The Boston University committee charged with forming an honors program to replace the University Professors Program still has not decided on many details and has not considered students’ opinions, according to committee members.

After President Robert Brown decided to cut UNI in July, a committee of professors and administrators was created to design a school-wide honors program to replace the school. However, several months after Brown sent letters to students and professors, little progress has been made, committee members said.

UNI students and committee members said Brown was “rash” in his decision to cut the school without a new program in place. Some students said they are uninformed about discussions and have had few chances to voice their concerns.

“My experience in university leadership is that if a decision is made on a critical issue, there is always some who will call the decision ‘rash,'” Brown said in an email to The Daily Free Press. “The question is whether this group outweighs the group that is saying ‘about time.'”

When making his decision, Brown acted on the advice of former President Aram Chobanian, who had headed a critical review of UNI for several months.

UNI junior Will Lewis said the president should consult UNI students, especially because the initial decision was made “outside the context of students,” who are unsure how to express their opinions to the administration.

“[UNI students] feel like there’s no hope for their voices to be heard, and [they] have resigned themselves to being a cog in the BU system,” he said. “If our input isn’t valued by the committee, I don’t know what we can accomplish.”

Committee members decided last week to arrange a meeting with students and ask UNI alumni for input.

The committee has met weekly to determine the specifics of the new honors program, scheduled to be in place by fall 2009. The committee includes the deans of the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, the School of Education and UNI; the Enrollment and Students Affairs vice president and the new associate provost of undergraduate education, along with other professors.

“The intention is to create a community of learning which ultimately might become the norm for how everyone is educated at BU,” said SED dean Charles Glenn.

Committee members said they are working to create a blueprint for the program, but no specific timeline has been set. The program will aim to admit 200 students in fall 2009 and then each year after until the program serves 800 students at a time.

Brown said UNI students can give their input, but how much it would be taken into consideration “would be speculation at this point.”

Lewis said some professors are “very upset” about the transition and the mystery surrounding the new program.

“A lot of the professors are in the dark,” Lewis said. “If Brown can’t convince the professors that it’s a worthwhile change, then why would we be convinced that things are going to be better?”

Some students said they are concerned Brown is basing his policies solely off of James Collins’s book Good to Great, which describes business models, but they say does not outline the best strategy for BU.

“It is flattering for someone to imply that I have a prescribed management style. I don’t think this is true,” Brown said. “I did give copies of Good to Great (and the supplement for not-for-profit institutions) to our university leaders as a way of starting a discussion about making decisions that focus our resources on programs that are critical to the university and on programs at which we can be great.

“Boston University does not have the resources to be great at everything that a university might do, so we do have to think about how to focus our resources and how to measure our progress,” he continued.

UNI Director Hans Kornberg, who said he welcomes students to talk to him about concerns, said UNI professors will teach in the new honors program.

“I’m not aware of anyone leaving, and there has been no suggestion of anyone being forced out,” he said.

UNI senior Claudia Huang said Brown should be careful when deciding how the new program will work, because of the number of students who will be affected.

“I hope he realizes that there’s a lot at stake, and I don’t know that he does,” she said.