Acting Provost Sarah Feldner’s proposed timeline for possible academic college and department restructuring received criticism at a Sept. 15 University Academic Senate meeting.
The recommendation was issued in Sept. 2024 by a steering committee in charge of leading Marquette’s goal to cut $31 million by 2031. Feldner has been tasked with presenting a restructuring model to University President Kimo Ah Yun this December for a final version to seek approval from the Board of Trustees next April.
Models for possible restructuring were supposed to be submitted by Feldner in July 2025, but it didn’t happen, she said. However, Gasser and Feldner continued discussing the changes over the summer.
To further discuss the process, The Wire sat down with Feldner and Chair of Academic Senate, Paul Gasser, on Sept. 17.
History behind the changes
The steering committee created to lead Marquette’s budget reduction issued a total of nine recommendations last September to generate cost savings or make cuts — college restructuring was just one of them. UAS Chair Paul Gasser said this isn’t the first time restructuring was proposed.
“Around Covid, there was a big financial crisis and there were discussions about big changes like this,” he said. “At that time, those weren’t all-university discussions. Those were work groups.”
Work groups and listening sessions
The steering committee recommended creating work groups in a 2024 report as a way for faculty to have a voice in how the restructuring happens, but Feldner is taking a different approach, saying the steering committee gave her a “direction to go.”
Instead, the university will hold seven listening sessions over a three-week period for faculty to attend and share ideas. Feldner said she’s also prioritizing speaking individually with chairs of departments and senior faculty members.
Gasser said he hopes faculty come to meetings and listening sessions with “skeletons” of ideas or models.
“I think there are some positive things that could happen out of this,” he said. “Whether they’re just financial benefits, but also maybe improving how we serve students or recruit students.”
In the recommendation from the steering committee, the College of Arts & Sciences, which houses the humanities, and the College of Engineering were both named as colleges that don’t have favorable financial trends, and were used as examples for colleges that could be reorganized.
Depending on how the final models look, Gasser said faculty will then be able to get a better sense of how their department or college would fit into the larger picture.
“Let’s say we have one fewer college, that’s a whole list of departments that have to be in a new home,” Gasser said. “That doesn’t mean we’re slicing them off, it means we’re putting them in different places.”
Timeline for cost savings
Feldner said during the Sept. 15 academic senate meeting that the plans wouldn’t look to cut faculty, but rather revise hiring in the long term. When questioned further, she said hiring, promotion and tenure would be reevaluated as part of restructuring.
But cost savings wouldn’t be immediate. Feldner said the actual restructuring process would take a year, and the university wouldn’t see significant cost savings for another five years. If the Board of Trustees approves a plan, restructuring would start as early as this summer.
Feldner said she understands that this isn’t going to be like “flipping a switch” and hard decisions will need to be made between now and April 2026 to decide which model, if any, would generate significant savings.
“If we get to the end of this and the board says, ‘This is not the way to go,’ or we say, ‘It’s not the way to go,’ there will be no implementation,” she said.
Changes to timeline, concerns over timeframe
Feldner has laid out a plan, detailing that prospective models would need to be revised between now and April.
After faculty voiced concerns about the tight timeline, the university added another step, announcing Sept. 16 that shared governance bodies would give feedback on the final models before they are sent to the Board of Trustees.
These governing groups include University Academic Senate, Faculty Council, University Board of Undergraduate Studies, University Board of Graduate Studies and the Committee on Research.
The April date for Board approval stayed the same.
Some faculty were concerned that the listening sessions and consulting shared governance was happening too late in the game, citing the fact that Gasser and Feldner had been discussing the process in the summer.
“It is not a secret,” Feldner said. “I think that there are models out there. They were announced, they were discussed. There are models that were discussed in 2021. There are models people have put into a portal. So those do exist.”
Feldner said those models haven’t yielded any permanent decisions, but she was supposed to have a proposal for restructuring completed in July. Nothing concrete was accomplished then.
“It just didn’t get done. And I did not have time to fully think about it,” she said.
Rather, Feldner said she wants faculty to know this semester is about brainstorming, and she’ll be asking “Do we need to restructure?”
Despite some opposition, Gasser said the attitudes from faculty haven’t been overwhelmingly negative.
“There is some excitement about it,” he said. “There is a real desire to be involved in the conversation.”
Other faculty raised concerns that the listening sessions felt like an afterthought, but Feldner said she hopes even if someone’s idea doesn’t get adopted, they still feel like they were heard. Feldner hopes by sitting with chairs of departments and faculty, their ideas will start to shape the way she sees the restructuring.
“You may have an idea that does not become the idea,” Feldner said. “That’s an upshot of when you have this many different perspectives and different ways of coming at it.”
Leadership changes and provost searchÂ
In the past two years, after the university announced it was facing a budget shortfall in 2023, there’s been a feeling of mistrust among some faculty, which was reflected in the 2025 campus climate study, where faculty reported concerns about communication with university leadership.
University Academic Senate voted no-confidence in former Provost and now-President Kimo Ah Yun in November 2024, and Feldner said she’s learned from faculty’s discontent with prior leadership.
“I’m in such an interesting position relative to that,” she said. “And so what I can say is for me, [the vote of no-confidence] informed how I approach the acting role.”
Ah Yun sent out an update on the provost search in June 2025 saying the search committee had a final candidate selected, but the individual declined the offer. Moving forward, he wrote in the update that he’s putting “no mandatory timeline on concluding the search,” but hopes to have someone selected by the end of the calendar year.
Feldner said in the meantime, she’s looking forward to having meaningful conversations about the restructuring to better understand where faculty stand.
“It’s big,” she said. “It’s complicated. But I’m looking forward to what we learn.”
This story is part of an ongoing series from the Marquette Wire regarding the university’s budget cuts and fiscal situation. If you’re interested in discussing your thoughts or program, please reach out to the Managing Editor of the Marquette Tribune at [email protected].Â
This story was written by Sophia Tiedge. She can be reached at [email protected].Â
