The University of Central Florida has modified its proposal for academic program deletions by preserving the Statistics program and suspending Actuarial Sciences. Both programs are in the College of Sciences.

UCF previously announced a proposal to delete academic programs in response to $77.2 million in state budget cuts.

Keeping Statistics will preserve 12 faculty and two staff jobs and allow 75 students to continue in the program as long as Statistics meets new productivity goals. Among those goals are increasing overall degree production and placing greater instructional and research emphasis on biostatistics and data mining.

“After further consideration in recent weeks, I believe a restructuring of Statistics will allow us to preserve the program as long as it meets new productivity measures,” said UCF Provost and Executive Vice President Terry Hickey. “This modification supports our goal to preserve UCF’s core educational and research programs to allow the university to emerge from the economic downturn in the best position possible.”

The Board of Trustees' Educational Programs Committee voted to recommend approval of the revised proposal after a public hearing on Monday. The committee's recommendation will be considered later this month by the full Board of Trustees.

While the suspension of Actuarial Sciences has the same personnel and instructional impacts as deletion, suspension allows the program to be reinstated at a later time should the decision be made to do so based on budget, hiring and student demand factors. Actuarial Sciences would be phased out in two years.

Since 2007, UCF has had $77.2 million cut from its recurring state budget. That includes a $38.3 million cut for the 2009-10 budget, which took effect July 1.

The remaining four programs proposed for elimination are: Cardiopulmonary Sciences and Radiologic Sciences (College of Health and Public Affairs), Engineering Technology (College of Engineering and Computer Science) and Management Information Systems (College of Business Administration). In the previous plan that proposed five deletions, Statistics and Actuarial Sciences were grouped together.

The amended proposal involves 37 employees and about 1,025 students. If approved, these targeted cuts would save UCF about $4.6 million and help protect UCF’s remaining academic programs. In addition, all of the university’s administrative units are having their budgets reduced.

Programs would be phased out over two years, and affected employees would remain with UCF until at least the end of spring 2010. UCF will work with affected students to help ensure a workable path to their degree completions.

Please visit UCF’s Budget Resource Center at www.ucf.edu/budget for updated information about UCF’s budget and for answers to frequently asked questions.