Projected falling state revenues in the economic downturn prompted the state to require major budget cuts in Tennessee higher education institutions. The UT Board of Trustees enacted a system-wide $21.2 million budget cut in June, with an $11.1 million funding cut from the Knoxville campus. Of the initial cut, $6.7 million was to be absorbed by the administration and $4.4 million was to be cut from academic and other vice chancellor areas.
Interim Chancellor Jan Simek and President John Petersen sought strategic elimination of functions or programs instead of implementing across-the-board cuts. Simek announced that at Knoxville, in addition to leaving 44 vacant faculty and staff posts unfilled, 3 academic programs were targeted for elimination: the dance program, a minor concentration in the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences; the organizational psychology graduate program in the College of Business; and the Department of Audiology and Speech Pathology in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Considerable student, faculty, and community reaction to the closing of the Department of Audiology and Speech Pathology ensued. The 1966 document detailing the assumption by UT of the state’s Hearing and Speech Center located on campus was reviewed and was found to require that function to remain at least through 2047. The board of trustees delayed a vote on the program eliminations until its October meeting, by which time an agreement had been reached to transfer the graduate aspects of Audiology and Speech Pathology to the College of Allied Health at the Memphis Medical Units and to retain their operations in Knoxville under the Memphis administrative purview. The other two programs were eliminated at the October board of trustees meeting, at which the change in administrative responsibility for Audiology and Speech Pathology was approved.
In October an additional impoundment of $17 million was announced, resulting in a further reduction for UT Knoxville of $6,007,600. Simek indicated in an October 9 e-mail to faculty and staff, that the impoundment would be addressed by instituting the following measures: reduction or elimination of travel and field opportunities for students; reduction in the ability to modernize teaching and classrooms through the use of technology; cancellation of courses, particularly at the upper division level; reduction in faculty research support; and additional reductions in the number of faculty lines, requiring hiring lecturers to replace tenure-track faculty positions; reduced funding for admissions; and a reduction in maintenance funding. Students, faculty, and staff responded to these additional budget cuts to the UT system by protesting on Pedestrian Mall.