UT Austin Is Dismantling Its Academic Core—And Calling It “Optimization,” by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

UT Austin Is Dismantling Its Academic Core—And Calling It “Optimization”

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

January 27, 2026

The University of Texas at Austin has announced that it is closing its Center for Teaching and Learning, along with the Office of Community Engagement, the Vick Advising Excellence Center, and the Office of Undergraduate Research.

Geez, that's a lot to come down, to get dismantled, that is.

The decision—communicated quietly, with no meaningful consultation and almost no explanation—has left faculty stunned, confused, and rightly alarmed.

According to Provost William Inboden, these closures are part of an effort to “optimize” and “streamline” operations. But stripped of administrative jargon, the reality is this: UT is eliminating the very structures that support teaching excellence, interdisciplinary collaboration, student mentoring, undergraduate research, and community engagement—at a time when faculty and students need those supports more than ever.

As American Association of University Professors campus president Karma Chávez put it, there is no pedagogical or institutional logic for dismantling a centralized teaching center. For many faculty, the Center for Teaching and Learning was not a luxury—it was transformative. It created cross-college dialogue, supported innovative pedagogy, strengthened student learning, and allowed faculty to adapt to a rapidly changing classroom environment. For some, it was the single most meaningful professional development experience of their careers.

The administration’s claim that these functions are “rooted in colleges and schools” collapses under even minimal scrutiny. Many colleges—including the College of Liberal Arts, UT’s largest—have no teaching center at all. What this decision actually does is fragment support, deepen inequities across units, and eliminate the very spaces where interdisciplinary exchange and shared governance can occur.

Even more troubling is the broader pattern this decision fits into. The Office of Community Engagement—now being shuttered—was the last remaining remnant of UT’s once-robust Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, dismantled after Texas passed its anti-DEI law, Senate Bill 17. While these offices were not labeled “DEI,” they were grounded in the best research on how to support students, particularly those historically underserved, through advising, teaching, research access, and community connection. 

Eliminating them does not create neutrality. It creates a gaping void. And absence is not accidental. It's by design. And it's about more people losing their jobs when this is not about budgetary imperatives. Pointedly, UT Austin is not facing a financial crisis, and the provost’s email cited none. 

Nor does it make sense as cost-saving if the work is merely “redistributed” across colleges—duplicated, diluted, and stripped of the coherence it had. What is being optimized here is not efficiency, but control. What is being streamlined is not bureaucracy, but the university’s public mission.

This pattern is not unique to UT. Across the country, state laws and political pressures are eroding the capacity of universities to support students and faculty in substantive ways, not by accident but as part of a broader governance agenda that conflates equity-related work with political ideology (Sachs & Young, 2024).

At a moment when faculty are navigating political interference, curricular surveillance, and the chilling effects of state power, UT has chosen to remove the very institutions that help educators weather those storms. 

Teaching centers do not impose ideology; they defend pedagogical integrity.

 Advising centers do not indoctrinate; they catch students before they fall through the cracks. Offices of undergraduate research do not politicize learning; they democratize access to knowledge production.

Calling this “optimization” insults the intelligence of the faculty and students who know better. This is institutional subtraction masquerading as reform. And it should alarm anyone who believes that a flagship public university ought to lead—not capitulate—when higher education itself is under attack.

Flagships do not hollow themselves out from the inside. When they allow it to happen, they surrender their public mission. And to whose benefit? And toward what ends? Their silence is deafening.

Reference

Sachs, J. A., & Young, J. C. (2024). America’s censored classrooms 2024: Refining the art of censorship (Report). PEN America. https://pen.org/report/americas-censored-classrooms-2024/?utm_source=chatgpt.com


UT-Austin Is Closing Its Teaching Center. Faculty Members Ask: Why?

The U. of Texas at Austin campusSergio Flores for The Washington Post, Getty Images

By Beth McMurtrieJanuary 22, 2026

The U. of Texas at Austin campusSergio Flores for The Washington Post, Getty Images

The University of Texas at Austin is shuttering its longstanding Center for Teaching and Learning at the end of the semester, part of a wave of changes announced last Friday that include the closure of the Office of Community Engagement, a campus advising center, and the Office of Undergraduate Research.

The news, which came in an email from William Inboden, the university’s provost, presented these moves as part of an effort to “optimize” and “streamline” academic operations. He wrote that resources provided by the programs would be repurposed, but offered no details.

