On June 13th, 2024, UNCA’s Chancellor, Kimberly Van Noort, sent out an email to incoming students, current students and faculty heading her APR Proposal to phase out four academic departments.
The proposal included ancient mediterranean studies, drama, philosophy, and religious studies, all of which are within the Liberal Arts concentration.
One student in the drama department, Kelani Burkemper, senior, said they were shocked to hear the news that the major they were just about to finish was on the list to be cut.
Burkemper pursued a major in Drama, actively participating in the theater department and the shows they put on.
“The budget froze, spring semester, a week and a half before our current show opened, so the timing wasn’t great. Do I think it was intentional looking back? Yes,” Burkemper said.
According to Burkemper, despite the theatre department’s great turnout for the show, Chancellor Van Nort never attended any of their shows.
“Over the summer I had an internship that I needed to graduate. I got an email and the professors were blindsided, everyone was blindsided,” Burkemper said.
Burkemper said the students created their own show of protest by submitting close to 1500 letters in appeal of Van Nort’s decision to cut their department. None of which they said received any response.
“I was left scrambling, not knowing for a while if I was going to graduate,” Burkemper said.
Karson Ingram, a first-year history major said he didn’t initially intend on pursuing the history major. Instead, Ingram came to UNCA with the Ancient Mediterranean Studies major in mind.
“I believe the way they chose to cut the major was really unfair,” Ingram said.
Ingram planned to study ancient mediterranean studies as his major, but switched his focus to history once he found out his intended major was in the process of being phased out.
“It puts a bad taste in my mouth that one of the first things the school thought to do to solve a budget crisis was to cut down on the actual education given here,” Ingram said.
The university decided to move ancient mediterranean and the drama department to “no longer accepting new majors” according to UNC Asheville’s Major and Minors page.
“I’m still taking as many of the ancient mediterranean classes as I can that are still offered,” Ingram said.
Ingram said he hopes the university will decide to turn the ancient mediterranean studies into a minor instead of cutting the department out completely.
