Following months of observation, discussion and planning, Interim President Arthur Levine ’70 recently announced his plan for the future of the University, splitting academic programs into four different “buckets” with individual leadership teams. On Friday, Feb. 28, the faculty held a special meeting to receive a presentation regarding the evolution of the University, following conversations that have taken place over the past month. 

After an introduction from chair of the faculty senate Prof. Jeffrey Lenowitz (HIST), Senior Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs Prof. Joel Christensen ’01 (CLAS) took the stand to deliver the presentation. This meeting took place exactly a week before the regularly scheduled faculty meeting on March 7, allowing for all voting-eligible members to obtain information with ample time before the proposal of a vote. 

Christensen began his presentation by explaining that in the past, Brandeis has not been able to move this quickly on large-scale projects. He thanked everyone involved and expressed that while he is the one presenting, the work that is being shared is truly a “group project.” He explained that the presentation held three sections, the first of which being “[communicating] clearly the urgency of the changes and giving [faculty] the background.” The second section covers the details of the plan and the general framework that has been created. The final section is focused on the “how,” “what will happen after this week and how we get to where we need to be going.” Christensen ended the introduction of his presentation by calling on attendees to “vote in favor” of the plan in the coming weeks, as well as “[asking] for [their] help in making this work all right.” He explained that he hopes “by doing these things that we can achieve something we haven’t done in a bit, which is to get to a place of hope rather than a place of fear for where our university is.”  

In the next section of the presentation, Christensen discussed the recent meetings covering the restructuring and split them into four separate categories of “why are we doing this,” “what will the governance model be like,” “what will the budgets be like” and “will we be retaining our units unique identities and our autonomy.” Christensen stated “across the board, I want to say that for governance, very little is going to change. We’re going to honor the principles of shared governance that make working at Brandeis a very different proposition from other institutions.”  

Christensen then addressed concerns regarding departmental budgets, explaining that current budgets will be moving with their specific departments as the University reorganizes. He stated “your staffing fundamentally stays the same ... you’re going to keep your identity as your departments, as your units and as your schools. And you have the option later, once you’re together and in different buckets, to think about what the future is going to be like, but nobody’s going to make you leave the department.”  

Following these clarifications, Christensen discussed the target audience of these restructuring changes. He explained that “for some of these changes, that’s the students who are closer to the age of applying to undergraduate. They’re looking at these proposals and they’re excited about them. They like the ideas of more internships and experiential learning. They want to think about a new core curriculum with modern needs, their concerns about careers.”  

Christensen explained that when students consider applying to colleges they go online and search for unique opportunities. He highlighted just a few of these programs as Northeastern University externships and the Clark University 4+1 Accelerated Master's Degree program. He explained what makes the school stand out is not as clear when students visit the Brandeis website. Christensen stated “It’s not because we’re not doing important work, it’s because we haven’t made it legible and visible to the community outside in a way that schools have, and so we’re going to start.”  

He shared “Brandeis delivers the small intimacy of a liberal arts education, with access to world class research. Students can come here and start with that disciplinary work and move into realms of learning and career opportunities that other schools don’t give them.” He discussed the financial challenges being faced by many institutions, and elaborated by explaining “higher ed has been facing a fundamental rearrangement in its financial support structure. We’ve gone from many small market small donors to major major donors who can shift the way universities function.” He also discussed recent changes to government-based grants and [National Institutes of Health] funding, explaining that “our future is uncertain and tuition revenue has changed across the board. People are paying more and expecting more, and our endowments are getting stretched as a result of these facts.” 

He then went on to explain that “we face it with a degree of greater vulnerability because of our age and our unique position, we don’t have the deep pockets of other institutions of our right because we’re only 75 years old and we always managed our endowment as well as we could have.” He also expressed other challenges specific to the University such as the financial crisis of 2008 and its long lasting effects on the organization. 

“The real way that we bounce back from there is we got historically lucky with two things,” Christensen said. “Full paying international students at one point made up almost 20% of our undergraduate student body and our masters enrollments rose to historic heights of over 1,200. This and last year our masters students are down below 800. We have very few full pay undergraduates.” He explained that additionally, Brandeis had 100 fewer enrolled students than targeted for this academic year. In conclusion, Christensen shared “We are a tuition dependent school and we’ve seen the bottom fall out of our master’s revenue and we’re looking at steady declines in our undergraduate tuition method.” 

He shared that the ultimate effect of this combination of deficits is that “next year, we’re looking at a revenue shortfall of $20 million. If this continues, it’ll go up 10 to 15 [percent] after that year and then level off after four years or so.” Ultimately, this revenue shortfall “will be as high as 25% potentially of our budget.” He then explained that this is not certain, just a prediction based on trends.  

In terms of undergraduate tuition revenue, he mentioned that “we also have fewer enrolled undergraduates who are paying at the same rate that they used to. We’ve gone from a general tuition discount rate of 38% to one that’s a little above 50%.”  

Christensen highlighted the work done at the University during the COVID-19 pandemic, explaining that “we responded better than almost all of our peers ... We moved in line with our values which [are] our community and our education, and we put people before infrastructure. We understood what makes Brandeis special are the people and the mission.”  

He explained that “the message the Board [of Trustees] has given [Levine] ... is that they’re going to give us extraordinary financial flexibility not to think about this as a deficit problem that needs to be cut, but as a revenue problem for a short amount of time. They’re going to let us take more money out of the endowment and they’re going to let us be creative because we have a plan to do something different.” 

Christensen then called on the faculty to help, explaining that there are ultimately two choices moving forward. “One is to cut the size of our institution and our function to our revenue size and our predicted future, which is having 3,000 students or so. What that means is probably losing our R1 status and moving towards a small liberal arts model.” He explained that “some of us may be ok with that, but it would mean basically 20% reshaping the institution and a fundamental change of our mission.” 

He explained that “the other choice is that we get up to the plate and take some big swings.” Christensen expressed that this option involves following the model laid out by Levine, and heavily endorsed this as the right choice for the University, both his place of work and his alma mater.  

He shared a true definition of what the liberal arts means and emphasized that Levine will be leaving the University in 18 months. Christensen shared “we get to fill in that empty signifier and explain to students why studying the arts matters.” He explained that this mission “takes what we are already and makes it legible to other people in the world.” 

Christensen continued to emphasize one of the main themes of his presentation: that Brandeis is unique. When referring to future students, he explained “We can be something very different that will help them do what they need to do.” He called on faculty for further involvement, stating “one of the things we’re going to ask you to do is have some more convenings if you’re up to it. So once you have more of these details, you can dream a little bigger about the programs you’d like to build, the initiatives you’d like to be a part of.”  

He shared “when you look at this, it’s about pitting departments and disciplines in conversation with each other, and something that [Dean of Arts and Sciences Jeffrey Shoulson] told me to be sure to say today, is the transformation we make next year isn't forever, just like we’ve only been here 76 years.” He emphasized that if something doesn’t end up working, it can always be revised, and where they are at now is just a starting point. 

Christensen reviewed some of the leadership structure of the new units, explaining that they will each have a dean, and these deans will be “tenured faculty from within the institution.” These deans will report to the Vice Provost, “who will be responsible respectively for undergraduate and graduate education.” The deans will be “primarily responsible for the academic activities,” and the operational and budgetary duties will be done at the provost level. He explained that the budget is shifting for now, but there will be space for revision in the future. 

To conclude the presentation, Christensen shared a message of hope with the faculty, “I want to regain my pride in this institution. I believe in you, in our faculty.” 

This presentation was held in advance of a consent vote that will be available to the faculty next week. The floor was then opened to all attendees of the meeting for questions and clarification.