Layoffs and other staff reduction are part of a plan at Winfield’s Southwestern College aimed at cutting $2.4 million in expenses for its current fiscal year, officials at the private four-year school announced Friday.
The college will reduce its workforce through a combination of offering an early retirement window, layoffs, and through unfilled open positions. A decrease in the number of students Southwestern is retaining, played a role in the current budget struggles, officials said.
“The layoffs are in no way connected to a person’s performance, capabilities or credentials,” said the college’s director for human resources, Lonnie Boyd. “We know that this is difficult and distressing news for our community and we acknowledge how disruptive it is for our colleagues who are impacted. We are doing our very best to care for employees during this time and are extending benefits and pay to those who have been laid off in the form of a severance package.”
While affected staff have been notified, the college’s faculty layoff committee, composed of faculty leadership, will work to review faculty lines to make a recommendation to the board for possible reductions. The committee’s work will not begin until the college’s early retirement window closes later this fall.
Multiple sources told NewsCow that the staff reductions could affect some long-time faculty and staff at the school.
On August 31 Southwestern College President Liz Frombgen met with faculty and staff of the college to share an update on the 137-year-old institution’s financial position.
Frombgen announced at the meeting that the college would be enacting the cost-cutting plan. The reductions are in part responsive to budget performance concerning the college’s retention rate and tuition discount rate for both main campus and professional studies learners. Additionally, the college is curbing expenditures in expectation of higher operating costs due to increasing energy prices and inflation.
Southwestern welcomed an incoming class of 196 freshmen and 47 transfer students in August. Though the college does not finalize enrollment numbers until the twentieth day of class, enrollment at the main campus totaled 579 full-time students and 7 part-time undergraduate students as classes began.
“While campus enrollment didn’t quite land where it was budgeted,” said Frombgen. “We weren’t far off and we did bring an excellent group of students into the Builder family. The greater budget implication was caused by a reduced retention rate. We are working with urgency and conviction to improve retention moving forward. It is imperative to our mission to see more students through to graduation.”
Frombgen said that many of the planned reductions would necessarily be permanent, because of compounding financial obligations and the college’s need for an operational margin moving forward.
“The college must be positioned to make investments as identified through the strategic planning process that will lead to increased revenue and improved institutional vitality,” Frombgen said in a follow-up email to the campus community.
“It has been deeply difficult to arrive at these decisions, but ultimately it’s right that we make them now, ensuring that our community will have the opportunity to move through this time with care. We will confront this challenge together and we will heal together,” Frombgen wrote to employees of the college.
Frombgen will meet with students next week during a Town Hall hosted by the Student Government Association to discuss the college’s position and to field questions from the student body. Additionally, she is hosting a community listening session, focused on strategic planning, on Sept. 27 at 7 p.m. in Deets Library. Alumni and friends of the college are encouraged to attend as the college works to chart its five-year strategic plan.
“This is an incredible college with much to be proud of – including a tradition of meeting our challenges, with courage, head-on. We will get to a more sustainable future, one in which our college is stronger, but getting there will be hard,” Frombgen said. “I know we are capable.”