ISU undergoing ‘significant’ structural changes, combining 2 colleges and laying off employees
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POCATELLO – Big changes are coming to Idaho State University, and some of its employees won’t be there to see them.
ISU is carrying out what it calls “budget reduction plans” to respond to cuts made at the state level. Information shared on Tuesday at two meetings EastIdahoNews.com gained access to reveal that the university has eliminated administrative, faculty and staff positions, and plans to implement “significant” structural changes.
One of these changes is combining the College of Education and the College of Fine Arts into one college, called the College of Humanities, Education and Social Science.
“That change is significant, and we wouldn’t have entertained it if it didn’t yield significant savings,” said Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Adam Bradford in the College of Science and Engineering faculty and staff meeting.
Bradford said this decision will save ISU approximately $1.8 million, aiding the school’s effort to correct its projected budget deficit — an estimated $8 million funding gap.
Where did ISU’s budget deficit come from?
The university entered the current fiscal year with a balanced budget, according to the ISU Division of Finance’s website, on a page titled “FY2026-FY2027 Budget Planning.”
“Despite a generally strong state revenue outlook, the State of Idaho has implemented a 3% ongoing reduction to appropriated funds and signaled the possibility of further cuts,” reads the website.
The ongoing reduction refers to budget holdbacks ordered by Gov. Brad Little, who asked all state agencies, except K-12 public schools, to cut 3% of their budgets for fiscal year 2026. In September, these cuts became permanent.
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The state also did not issue additional funding that addresses “enrollment growth, inflation, a 26% increase in health insurance costs or Change in Employee Compensation,” the website reads.
How many positions have been eliminated?
In a faculty and staff meeting with the College of Business, Bradford shared the total number of positions that ISU has eliminated, which were spread across all three of the institution’s employee classes — administrators, faculty and staff.
Administration, which includes leadership roles at the university, had 11 positions cut from a total of roughly 76. This comes out to 14.5% of all administrative positions being eliminated.
Faculty, which are typically teaching positions, had 12 of 351 positions eliminated — around 3.4%. All of these positions are unoccupied, Bradford noted.
And staff, jobs that focus on operational support, had 21 positions out of 700 eliminated. This amounts to 3% of all staff positions.
Lee Ann Waldron, the university’s executive director of communications, further clarified for EastIdahoNews.com that the numbers presented at the meeting “focused specifically on centrally funded full-time positions.”
Waldron said that these figures represent the “total number” of ISU employees across all funding sources:
- Administration — 11 of 75, or 14.7%
- Faculty — 12 of 634, or 1.89%
- Staff — 21 of 1102, or 2.09%
“ISU is reducing its workforce by approximately 45 positions — nearly 40% of which are currently vacant — and reductions are proportionally aligned to administration, faculty and staff,” she added.
One of these staff members, Chelsea Wilkerson, an administrative assistant in the biology department, received an email last Tuesday about a meeting for her to attend on Thursday. Her co-worker had received the same email, and her meeting was scheduled for a different time.
While at lunch, Wilkerson’s friend, Joseph Crupper, the administrative assistant for the geosciences department, told her, “that it wasn’t good news.”
For Crupper, who had received the same email, he immediately forwarded it to his boss. When she looked into it, she said, “This is just as bad as you think it is,” he recounted.
Bradford shared his experience in conducting these meetings, saying that while he had been “really angry” in recent months about what was happening, he knew he couldn’t show it.
“I did walk into those meetings very much prepared to be met with anger and even vitriol and deep frustration,” Bradford said. “What was really humbling for me … that is not what I was met with. Sadness, yeah, real sadness. Fear, for sure. … I was very surprised to see them offering compassion and grace to us. Their concern was about their students and their departments, and (if) they (would) be OK.”
At the meeting, Crupper and Wilkerson found out that their positions would be eliminated as of June 20.
What could these layoffs mean for ISU?
Both Wilkerson and Crupper worry about the extra workload that will fall on the employees still at ISU.
The way Wilkerson explained it, all of the work she and other administrative assistants do — like structuring the course schedule, answering emails, scheduling appointments and managing the website — will still need to be done without them there.
“There’s so much that we do that the professors rely on us to do … because they’re so busy teaching,” Wilkerson said.
Crupper fears that faculty will have less time to focus on their work with fewer administrative assistants in the college.
“It’s going to result in faculty having less time to do the things that they need to be doing. It’s going to result in people in my position having to do more work and just the bare bones, basic minimum of it,” Crupper said.
During the College of Science and Engineering meeting, Bradford said the university will move to a “shared services model” for administrative assistant work. Essentially, ISU will create a shared services administrative hub for this work, he explained.
“I know some of the grief and challenges that (the shared services) model has presented, but it is a model that we need to figure out how to make it work for the institution. And we’re committed to that pretty much across the entirety of the institution at this point in time,” Bradford said.
Both Wilkerson and Crupper shared how much they love their jobs, and how they planned to stay far longer than June 20.
“I was prepared to retire from ISU,” Wilkerson said.
“I envisioned myself staying in this position for a long time, and now I don’t know what I’m going to do next,” Crupper said.
In a budget memo announcing the permanent holdbacks, Idaho Division of Financial Management Administrator Lori Wolff wrote, “This effort is about ensuring that Idaho government remains lean, efficient and aligned with the values of our taxpayers.”
Crupper has a different opinion on the budget holdbacks.
“I think that (the Idaho Legislature) convinced themselves that this is fiscally responsible or something, but it’s not. They are creating situations — not only at universities, but all other state agencies — where they’re going to have worse agencies, worse universities, worse learning spaces, because they don’t have the resources available to them to take on the increased burden,” Crupper said.