Insufficient recruiting Recent SSU graduate Ismael Ramos spent four years pursuing his degree in the Theater Arts program—one of the programs now eliminated in the cuts announced in January. He graduated in May with a bachelor’s in acting—the last such degree SSU will be awarding for the foreseeable future. “I saw theater as a way to
To help shape the future of Sonoma State University, the school unveiled a “Bridge to the Future” draft plan in April, asking students, faculty, staff, alumni and others associated with the university to weigh in with their ideas and input. The plan was announced before the university received $90 million in one-time funds by summer’s end, dubbed the “Sonoma State Commitment.” Approximately $10 million of those funds will be used to implement the Bridge plan. Among the goals of the Bridge plan is to “increase the number of full-time equivalent students.” In addition, the plan seeks to ensure the region is fully engaged as a partner in “increasing social mobility, developing informed citizens and meeting regional workforce needs.” At least $5.8 million in Commitment funds will go toward student services and additional monies to increase recruitment. To assist students who lost their majors due to the budget cuts made in January, “teach-out plans” will be offered to help them find ways to finish their education at SSU. The plan also seeks to bring cost-per- student in line with the California State University’s average. At SSU, the cost-per- student average is 33% higher than the CSU campus average, according to the plan. SSU also seeks to enhance financial resources through administrative cost and functioning improvements in the network with San Francisco State and California State of the East Bay, along with “increased entrepreneurial uses of the university facilities and infrastructure.” The plan also stated: “Our recent budget decisions now need to become investment decisions. Those investments are going to help recruit students, retain them, prepare them for careers, connect them to on-campus and regional employment and business opportunities, and keep them in the North Bay to reduce the region’s ‘brain drain’ and create a ‘brain gain.’” Investments and Commitments
Ismael Ramos, among the final graduates of SSU’s theater arts program.
tell stories for people who can’t tell them for themselves, and those stories can be funny or heartbreaking,” Ramos says about what led him to that pursuit. But as his years at SSU went by, fewer students and faculty in the program with which to interact made it more difficult to hone his acting skills. “You get better at your craft by working with lots of people with different skill sets, but with so many fewer people in the program, you get stuck with the same ones.” Ramos says that between six and eight students graduated in May in the final program he was a part of. “But it would have been double that number in better years. After it was announced the Theater Arts program was being eliminated, faculty were doing their best to help students transfer to other units, but there were only so many faculty members who could help out. The university then asked first- and second-year Theater Arts students to switch majors.” [Keating clarifies that completion of a major with 120 units is a state mandate, so some of the students who had 60 or fewer units when the SSU Theater Arts program was shuttered have the option of completing degrees or switching majors, depending on if they were above or below 60 units.] “The nearest theater arts programs outside Sonoma County are at UC Berkeley and UC Davis,” according to Ramos. “But a lot of students initially came to the Sonoma State theater program because they didn’t get into those schools. I didn’t try to get into those schools—I chose Sonoma State from the start.” When the chair of the dance department left, he says, many students figured the program was no longer viable. “Another chair was assigned to us, but it left us all in limbo, like, ‘who do we talk to now?’ There wasn’t much continuity. Just in the theater department itself, the size of the classes were dwindling each semester, and we were speculating about the faculty changes happening in the past couple of years. So it was a moment of disbelief for students when the cuts were announced, and I’m pretty sure the faculty were in disbelief, too.” Though he began his schooling at SSU during the pandemic, Ramos doesn’t believe that’s what led to the program’s declining enrollment. “I think a large part of the demise was a huge lapse
52 NorthBaybiz
November 2025
Made with FlippingBook. PDF to flipbook with ease