Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 16, 1994 TAG: 9406210080
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LYNCHBURG LENGTH: Medium
More than 20 faculty and staff members at Liberty have been cut over the past month, including the two professors who ran the Center for Creation Studies.
``We're just trying to be as fiscally responsible as we can,'' said Norm Westervelt, Liberty's vice president of administration and finances.
Chancellor Jerry Falwell notified school supporters in March that Liberty faced an immediate shortfall of $500,000 for the semester just concluded. That announcement came on top of a report given to a group of the university's creditors that Liberty had a $7 million operating deficit at the end of December.
Falwell still must come up with money to pay off the university's debts. A debt restructuring plan issued in 1992 listed the school's secured debts at $73 million.
According to a press release issued by university spokesman Mark DeMoss, the school has reduced its total work force by 3.6 percent. That would mean the elimination of 21 people out of a total of 603 employees, though Westervelt said he could not confirm an exact figure.
Westervelt said no further cuts are planned at Liberty. However, university staff members who have been laid off have said the number of jobs eliminated already exceeds 21.
The former staff members, who asked that their names not be used because of fear that they would be unable to find new employment, told The News & Advance that cuts have been made in Liberty's purchasing and athletic departments as well as in the School of Arts and Sciences and the adult education extension program.
Liberty has been trimming its payroll since the 1989-90 school year, when it hit a peak of $20 million. By the 1991-92 school year, according to the most recent tax forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service, the school's payroll had been pared to $17.4 million.
Lane Lester, director of Liberty's creation studies program, said he and associate director James Hall were notified Thursday that their jobs had been eliminated.
``It was a complete shock,'' said Lester, who has been on Liberty's faculty 15 years. ``The Center has been one of the distinctives of the school. I have no idea what will happen to it.''
Hall, who was cleaning out his office Tuesday, declined to comment except to say, ``My work here is finished.'' He taught at the university for 19 years.
The center was created in the mid-1980s after the state Board of Education told university officials that their biology program would be approved for certification only if it removed a creation science course. Certification is needed for Liberty graduates to be able to teach in Virginia's public schools.
The university replaced it with a course on the creation-evolution debate. All students must take the course, which was offered through the Center for Creation Studies.
Creationists hold that the biblical version of the origins of human life is literally true and oppose the teaching of evolution.
Westervelt said creation studies will be retained in some form in Liberty's curriculum.
by CNB