Ciara Nelson’s career goal rests squarely at the intersection of her passion for transportation planning and love of wildlife conservation.
Quite literally.
“My goal is to one day be on a plan that implements a wildlife crossing,” the South Dakota native said.
At the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Nelson found a place where she could learn how to improve safety for motorists as well as the elk, antelope and bighorn sheep that cross the roads in front of them.
But the Community and Regional Planning program where she is on track to earn a master’s degree this year is among a half-dozen departments proposed for elimination as part of UNL’s wide-ranging plans to close a $27.5 million budget deficit.
Students, faculty and staff were devastated and confused in equal measure when the announcement came Sept. 12, Nelson said.
“When it was originally communicated to us, we weren’t given reasons,” Nelson said. “They told our professors we didn’t meet certain metrics. That was really all that was said.”
In the weeks since, many at UNL still aren’t quite sure how they ended up on the list even as they try to compile their own data ahead of a series of public hearings where they’ll get a chance to state their case for a pardon.
UNL Chancellor Rodney Bennett, in an interview with the Journal Star earlier this month, said administrators stood behind the quantitative and qualitative review that led to the recommended cuts.
It wasn’t an easy process or call to make, Bennett said, but it remains necessary amid ongoing financial struggles at UNL and across higher education more broadly.
“We have to be willing to make really tough decisions that don’t force us to leverage our future because of our inability or unwillingness to take action,” he said.
For the Community and Regional Planning program, the quantitative review used to justify the department’s elimination fail to tell the whole story, Nelson said. The Journal Star obtained a copy of UNL’s spreadsheet tracking nearly 70 data points for 70-plus programs.
UNL’s metrics tracked the small uptick in student enrollment and majors over the past five years. Last year, there were 41 total majors, 46 undergraduate minors and 1,034 credit hours taught, according to the data.
Community and Regional Planning also remains relatively inexpensive to run. Each full-time instructor in the department taught 369 credit hours last year, keeping the cost per credit hour of doing business at about $220.
The base tuition rate at UNL for the 2025-26 school year is $291 per credit hour.
When compared against the average reported from other UNL units, however, Community and Regional Planning appeared to be falling behind in the numbers of credit hours taught, majors enrolled and its efficiency.
“It really doesn’t tell you why, only that you’re not performing as well as other programs,” Nelson said. “When we looked at our own metrics, it doesn’t make sense.”
The impact Community and Regional Planning has on both the university and state wasn’t necessarily captured in the metrics used to put the department on the chopping block, Nelson said.
But they don’t make the program any less important.
The department has engaged in more than 40 projects across the state over the past seven years in communities like Peru and Ogallala. Students are currently working on a planning project in Elmwood.
Students have helped communities recover after the 2019 floods, develop projects to help expand rural health care offerings and lead economic development efforts, she said.
Community and Regional Planning, which is the only accredited program of its kind in the state, has also brought in more than $3 million in research funding, which has helped the department pay for itself. The university estimates eliminating the program will save $475,000.
And UNL boasts 100% job or Ph.D. program placement for its Community and Regional Planning graduates, Nelson said, while also providing continuing education to working planners across the state.
Sixty percent of graduates stay in the Cornhusker State, she added, with many choosing to live and work in rural areas.
“We are a net-positive program,” Nelson said. “We’re contributing to the brain gain, we work not as a nonprofit but as a contractor at a low price for communities we work with to save them money.”
How the numbers work
The metrics used to review — and ultimately rank — UNL’s programs were developed over a period of months at Bennett’s direction, according to Mark Button, who became the campus’s executive vice chancellor and chief academic officer earlier this month.
“A budget reduction of this size requires us to think about this in terms of our core strategic priorities,” Button told reporters this week, “in a way that’s informed by metrics and closely aligned with the University of Nebraska’s strategic plan.”
Unlike prior rounds of budget cuts, which have asked academic units to uniformly reduce spending — what administrators call “horizontal cuts” — Button said UNL opted to go vertical, eliminating entire programs and departments.
The effort to develop metrics started in the Canfield Administrative Building with input from the deans of UNL’s nine colleges. Button said the work was also informed by the Academic Planning Committee’s existing processes of reviewing programs.
In all, 18 different measurements were settled on, falling into two broad categories: instruction and research.
Academic units were measured for the number of credit hours generated, students who have declared majors or minors, as well as retention and graduation rates.
The metrics also seek to describe a department’s operations, how many credit hours each full-time instructor is teaching, the cost for each credit hour taught, as well as the share of each department’s budget funded by state tax dollars.
For research-driven units, Button said the metrics largely follow those used by the Association of American Universities, which booted UNL from its ranks in 2011. NU leaders have announced a goal of being invited to rejoin the prestigious organization.
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The metrics look at research expenditures — a sign of how many competitive grants a unit has won — the number of book publications and article citations, as well as the number of faculty who have won an award or joined a fellowship.
