Highlighted by administrators as an effort to strengthen the University of Denver’s (DU) long-term future, the “Academic Transformation” initiative is unfolding amid financial strain and heightened scrutiny from faculty and students. 

As the chief academic officer of the university, Provost Elizabeth Loboa is tasked with overseeing the “strategic direction and support of the teaching, research, and learning at DU.” One of her responsibilities this year has been to supervise what she and Chancellor Jeremy Haefner have described as an “academic transformation.” 

This transformation is aimed at “reimagining the academic experience in ways that strengthen student success, enhance faculty impact and prepare our community for a rapidly changing world.” 

With a $20 to $30 million projected budget shortfall for the next fiscal year, Loboa acknowledged that the academic transformation is also an opportunity to redirect resources toward programs the administration considers successful and sustainable.

“We’re pushing to try to do an academic transformation in a way that releases additional funds to invest in our areas of strength,” Loboa said. 

Earlier this year, the university established committees to advance Loboa’s academic transformation priorities, including the Goal 3 committee, which has three subcommittees focused on “Academic opportunities for revenue growth,” “Creative restructuring across schools, departments and academic programs” and “Programs to be considered for closure.”

The committee delivered a report with its findings to university administrators on May 1. Loboa stated that the report would not be made public until after the Board of Trustees meeting in June, when university leaders will make final decisions on restructuring proposals and possible department closures. 

Loboa described this process of restructuring primarily as a question of balancing resource allocation with changing student demand. 

“So part of it is, how do we think about new revenue generation and reallocation of resources?” she said. “If student demand has completely dropped in some areas, and we are putting as much resources in that area as we have in another area, where student demands are going up, then we’re not allocating our resources correctly.” 

While the transformation effort comes amid significant financial pressure at DU, Loboa noted that reevaluating programs and resource distribution is a standard part of institutional planning.

“It’s something that you need to be doing at a university at all times,” Loboa said. 

This approach has been in practice at the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics (NSM) whose internal reviewing and restructuring processes focus on adapting to shifting student interests.

Despite this, Chancellor Haefner acknowledged that large-scale academic review has not historically been a university-wide routine at DU.

“To be quite frank, we haven’t done [academic transformation] in 50 years, so it’s not surprising that there’s a lot of anxiety around this,” Haefner said. 

Loboa similarly noted that, for community members unfamiliar with this kind of process, it can feel abrupt, especially because the university’s budget challenges have compressed the timeline.

“The budget components drive these things at a pace that feels very fast,” she said. “In a perfect world, you can right-size a university over three, four years, right? Well, that’s just not the reality we’re in… We need to pivot.” 

She highlighted that as a private institution, the university can respond faster to changing student interests and market demands. 

“That’s the joy of being in a private institution: we can pivot quickly. We can be nimble, and we can offer really innovative, interdisciplinary programs to our students much more quickly, and that’s what we’re doing. We’re making sure that we lean into doing what’s best for our students and what they’re telling us they want,” Loboa said. 

She acknowledged that the scope of the academic transformation can make the process difficult for students, faculty and staff to navigate, but said she believes the changes will ultimately expand opportunities for students at DU. 

“We need to adjust and do an academic transformation from the budget perspective, obviously. But the other component of this academic transformation is being more forward-thinking and nimble and responding to student desires and needs,” Loboa said. 

Loboa attributed much of the financial strains driving some of the academic transformation initiatives to a projected tuition revenue gap stemming from enrollment challenges. 

During an employee town hall on Feb. 18, Loboa emphasized increased undergraduate applications as an encouraging sign for the university, at that time projecting a potential incoming class of 1,400 students. 

“Right now, we are over 30 percent up in undergraduate applications,” Loboa said in the town hall. 

However, she later clarified that the incoming class is now expected to be approximately the same size as last year’s, which had 1,184 students. 

“Based on what we are currently projecting, it’s probably going to be more like 1,050 or 1,100,” Loboa said. 

Loboa said the university’s initial projections reflected an ambitious enrollment target rather than an expected outcome. 

“Applications were at record numbers, and we actually were even more selective in admits, but we still had over 15,000 [admitted students],” Loboa said. “1,400 was always a very aspirational goal.”

Though the incoming undergraduate class is expected to be similar in size, Loboa noted that the university is graduating a significantly larger class this year, creating a tuition revenue gap that has contributed to the university’s broader budget challenges.

At the start of the fall quarter of 2022, DU’s undergraduate class of 2026 had about 1,650 students. Loboa attributed the difference in class size to the pandemic, where DU saw a significant enrollment surge. To account for the surge, the university grew with it. 

“In order to best serve your students, if you have students coming in, you hire faculty, and academic staff, and academic support personnel… and if you’re not bringing in the exact same numbers, and if you resourced your university to the size that was the COVID bump size, you’ve got to make sure that you then stop doing the things that students no longer desire, right?” Loboa said. 

However, faculty have questioned whether cutting instructional costs would be an effective solution for the university’s financial challenges.

Last April, an auditor hired by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) chapter at DU highlighted that faculty are a relatively low cost for the university. In comparison to 20 self-identified peer institutions, DU ranks in the bottom half for faculty salary in every category. 

Loboa emphasized that the proposed changes are designed to reshape, rather than eliminate, academic opportunities for students.

She also noted that closing departments does not necessarily mean closing programs. Loboa pointed to colleges like CAHSS that have already begun to do internal restructuring to increase its interdisciplinary programs. Loboa believes that this will lead to better outcomes for students. 

“If you have multiple tiny departments that have their own little administrative structure… The students can really feel siloed,” Loboa said. 

Loboa wants students to know that regardless of what changes are made, the university will ensure they have paths to graduate. 

“Any student who has signed up for any degrees here will get those degrees. We will make sure our students are first,” Loboa said. 

She also said faculty and staff impacted by the changes would continue to be included in the process as discussions move forward.

“I understand the fear and consternation with change. Everyone should understand that this has gone through, and continues to go through, a very extensive shared governance approach,” she said. “Full APT processes will be followed.” 

The APT is the university’s governing Appointment, Promotion and Tenure policy. 

Transparency and communication have been points of concern across campus. An initiative spearheaded by Loboa this year to address that problem has been sharing weekly newsletters with faculty and staff. However, she recognized that these efforts have not been as effective as she’d hoped. 

“I’ve tried to be very clear in my weekly newsletters,” Loboa said. “We have incredible faculty and staff, and they’re working very hard at what they’re doing in their roles, and so maybe they’re hearing about things at different times.”

Loboa acknowledged that the proposed changes have generated anxiety across campus, but maintained that the restructuring is necessary for the university’s long-term sustainability.

“You do the right thing, even when it’s the hard thing. And change is really hard. But we have to do the right thing, and we have to right-size the university in a way that we are seeing we best serve our students,” Loboa concluded.