The Letter

On the afternoon of the 3rd of February, during the town hall meeting for all College of Engineering and Applied Sciences (CEAS) constituents, the Dean of CEAS, Dr. Carlo Montemagno, unveiled his plan to deal with the recently announced budget cuts at the University of Cincinnati. As part of his “Road to 2019” plan, he proposed his notion to completely dissolve the School of Computing Science and Informatics. While other budget-related cuts where presented, in regard to the Computer Science program, the dean stated the following measures:

1. Close the CS program completely.
2. Completely suspend all admissions for the Bachelors CS starting in 2012.
3. Move all graduate students that are currently enrolled in the Computer Science and Engineering to the recently formed School of Electronics and Computing Systems.
4. Increase the engineering undergraduate program fee by 10%.

Understandably, in face of such drastic cuts, some measures must be taken. However, the reasoning behind Dr. Montemagno's decision is unjustified and even, to a certain point, irrational. Through this letter, we wish to notify UC and it's community of the ongoing situation and of possible effects, and propose an open-discussion towards possible alternatives. We hope that a significant number of students and parents will get involved in our cause. We believe that, students must come together and decide a plan of action immediately to deal with our grievances.

After a quick brainstorm and limited discussion, we have identified the following effects (contributions are welcomed in posterior meetings). Please note that [G] represents graduate student, and [U] undergraduate student grievances.

• [G][U] Accreditation
• [G][U] A binding contract was made between students and UC. With the proposed changes, how will UC keep it's end? In all practical terms, in 2012, students will have no practical option but to change from CS to CE.
• [G] Quality of research
• [G] Loss of funding opportunities
• [G] Advisors may be pressured to leave UC
• [G] No TA (if we have no department, there will be no department funding)
• [G][U] CS is an integral part of any good university. Any student, in order to be competitive in today's market, needs a solid foundation in computer science, with strong competencies in data structures, algorithms, and software design.
• [U] Enrollment has increased in the department in the last 2 years. How can the Dean justify this type of cut?
• [G] As CS graduate students, if current faculty are pressured to leave, who will mentor students? By merging with the SECS department, it is obvious that certain research topics will be completely ignored.
• [G][U] What are the facts behind this decision? It is well known that the CS department has more enrollment than other departments. So why CS is being dissolved?

While not proposing a solution yet, we outlined alternatives that could still be explored, without resorting to such extreme measures.

• Faced with a similar situation, the Department of Physics at UC decided to increase enrollment, rather than decrease, let alone completely freezing it. Both their department, as well as ours (CS), has shown a trend of increasing admissions. Why has this option been overlooked?
• While other departments have a smaller population of faculty and undergrad students, why is this cut not performance based?
• Why are cuts not being made uniformly across all constituents in the college?

If you believe that these changes will impact YOU in a huge way, please reply to this email ASAP so that we can take a more organized approach to make our grievances heard to the concerned and rational people.

Thank you,
Computer Science Graduate Students