It’s not exactly a picturesque outlook for the UNM photography program.
Professor James Stone said in an e-mail that the campus-wide funding shortage is forcing the Department of Art and Art History to make tough economic decisions. He said that the department is canceling four high-demand undergraduate classes and scaling back two graduate jobs to meet budgetary concerns.
“Since we have a prominent graduate program in photography, one of the most highly ranked programs of any sort at UNM, we will be suffering as a result,” he said. “Unfortunately, if we can’t support the graduate students while they are here, we will necessarily see a decline in enrollment.”
Professor Patrick Manning said long-term budget cuts could hurt UNM’s ability to compete with other universities’ photography programs.
“This year, a number of our grad students are going to have to struggle for financial funding to complete their MFA,” he said.
Already, the art department slashed faculty travel funds and has difficulty finding money to update computer hardware and software, Stone said. To make matters worse, Manning said, the department is bracing for an 8.2 percent cut in the fall.
Student Gabriel Alarid said everyone is affected by the cuts, including undergraduates.
“I think it’s a huge bummer. It makes it harder for us undergraduates to sign up for classes, so it drags us out an extra year,” he said. “I hope that they can find some money somewhere because I think it’s a good program, and the quality of students that come out of it is really high.”
Student Nick Miller said UNM is neglecting its academic mission.
“If there’s not as many positions open for grad students, maybe the program itself will lose quality because grad students who would come to UNM for the photography program now can’t,” he said. “So they will go somewhere else.”
