President Robert Brown is cutting the University Professors Program from Boston University, effective fall 2008, and replacing it with a “university-wide honors program,” according to a letter he sent to UNI students and professors in mid-July.
Brown accepted the recommendation to disband UNI from former President Aram Chobanian, who had been leading a committee evaluating the school, by far the smallest of BU’s colleges.
UNI students will be allowed to take their scheduled classes for the next two academic years, and along with the 17 freshmen who will join them in the fall, will still have the college’s name on their diploma when they graduate.
The newly proposed honors program still lacks formidable details, such as who will be eligible and how it will function, though Brown said in his letter that its teachers “will be drawn from across the university.” He indicated in his letter that students in the honors program would be able to study topics in different colleges, similar to what UNI allows.
“By moving resources to support an all-university honors program we can better serve more of the exceptional students at Boston University who are interested in both disciplinary and inter-disciplinary degree programs,” Brown said in an email to The Daily Free Press.
A faculty committee will meet at the beginning of the school year to plan the new program, Brown said in the email.
In the meantime, UNI will be headed by biology professor Hans Kornberg, who has been a UNI professor for 12 years, serving as director for five semesters and acting director for one semester during that time.
“I sadly realize that the UNI program, as an independent entity, is no longer viable,” Kornberg said in an email. “I therefore concur with the recommendation that the ideals and aims of UNI should be maintained but subsumed in an enlarged university-wide honors program.”
In his letter, Brown acknowledged the sudden change and the impact it will have on UNI students.
“Obviously, for incoming and current undergraduates in UNI, these changes are significant,” he said. “As we move forward to disband UNI as a freestanding unit, we will follow the procedures established for such administrative changes by the University Council and outlined in the Faculty Handbook.”
In June, then-Director Bruce Redford stepped down from his post at UNI to work on a history exhibit at the J. Paul Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, acting on an announcement he made in December 2006.
Students in UNI must uphold a 3.5 GPA and have the privilege of virtually choosing their own creative majors. The “gifted” students, as Kornberg and the college’s website describe them, must also learn a second language, attend weekly seminars during freshman year and complete a senior thesis.
“What makes UNI truly unique is that all of the Core classes (offered in the freshman and sophomore years) contain fewer than 18 students, that all are taught by full professors, that each student has an academic adviser who acts both as that title implies as well as a friend and confidant, and that all UNI faculty, staff and students form small but tightly knit and supportive community that acts more as a family than as a department,” Kornberg said.
UNI junior Richie Hofmann, who said he received Brown’s letter Wednesday, said he was aware of the committee evaluating the college but was “pretty shocked” to hear that it would be cut after this year.
“My concern is the standards of education won’t be upheld once the program is disbanded,” said Hofmann, who is studying literature and arts and was advised by Redford. “If all confidence has been lost in the program, then what quality of academics will there be for the students in it?”
Staff reporter Jason Millman contributed reporting for this article.