After several weeks of getting pummeled as a heartless executioner of humanities programs, Marymount University president Irma Becerra on March 8 went on offense.
In a recorded video message to alumni and friends of the university that lasted seven minutes, the president said the issue had been blown completely out of proportion by media reporting that was “misleading at best and pointedly incorrect at worst.”
“We are not eliminating the humanities and social sciences from our curriculum, nor are we turning our back on our Catholic traditions,” Becerra said. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
What the university is doing, Becerra contends, is eliminating degree programs that have seen little to no student interest in recent years. Among them: bachelor of arts degrees in art, economics, English, history, philosophy, secondary education and theology/religious studies; the bachelor of science degree in math; and master of arts degrees in English and humanities.
Instead, the university is moving forward with degree programs that allow Marymount to “strategically reposition itself for success,” said Becerra, who has been Marymount president since 2018. Programs like an undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering, a doctoral program in cybersecurity and others “speak to the needs of our society,” Becerra said.
The proposed changes drew a heated response from some students, faculty and alumni, amplified by social and mainstream media, earlier in February. The sound and fury, however, ultimately signified nothing: In the end, the university’s board of trustees were unswayed, voting without dissent to back Becerra’s recommendations.
University officials say 74 current students in a student body of more than 4,000 are enrolled in degree programs that are slated for elimination, and they will be able to continue them through to graduation. The programs will not be available to future students, however.
Certain courses within many of the eliminated degree programs will remain available, and in some cases even required of students as part of the university’s core curriculum.
Marymount is not alone in attempting to reposition itself in an increasingly competitive and cost-conscious market for higher education. In her remarks, Becerra said that while coursework may be evolving, the university’s values are “unchanging.”
Marymount University was founded in 1950 by the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary order of Roman Catholic nuns as a junior college for women. Over the years it expanded into a coeducational university granting degrees up to the doctoral level.
