacific University will implement a 40% decrease in faculty and staff, a decision announced in mid-June of 2023. The university has seen a significant decrease in admissions and outside funding within the last three years. With the institution facing financial hardships, budget cuts were needed to keep the school afloat.
In August of 2023, the faculty of SPU received an email from Interim Chief Academic Officer, Les Steele, and Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, Cindy Price, detailing the department and administration cuts projected to take effect in the next two years. There will be a total of 13 programs disbanded and 63 faculty members will be leaving the university by June 2025.
For many faculty members, this announcement came as a surprise. Dr. Michelle Beauclair, department chair of the linguistics and cultural studies department, has been wrestling with grief over the announcement that her entire program will be phased out.
“Oh, we’ve been gutted,” Beauclair said. “[I’m feeling] sad and disappointed, especially for the future students to not have the opportunity to take foreign languages here.”
The linguistics and cultural studies department has disbanded most language majors and programs. Beginner courses will remain to fill students’ graduation requirements, but they will not be offered as complete majors or areas of study.
“The decision that the APP [Academic Program Prioritization] committee and others made was that we would only offer first-year language courses, so as I understand it, first-year French, first-year Spanish and first-year Mandarin taught by adjuncts,” Beauclair said.
The university will lose the programs and many faculty who teach within them. Dr. Scott Cairns, Director of SPU’s Masters of Fine Arts in creative writing, worries that the institution is losing one of its highest-grossing programs.
“I daresay [the MFA Creative Writing] was the most nationally recognized program of Seattle Pacific University,” said Cairns. “I have still not been satisfied with an explanation for why a program that I think cleared between $180,000 and $350,000 for the university in a given year [has been cut].”
Faculty are mourning the programs and the unique experiences that came alongside them for SPU students.
“Very often, MFA programs and some Ph.D. programs can be competitive to the point that students actually feel like they’re vying against one another,” Cairns said. “It was like a breath of fresh air to come into a place where my students loved each other and cared as much for one another’s success as they cared for their own; that’s not just uncommon, that’s unique.”
In fall of 2022, faculty with at least 10 years of service at SPU were offered buyout packages in preparation for the inevitable cuts. The buyouts were intended to allow employees to voluntarily leave the university with financial compensation such as severance pay or other benefits.
Dr. William Purcell, chair of the communications and journalism department, expressed that these voluntary decisions to leave came from a number of reasons, including self-preservation and prioritization of younger colleagues.
“It’s time to retire. It’s a good deal, and if I retire, maybe they will not cut one of my junior colleagues,” Purcell said. “It’s been a very droopy place to work for the last year. I’m tired of the drama. I will miss my students, I will miss my colleagues, but I will not miss the other stuff.”
Oz Nardecchia, a third-year English creative writing major, feels equal parts sorrow for Purcell’s leaving and gratitude for his time at SPU.
“Even for students who didn’t know who he was recognized his kindness,” Nardecchia said. “When I found out that Purcell was leaving, immediately it was just like disappointment at the fact that we were losing a genuinely wonderful man.”
SPU’s English department has been steadily dwindling since assistant professor of English and writing Mischa Willett started at the university six years ago.
“We have lost four positions since I’ve been here – before the cuts,” Willett said.
Willett is involuntarily leaving SPU at the end of June in 2024 and expressed both sadness and excitement.
“You know when you’re young and someone breaks up with you, and it seems like the end of the world,” Willett said. “But there is a little tingle of ‘Oh man, that means I’m free again.’ There is a sense of possibility.”
For the privacy of SPU faculty, a comprehensive list of all faculty leaving has yet to be officially released to students.