Faculty members were stunned by the news.

“I literally cannot think of any reason why you would dismantle a centralized center for teaching and learning,” said Karma Chávez, president of the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors, and a professor of Mexican American and Latina/o studies. “It absolutely baffles me.”

Chávez said she had scant information — the email was sent to a small number of people on campus, including deans, she heard — but learned through conversations with colleagues who are directly affected that the “vast majority” of the staff will be laid off, more than 20 people. The teaching center is the largest of the four operations, and lists 13 staff members, along with 11 student workers, on its website.

In the email, Inboden said the changes “are designed to enhance collaboration, create new pathways for partnerships, prudently steward our resources, and strengthen existing units within our colleges and schools.”

Mike Rosen, senior director of media strategy, said in an email that the university’s commitment to undergraduate research, faculty support, advising, and student programming is unchanged. “Those functions are rooted in our colleges and schools, which are best equipped to meet their needs,” he wrote. ”Closing those particular offices will allow us to focus resources for these programs where they are most needed and most effective.”

Mary Neuburger, a history professor and chair of Slavic and Eurasian studies, said the argument that those functions are rooted in colleges and schools made little sense to her. The College of Liberal Arts, where she teaches, doesn’t even have a teaching center. “We have nothing,” she said. “And we’re one of the biggest colleges.”

Neuburger, who has taught at the university for almost 30 years, said her time working on a project with the Center for Teaching and Learning was “the single most transformative experience I’ve had at UT.” She was a Provost’s Teaching Fellow, she said, and was able to discuss teaching issues with faculty members from across the university. Now she worries that interdisciplinary collaboration and exchange of ideas will be lost.

Nina Telang, a professor of instruction in the department of electrical and computer engineering, was also a teaching fellow. The support she received at the center allowed her to build supplemental instruction into many courses in her department — not just her own — with the help of the campus tutoring center. She also developed wellness workshops for engineering students in collaboration with the campus wellness center. “Every single CTL initiative has ultimately benefited the students,” she said. “It’s all about the student.”

Josh Eyler, senior director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Mississippi, who is active nationally on teaching issues, said he was surprised that UT-Austin would shutter a distinguished center with a long history, particularly at a time when the challenges facing faculty members in the classroom are growing.

“At their best,” he said, “teaching centers provide a place to advocate for faculty and to help them make it through the storm of constant changes and new technologies and new fads and new approaches that are coming down the pike.”

Professors also mourned the closure of the other offices, saying they provided special services. Every college on campus has its own advising center but the Vick Advising Excellence Center “was for students who were slipping through the cracks to get extra help,” Neuburger said. “That was part of a huge initiative to increase our graduation rates, and it was working.”

She was also confused as to why the university would eliminate the Office of Undergraduate Research when engaging students in research has been an administrative priority. That office, in particular, has helped students find opportunities to do interdisciplinary work, Chávez said.

Rosen said he did not have information on any positions eliminated. He said that Inboden was not available for an interview. Neither Molly Hatcher, director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, nor Jeff Handy, director of the Vick Advising Excellence Center, responded to email requests for interviews.

Not UniqueStaffing cuts to student-facing services are certainly not unusual given the tough financial situation many colleges now find themselves in. Last year Catholic University of America eliminated 16 positions in its Center for Academic and Career Success to help address a $30-million structural deficit. And Emerson College, which has been dealing with enrollment declines, cut half of its eight full-time staff in the Office of Student Success.

But UT-Austin doesn’t have financial woes, faculty members said, and the provost’s email said nothing about needing to trim costs. Chávez said that eliminating central offices doesn’t make financial sense to her if, in fact, the administration will just be moving that work to schools and colleges, duplicating it several times over. “I’m not sure how that would be a streamlining or a cost-cutting mechanism.”

Rather, she worries that this is more about eliminating the last traces of diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus. The offices being shuttered are not practicing DEI, she said. But the best scholarship on advising, teaching, community engagement, and supporting diverse students in undergraduate research relies on that framework. She noted, too, that the Office of Community Engagement is the “last vestige” of what was once the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, which was shuttered after the state passed a law banning DEI activities. That went from a division with dozens of people to an office with two staff, doing outreach work in the community. “That’ll be gone now, too.”

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