Staff cuts and program changes underway as UAF restructures teaching and learning center

FAIRBANKS, Alaska (KTUU/KTVF) - The University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) announced on Nov. 12, that it will reorganize the Center for Teaching and Learning, which includes slashing staff positions and some programs.

The Center for Teaching and Learning was created two years ago as “part of a push to be more interdisciplinary and to help enable faculty to create more authentic assessments for students,” according to Sean Holland, the associate director for learning innovation at UAF.

They provide faculty with curriculum support as well as assisting with presenting class material in new ways. This includes using tools such as learning glass, LED walls and other digital instruction tools. They have also developed relationships with other departments on campus such as the athletics department which utilized their services for media content.

Much of the academic support given to faculty through the center also trickles down to students, especially to those taking online courses.

Many of those students are non-traditional students, which make up 79% of all students in the University of Alaska system. According to Kendell Newman Sadiik, the associate director of transformative teaching, the largest part of that group includes students who started college after turning 19.

“But it also includes students who are working part-time or full-time, students who are caregivers for children or for other family members,” she said.

As the university reorganizes the center, 14 staff positions are being cut, and 17 others will be moved to different units.

Holland said the loss of the staff members will mean a loss of institutional knowledge and relationships built with the faculty.

It also means a loss of programs too.

“We have eight, which will go away because the woman who ran them was not retained. But over the past year, we have developed eight modules specifically with graduate students in mind,” Newman Sadiik said.

With the loss of staff, reorganization of programs and people that had their positions retained, there is now uncertainty for how faculty and staff will be impacted by the change.

“If you’re wanting to do something and you don’t know how to start, you don’t know if it could work, and you kind of just need someone to like sit down and talk with and help fuel it, like that, I think that we are known as that place and I think that’ll be a loss, but I hope folks find it in their colleagues,” Newman Sadiik said.

“I hope that the drastically reduced team that is retained has the capacity to do that type of work, but certainly one risk is that that team will end up doing, sort of become more just like responsive to urgent need, which we have also always done, but we’ve had the capacity to do more than that, and to look ahead and to lead the institution as far as teaching and learning goes into the future.”

Holland recognized the change was related to the bureaucratic process of the institution’s financial management but remains hopeful that the university will continue to innovate amidst the change.

“UAF is actually a very nimble organization. Universities are seen as places of institutional inertia and resistant to change, but that’s actually not true. These places are changing all the time, and this one is actually pretty good at it,” he said. “I think that even with the loss, the real loss of a lot of talented staff, and I think a morale hit to staff and faculty, I think that there is an interesting, there’s some interesting opportunities for those who are going to stick around at this institution just to think about how we do things and how it doesn’t have to be the way that we do them now.”

According to a press release from the university, the reorganization will continue to provide course development and faculty support as the change seeks to create a central hub for faculty development.

Alaska’s News Source reached out to the administration for further comment but did not hear back as of publication.

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