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OPINION

FAM statement on regional restructuring: The liberal arts are the beating heart of the polytechnic

Miami University management’s decision to rebrand Miami Regionals as a Polytechnic took regional faculty and students by surprise. This top-down decision by the Board of Trustees is now being hastily implemented through a two-month restructuring process that will radically transform our university and our students’ education.

If we are to be a Polytechnic, the Faculty Alliance of Miami (FAM) wants to see us succeed. We are not against change — innovation is important, and we want to be responsive to our community. But successful restructuring requires intention, forethought and buy-in from all stakeholders; from students to faculty to parents and the public. Moreover, it requires doubling down on what makes us special: the quality liberal arts education that Miami is known for and that we bring to our open-admission campuses in Hamilton, Middletown and West Chester.

All Miami students deserve a quality liberal arts education. This is equally true for regional students, who deserve new technical majors and degrees, yes, but alongside high-quality liberal arts majors and degrees — not as a replacement for them. Miami Polytechnic must deliver academic programs that serve the whole student. Our responsibility is to our students first. We owe them not only today’s skills that industry is asking for, but also the flexibility to respond to tomorrow’s trends.

The path to the flexibility our students need is the liberal arts and humanities, and we must not abandon them in favor of shiny new tech degrees that will quickly become outdated. A hard pivot toward career-oriented education falsely characterizes today’s workplace. Our students need to be prepared to demonstrate a range of capacities, including critical and creative thinking. In other words, the liberal arts and humanities are marketable workplace skills. They continue to be important to employers and workplaces alongside hard skills in manufacturing and technology. Technologies change, but social intelligence and critical thinking are durable skills.

Moreover, the liberal arts and humanities are applied skills. Miami Regionals is full of active scholars and artists whose research and creative scholarship benefit our students in the classroom, laboratory, studio and beyond. The liberal arts and humanities must be the beating heart of Miami Polytechnic.

We demand that, as the administration rebrands Miami Regionals as a Polytechnic, the restructuring process should include a clear, stated commitment to the liberal arts and humanities.

We demand to see the process coordinator’s report.

We demand that Miami Polytechnic’s restructuring maintains the teacher-scholar model.

We demand to have a say in our departments, majors and curricula through established shared governance processes.

Signed,

Faculty Alliance of Miami, AAUP-AFT, Local 375

Executive Board

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