As SIP Closes, Faculty Still Have Questions
James Kelly
He/Him
Editor-in-Chief
10/30/25
The window for faculty to submit their Separation Incentive Program (SIP) applications will close Friday, but fundamental questions about the SIP – including those surrounding how program eligibility was determined, and the relationship between the SIP and potential program curtailment – remain largely unanswered.
The SIP, which was initially announced to faculty in August, allows some faculty to voluntarily terminate their employment, effective January 2026, in exchange for 18 months of pay and some continuing benefits. Applications for the SIP were emailed to eligible faculty on the evening of October 1st, and the application window opened the same day. The window will close October 31st.
To be eligible, a faculty member must be tenured or tenure-track, have at least five years of full-time employment with PSU, and belong to an eligible academic program, according to the SIP application. Eligible programs include Biology, Communications and Media Studies, English, History, Music, and Political Science, along with minors such as Applied Ethics, Applied Linguistics, Art History, and Philosophy. Lamson Library, as well as a number of previously-eliminated programs including majors in Art History and Philosophy, were also SIP-eligible. Those programs were named in a list shared by the Office of Academic Affairs, said PSU American Association of University Professors negotiator Mark Fischler.
The specific process University Leadership used to determine which programs would be SIP-eligible, however, remains unclear. Since March, PSU President Donald Birx and Provost Nate Bowditch have pointed to enrollment and student-to-faculty ratios as metrics used to evaluate programs for both SIP eligibility and other potential cuts, including curtailment. “We looked at programs that have been challenged with enrollment and consistently have struggled with a faculty-to-student ratio,” Bowditch said of the SIP at an October 1st faculty meeting. But as of publication, neither the data nor its interpretation have been shared with faculty broadly. Bowditch did not respond to The Clock’s request for that information.
“I don’t have anything official from OAA about how the SIP and the potential program closures were determined. I also don’t think anything has been shared more widely in writing from their office,” said Faculty Speaker Rebecca Grant, an English Professor. “There are a lot of different kinds of ways to consider these numbers.”
Programmatic enrollment data is publicly available through PSU’s Office of Institutional Effectiveness, but hardly paints a clear picture of how the SIP list was determined. Some SIP-eligible programs rank among the 25 most-enrolled this semester, including Biology, Communications and Media Studies, and English. Others, like English Education and Music, have just a couple of students enrolled.
“There are inconsistencies,” Filiz Ruhm, a Political Science professor, said at the meeting. When she asked Bowditch for a breakdown of “why and how people or programs ended up on the SIP list,” Bowditch offered to share the information in writing. He never followed through, Ruhm told The Clock.
The result of the SIP will ultimately inform the University’s decision whether to curtail programs and, if they do, which programs to curtail. If PSU were to begin curtailment, it would do so within the programs named for the SIP, Bowditch said.
The AAUP collective bargaining agreement establishes more specific requirements for curtailment than for the SIP. In order for the University to begin curtailment, at least one of three conditions must be met: insufficient enrollment, inability to find or keep faculty, or a change in the University’s “direction or mission.”
The change of mission clause was a red flag to some faculty, given PSU’s recent changes to its general education system and reorganization of the University broadly into a six-school structure. But if PSU curtails programs, it won’t be because of a change in mission, Bowditch told The Clock. “Neither the new academic structure nor the new Gen Ed will be responsible for program curtailment should that come to pass,” he said. “Rather it is changes in funding, changes in the world of higher education, demographic declines, and the changing desires of students as they declare majors that will be responsible for any potential curtailments.”
The more persistent issue for faculty was that of the SIP’s timeline. If the result of the SIP will determine program curtailment, then faculty are taking a big gamble by taking or not taking the SIP, said Scott Coykendall, a Communications and Media Studies professor. “It seems to me that we’re asking faculty to kind of roll the dice in this case because we don’t know who else will take the SIP,” he said. “That’s not really a fair situation to put faculty in.”
Some faculty have nonetheless announced their intention to take the SIP. “I lost my job,” Library Director Robin DeRosa said in a blog post. “I took a “voluntary” separation incentive to leave my position. It doesn’t feel voluntary,” she wrote. “Close to thirty tenured faculty at my regional public university in New Hampshire will “voluntarily” leave their positions or face retrenchment, which is the odd word that academics use in place of “getting fired.” I am one of the faculty members who is choosing to separate rather than waiting to be separated.”
The Office of Academic Affairs anticipates a complete picture of the SIP’s result by mid-November. “No decisions about program curtailment or anything else are going to be made until after the SIP runs its course,” Bowditch told faculty. If, at that point, OAA initiates a program’s curtailment, only then would affected faculty be notified, he said.