Advocate for CTE students and faculty

We, the undersigned, call on the administrative officials of Central Washington University to advocate for faculty retention in the Theatre Arts Department and request that no faculty cuts be made in the near future as a part of the university-wide downsizing;
We request that the minimum student count for theatre courses be lowered to ensure that students can get the necessary individualized training they need in the classes they need;
And we request that efforts be made to offer consistent advising to students in the Theatre Arts Department in the future.

The theatre department has seen a decrease in faculty of 50%, from 21 faculty and staff in fall of 2018 to 11 in fall of 2022, and continued reductions will be extremely detrimental to the students of this department. Theatre faculty require intense specialization to adequately teach our students and prepare them for work in their field, and additional cuts to faculty will severely impact our ability to offer the hands-on experience necessary for students to succeed in and after college.

The university has been pushing for larger class sizes, which may work for certain major tracks, but theatre benefits from single-digit seat counts in a number of ways. When an acting class has a minimum student requirement of 12-24, our faculty lose the ability to offer the individualized training that makes theses courses so valuable to our students. When a shop class has a minimum student requirement of 12-24, the lack of individualized training and time has the potential to become dangerous. In theatre, students benefit from class sizes that are much smaller, in classes at all levels.

In addition to the loss of faculty and increased class minimums, students have been struggling with a lack of consistent advisors- many of our students have had several different advisors during their tenure here, and the process of switching from advisor to advisor obfuscates graduation requirements and complicates course registration.

We understand that many of these issues are happening university-wide, but theatre has different requirements than other programs, and these things are the minimum of what we need to keep running at a level fit for this institution. This petition is intended to allow students and the extended community of CWU to support and advocate for these requests. 

Theatre Advisory Board (TAB)    Contact the author of the petition