UT-Memphis Allied Health Sciences
Letters from Supporting Institutions
BACKGROUND OF THE CRISIS
On June 4, 2008, UT President John Petersen submitted a proposed 2008-9 budget for the UT system to the UT Board of Trustees. Due to budget shortfalls in the state, higher education funding has been reduced. Rather than finding other ways to manage the shortfall, the College of Arts and Sciences at UTK was asked to make cuts totaling $1.375 million. Dean of the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Bruce Bursten, recommended completely dropping the Department of Audiology and Speech Pathology, including all academic and clinical programs. This recommendation was reviewed and accepted by UTK Interim Chancellor Jan Simek, and approved by UT President John Petersen.
The intent of the University to terminate the Department was announced to the Dept. on June 2, which was insufficient notice and was probably intended to help minimize the time the Dept. would have to mount a campaign to stop the termination. However, the Campaign got underway quickly in June, and to date, has generated a massive amount of public response directed to the Board of Trustees and other key officials.
On Friday, June 6, the Board of Trustees held a committee meeting in Nashville. At this meeting, President Petersen spoke in defense of the proposed budget cuts. Responding to a significant amount of email and phone calls, a number of Trustees present at the meeting asked Petersen very pointed questions about the budget, specifically about the proposed termination of UT ASP. Petersen reiterated the information he had been supplied by Bursten, but was unable to respond specifically to several of the questions, which raised a great deal of doubt in those trustees' minds regarding the advisability of the termination.
On June 12, UT announced that it has to honor a agreement it signed in 1966 to preserve and to continue to operate the UT Hearing and Speech Center for 99 years. However, UT still plans to terminate the academic program. Essentially, the University is proposing to gut the Department, and only maintain a vestigial clinic program, honoring the letter but NOT the spirit of the agreement. This is NOT acceptable, in any manner whatsoever.
On June 20, the UT Board of Trustees voted to accept the budget as submitted by President Petersen. The decision on what programs to be cut - whether or not to cut the ASP program - will be made by the Board at its October meeting.
As of Sept. 26, a resolution seems to be in sight. On Sept. 18 and 19, media announcements made by UT officials indicated that the ASP programs will be transferred to the UT-Memphis College of Allied Health Sciences. Although very few details of this plan have been made public, we are reasonably optimistic that this is a big step toward saving UT ASP.
On October 23 and 24, 2008, the UT Board of Trustees will meet in Knoxville and will be voting on the UT-Memphis proposal. If all goes well between now and the end of the Trustee's meeting, Friends of UT ASP will celebrate a victory in this hard-fought political battle.
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The UT ASP program has been in existence well over FIFTY years. The Hearing and Speech Center, which is our clinical program, was established by community leaders in east Tennessee and Knoxville to serve the people of East Tennessee. The academic programs were then added, and the UT ASP program has continued to be one of the preeminent programs in the United States ever since. Our leaders have included distinguished Knoxvillians and professionals such as "Dr. Bernie" - Bernard Silverstein, Harold Luper, Sol Adler, Hal Peterson, and Jerry Carney. Our program is VERY active in the Knoxville community, and we are dedicated to improving the quality of life here in East Tennessee!