U of M to close dept. that helped students catch up with peers

The University of Minnesota is closing its Department of Postsecondary Teaching and Learning in about two years, officials announced today.

The department was the successor of sorts to the university's General College, which taught students unprepared for the rigor of university academics — many of whom were students of color.

Jean Quam, dean of the College of Education and Human Development, said the university will spread the department's faculty and programs throughout the college, and close the department at the beginning of the 2016-17 school year.

Quam said students will benefit by having access earlier on to faculty in other departments, and that it would not reduce the presence of low-income and minority students.

"It's strengthening the entire college," she said.

U of M created the department in 2006 within the college of education after regents voted the prior year to eliminate its General College.

The department now teaches all first-year students in the education college and also conducts research into teaching strategies to help first-year students — especially from underrepresented groups.

More than a third of the 430 or so freshmen who pass through the department each year are first-generation, low-income or disabled.

Former university regent Maureen Ramirez called the department "a place on campus that had a distinct focus on the academic success of underrepresented students, both serving students, and as an academic home for research related to student success."

Ramirez, now policy and research director for the St. Paul research and advocacy organization Growth & Justice, said in an email that the move "will be a real loss, and could leave faculty and students without a home."

But Quam said the move won't hurt diversity, and that students will still have access to the same programs they had before.

"I just don't see that there's going to be any difference," she said. "There will be no change in the type of students we're admitting, the numbers of students we're admitting, the experiences of those students. They'll look exactly the same."

Quam praised the department's work over the past eight years, and said the college's graduation rate is 62 percent — higher than the U of M's overall rate of 60 percent.

Such statements of praise led professor Irene Duranczyk to question the wisdom of changing something that appears to work — and wonders whether education will suffer.

"As [faculty] are dispersed into other units and departments," she said, "we will not have the cohesiveness that we have had sitting side by side...and the cohesiveness of the program will be diminished."

Quam acknowledged that "it's always hard to break up a team that works well." But she said spreading faculty throughout the college could "expand" its success and lead to even higher graduation rates.

In a separate announcement Tuesday, the U of M officials said the college has received $2.8 million from the U.S. Dept. of Education to learn "how best to support access and success for underrepresented and low-income college students."