While those figures may seem straightforward, Button said the metrics alone make it difficult to compare units. Some departments may do more teaching than research and vice versa, meaning UNL needed to develop a way to compare unlike entities.
Several methodologies were used, Button added, including pooling similar units for analysis — comparing science departments against other science departments, for example — as well as considering the weight each gives to instruction or research.
UNL also compiled a “z-score,” or a number showing the department’s raw score in relation to the campus’ overall average for each of the 18 data points measured.
Button said the metrics tell administrators “where we’re performing really well, both within the university and across the country,” but added they were only one part of the review.
“We are very mindful that the data can’t tell you everything,” he said. “It can’t capture all the things that a unit does, and it wasn’t designed to do so.”
The qualitative analysis, according to Button, was informed by “extensive consultation” with college deans about each department’s and program’s unique mission.
In some cases, those academic units may be key to supporting Nebraska’s largest economic sector — agriculture — and in others, they may be crucial to maintaining UNL’s status as a land-grant institution, with its three-part mission of teaching, research and engagement, Button said.
The final decisions tried to balance the data and contributions of an academic unit against the limited resources available, he added.
“We want to make sure that we preserve strengths, we create opportunities and invest in them, and make hard decisions about how we balance our budget and preserve the resources in a responsible way that’s accountable to the public.”
Questions linger
The data produces some anomalies, while faculty argue the metrics are keyed into different definitions of success.
Community and Regional Planning doesn’t appear in the “bottom 25” programs in UNL’s spreadsheet, but when the weighted values are included, the program is listed.
Same with Ag Leadership, Education, and Communication, which is slated to be merged with Ag Economics — another program listed in the bottom tier.
UNL faculty have criticized the metrics as opaque in many areas and missing the mark in others.
Faculty in the Department of Education Administration, where UNL is proposing to eliminate 17 positions, taught a total of 2,843 credit hours last year, or about 259 per full-time instructor, for a cost of about $480 per credit hour.
The department, which helps educate principals, superintendents and college and university administrators, has lost some enrollment, but at a greater rate than UNL as a whole.
“We haven’t been able to wrap our heads around (the metrics),” said Elizabeth Niehaus, a professor in the department. “They don’t measure the things we do.”
Robert Kelchen, a professor and head of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, said the metrics used by UNL seem focused as much on AAU membership as they do on saving money.
“There’s a strong focus on research productivity among all the metrics used, not just financial viability,” said Kelchen, who was asked to review the metrics by the Journal Star. “They are trying to reallocate money toward that goal of AAU membership, but it’s a goal that’s going to be extremely difficult.
“There are several dozen other universities pursuing the same goal with more resources to do it,” he added.
Institutions of higher education typically look at number of degrees awarded, changes in student enrollment, and “some measure of profit or loss,” when considering which programs to cut, Kelchen said, not which programs may best position them to rejoin an exclusive club.
Button said he believed in the rigor of UNL’s review in a briefing with reporters last week, adding he feels “very confident” in both the metrics and the analysis, adding others in the administration believe they are “the right tests.”
“There’s been an extensive amount of analysis and thinking and review to ensure that we feel confident about what we’re proposing,” he said. “It doesn’t make it any less challenging or hard at the end of the day.”
Students prepare defense
Bethany Sessions has always been “super artsy,” she says, and at the encouragement of a graphic design teacher who was also a licensed architect, pursued an education in architecture.
The senior from Little Rock, Arkansas, said she later fell in love with drawing landscapes and plazas, the things that go around buildings, adding it kept her at UNL working toward a college degree.
In addition to scratching the artist’s itch, the Landscape Architecture program — another on the chopping block — has also helped Sessions build confidence and collaboration skills. The program’s potential elimination has been “heartbreaking,” Sessions said, who like others said the explanations have been lacking.
“Had this program not been there, I don’t think I would have had a fulfilling experience,” she said. “I can probably say most people in the program agree with me.”
Ahead of the start of hearings about the proposed cuts this week, Sessions and others in the program have launched a campaign to build support: “Don’t Trim Landscape Architecture, Grow the Good Life.”
Last weekend, she and others fanned out across campus and the Haymarket, collecting some 1,500 signatures from students, alumni and community members.
They plan to share those with the Academic Planning Committee, as well as the awards won across the region and country by students, the 100% job placement rate, growing opportunities and other successes they feel outweigh the metrics used by UNL.
Nelson, too, has been coordinating with other students to provide their reasons why Community and Regional Planning should be saved. They have reached out to graduates and planners working in the profession; more than 100 letters of support have been returned.
She encouraged other Nebraskans, even those not directly affected by the cuts, to advocate for higher education at the NU Board of Regents and the Legislature.
“We just want to tell the university and the state that this program is doable,” Nelson said.
Reach the writer at 402-473-7120 or cdunker@journalstar.com.
On Bluesky @chrisdunker.bsky.social
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Chris Dunker
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