Florida Memorial University on pins and needles over future

Nearing its one-year probation period in June, Florida Memorial University (FMU) has decided to make cuts in faculty and programming.

Due to Florida Memorial’s recent sanction placed by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), the university’s administration had to eliminate programs, let go of faculty and staff, and merged existing programs.

FMU has operated in a sense of transparency, sending out mass communications, holding town hall discussions and disseminating videos to faculty, students, staff, alumni and stakeholders keeping everyone apprised as to what to expect as FMU continues to navigate through this difficult time, said Sharee Gilbert, the university’s director of communications.

Founded in 1879 and carrying on its legacy as the oldest and only Black university in South Florida, the university at 15800 NW 42nd Ave. in Miami Gardens has been facing challenges after being placed on one-year probation in June 2021 due to financial burdens and decline of enrollment. The SACSCOC, which accredits degree-granting higher education institutions across 11 southern states, has been monitoring FMU for two years

“The communication has been consistent and clear,” she said, “FMU’s leadership team and Board of Trustees have held meetings with SACSCOC and United Negro College Fund (UNCF) consultants, who have extensive experience dealing with accreditation matters in higher education.”

The university hired Gray Associates, a strategy consulting firm, which utilizes a data-driven process to optimize course and program offerings. The firm’s assessment revealed that FMU has a number of programs with extremely low enrollment.

Due to the high instructional cost of programs with few students enrolled, the review and analysis recommended discontinuing 16 programs within the university’s school of arts and sciences, business and education departments.

Among those eliminated programs are English, sociology, environmental sciences, engineering, accounting, marketing, biology education and secondary English education.

Over a five-year period, these programs produced fewer than five graduates, Ms. Gilbert added. “This is not sustainable to the overall budget alignment or the viability of the university.”

For the past 10 years, the university’s enrollment continued to decline but now that the university is seeing an increase in enrollment and working to revamp and realign its budget, data-driven decisions had to be implemented, she said.

This past fall term, the university had a targeted enrollment goal of 850 students, which was exceeded with an addition of over 300 freshmen students, increasing the current student enrollment population to more than 960, FMU’s Dean of the School of Education Dr. Jacqueline Hill told Miami Today back in October.

As of now, all faculty and staff affected by this data have been notified of the elimination of their positions, which will be effective May 14. A total of 18 positions will be eliminated, Ms. Gilbert said.

“As it relates to your question about tenured faculty – the university is not unionized. As for pending administrative actions, FMU will not comment,” she said. “However, I will reiterate, decisions such as these are not easy to make. They are certainly decisions most businesses and organizations have had to make more recently. The decisions were a part of a data-driven process, which in turn created data-driven results and were not personal in any way.”

In June, a SACSCOC committee panel is to review a monitoring report submitted by FMU. The committee will then determine whether to extend probation for another year for “good cause,” remove the university from probation altogether, or discredit FMU as a higher education, degree-granting university.

“As the current administration works to revamp and reimagine FMU’s future,” Ms. Gilbert added, “the current SACSCOC task force, the board, and the current administration are confident the university will see its way through this situation and the sanction of ‘Probation for Good Cause’ will be removed.”