School Has The Program On Elimination List

The nationally accredited aviation program at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota is in danger of being eliminated due to the school's budget woes.

The program is on a list of tracks that are part of $14 million in budget cuts proposed by the school for its 2012 fiscal year. The program also makes up about 25 percent of the activity at St. Cloud Regional Airport.

The university sent out layoff notices to the tenured faculty in the aviation program last week, which meets a deadline for the action. The notices can be rescinded, but they could not be issued past September 20th, 2010. The cuts were announced in August.

The St. Cloud Times reports that the program is the only nationally accredited aviation track near a large number of aviation-related industries in the Upper Midwest. Near the university are six major ATC facilities, several national guard units, the hub of a major airline, two aircraft manufacturers, and the University of Minnesota aeronautical engineering program. It is also one of the oldest such programs in the country, established in 1930.

The university says the program ran a deficit of over $250,000 last year, and has the smallest enrollment of any of its departments in the College of Science and Engineering. But the university is reportedly hearing from numerous industry and community leaders who say the program is worth saving, and there is a plan under discussion to have the aviation program absorbed by the G.R. Herberger College of Business.

Devinder Malhotra, Provost and VP for Academic Affairs, said that University President Earl H. Potter III had not yet made a final decision on what he described as a "complex" issue.

FMI: www.scsu.edu