With program cuts, the vibe has changed for E. Gordon Gee, West Virginia University’s suddenly embattled president

Early in E. Gordon Gee’s second stint as president of West Virginia University, things seemed almost chummy between the slightly built leader obsessed with bow ties and the university that gave him his first presidency decades ago and then hired him back for an encore.

For Gee, 79, West Virginia University’s suddenly embattled president, the vibe has changed drastically.

His plan to discontinue 32 academic majors, end foreign language instruction and cut 7% of the faculty — 169 positions — has thrust him and WVU into an unwanted public debate over how much can be jettisoned without undermining the mission of a research university serving one of the nation’s poorest states.

During a walkout Monday, some student protesters said Gee had to go. One protester carried a sign that read “Stop the ‘Gee-llotine.’ ”

On Thursday, during a campus conversation on Zoom, Gee suggested that complex pressures already weighing on higher education, and WVU, had been exacerbated by the pandemic.

“I thought I’d been through everything — floods, desolation,” he said. “But I’d never been through a pandemic, which had a more profound impact on the university than I think I even probably imagined, including financially.”

Gee pushed back against a narrative spreading on campus and beyond: “We are not gutting the university,” he said.

Through four-plus decades, Gee has held a prominent spot nationally among higher education leaders as chief executive at Brown, Ohio State and Vanderbilt universities, as well as the University of Colorado and WVU.

Among the most highly paid figures in academia during parts of that career, Gee generated his share of controversy, too.

But he could also charm.

Whether showing off one of the 2,000-plus bow ties in his collection, filling his Twitter feed with visits to student nightspots in Morgantown, or mugging with state lawmakers, Gee had a knack for social media — especially for someone 69 years old when he returned to WVU in 2014.

But as he ran a flagship public university in the years that followed, Gee found himself in scrapes over breakaway fraternities, pandemic mandates, and issues of transparency and spending priorities.

But all that paled when compared with the blowback this summer over a plan to cut and refocus academic spending amid enrollment losses and a $45 million structural budget deficit.

The plans are part of what leaders are calling an “Academic Transformation” at WVU, one that Gee and the university’s Board of Governors say is needed to win back public trust.

“The Board believes we must do this work to remain competitive and relevant,” Chair Taunja Willis-Miller said.

Board members are to vote Sept. 15 on whether they go through with cuts recommended by Gee and the administration.

In the meantime, signs seen on campus and on social media depicting Gee have become unflattering, like those from Monday’s walkout by hundreds of WVU students outside the Mountainlair student union and in Evansdale.

During the noon hour, shouts of “Stop the cuts!” and “Gordon Gee has got to go!” rang out.

“I’m tired of paying for bow ties,” read one protest sign in the crowd.

National media have been as critical of a research university with no language instruction, no graduate degree in math, and cuts elsewhere, from law to engineering.

“The Evisceration of a Public University,” read a story headline in The Nation. “What just happened at West Virginia University is alarming,” appeared above an essay in the New York Times.

In an email response later Thursday, Gee acknowledged the upset but said the moves are important.

“I understand that people are frustrated and angry regarding this process. And I am a logical choice for those feelings, but as I said during today’s Campus Conversation, I firmly believe that what we are doing is right even though it may be difficult.

“Ultimately, these decisions will benefit our students so they may better realize their academic goals and career potential.”

Frankie Tack, chair of WVU’s Faculty Senate, did not return messages seeking comment this week. Other faculty and student leaders say they are paying for poor management decisions over the years.

So far, sociology has not been targeted, though three of associate professor Jesse Wozniak’s colleagues have left “and I would be absolutely shocked if they are replaced,” he said.

His department is a revenue generator for WVU, but so was the Department of World Languages, Literatures and Linguistics, which would be dissolved on the Morgantown campus, meaning no more Spanish, French, German, Arabic, or Chinese instruction.

The administration has made it clear, said Wozniak, that this is only the first round of cuts.

“No one is safe,” he said.

“How do you eliminate language instruction and still claim to be a university?” he asked.

Gee “tries to be this folksy grandpa,” he said, while aggressively making business moves, extending the university financially and letting those on campus face consequences as predictions of a 40,000 enrollment by 2020 did not pan out. WVU enrolls 27,000.

“It sure feels from our perspective that they mismanaged us into this, and now they’re making it our fault,” Wozniak said.

Throughout his life, Gee has been an outspoken proponent of education.

Raised in rural Utah in the 1940s and 1950s, Gee received a bachelor’s degree in history in 1968 from the University of Utah, a law degree in 1971 from Columbia University and a doctorate in education in 1972 from Teachers College, Columbia University.

Gee served as president of WVU from 1981 to 1985. He said the opportunity became his gateway to higher education leadership.

At a December 2013 news conference in Morgantown to welcome WVU’s president-elect home, Gee donned a WVU ball cap and a brand-new blue-and-gold bow tie as he extolled the importance of an institution “that is fully committed to the social, cultural and intellectual well-being of the state.”

He added, “The power of the university is that we are one university, that we are not a collection of colleges connected by a heating plant.”

Those wry lines and a self-deprecating manner worked to his favor over the years as he pursued donations and support from state lawmakers — and tried to break the ice with undergraduates less than a third his age.

In fact, archived comments on WVU’s video from the welcome home event suggest the message resonated.

“Nice to see you again, Gee!” wrote one.

“What a happy dude. I thoroughly enjoy his hipster glasses :)”

Gee recently announced he planned to step down in 2025 and has received a one-year contract extension from the university.

During Thursday’s campus conversation, Provost Maryanne Reed said the university was prepared to provide outplacement, mental health services and other resources to the 169 faculty members facing potential job loss.

“They are not statistics. They are human beings,” she said.

Reed and Gee reiterated that the cuts will impact fewer than 2% of students, many of whom qualify for teach-outs.

But faculty found that enrollment in the Department of World Languages, Literatures and Linguistics this fall in fact numbers 2,800, or about 12% of students, said Nicole Tracy-Ventura, an associate professor there.

Like others, she questioned the administration’s suggestion that languages could be taught online, perhaps with an app, instead of with face-to-face instruction.

“This state has a teacher shortage. It’s hard to get people who want to be teachers — all subjects, particularly language teachers,” she said. “If they get rid of the language department, how are they going to train language teachers?”

Asked during the campus conversation Thursday if WVU guaranteed that students losing their majors would finish in four years, Reed said no. But she said the university would do all it could to make that happen, adding that students “will need to be motivated as well.”