Dear President Pinto and Provost Ferme;

We, the artists and students from the University of Cincinnati & DAAP Masters of Fine Arts, anticipated class of 2025, are issuing this statement in response to the proposed funding changes by the Graduate College and the College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (DAAP) at the University of Cincinnati. On December 8, 2023, we were informed of drastic cuts to the funding allocated to students in the MFA program, specifically from the Graduate College, a bureaucratic body within UC with a central role in financially sustaining Masters programs across disciplines at the public university. The sudden news came with little transparency and no gestures of accountability on behalf of the University. Though no explicit guarantee was made prior to our enrollment to secure funding for all four semesters needed to complete graduation requirements, we still find it prudent to expose the progression and impact of the Graduate College and DAAP’s decision on our lives, the program, and the community at large.

In the days after receiving the email with this news, we requested to meet with DAAP and School of Art leadership to elucidate the situation and its origins. In our first meeting with School of Art Director Kate Bonansinga and other School of Art administration we learned the funding changes were the consequence of a redistribution of funding across DAAP graduate programs, notwithstanding the SOA MFA’s long history of enrolling students with higher amounts of funding. Unfortunately, despite our early attempts to gain clarity on this situation and establish clear communication with University staff, including Dr. Rose Marie Ward, Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate College, and Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs Dr. Claudia Rebola to discuss the matter, but to this day have not been given clear information as to how our funding will be affected going into the 2024-2025 academic year. We have been assured we will learn how much funding we receive after April 15, 2024. This date refers to the Council of Graduate Schools’ April 15th Resolution, “an agreement among the signatory graduate schools to provide applicants until April 15 to consider offers of admission that also include financial support” [Council of Graduate Schools]. Should we seek enrollment into any other better funded programs, we will have to confirm this before April 15th.

Similar meetings as mentioned above with Dr. Ward, and Dean of DAAP Timothy Jachna have provided no additional information, nor agreed to our demands to share the nature and efficacy of their promised attempts to assuage the harsh deficit this enacts on our livelihoods. . We have acted in good faith to come to an accord regarding our future and have been met with disregard and a lack of commitment to the MFA program. We call on UC and DAAP to reconsider what amounts to an unfunded graduate art program next year and the likely dismantling of Cincinnati’s only studio MFA program in the future. UC and DAAP must honor our demands and actively prioritize the well-being and livelihood of the students and staff.

Upon admission to DAAP’s MFA program in early 2023, the entirety of the cohort was offered funding for their matriculation into the program for the 2023-24 academic year. While we recognize that this financial package was allotted for one year, when inquiring with faculty before admission, it was said that the same or similar funding would be obtainable with good academic standing. Many of the most competitive studio MFA programs in the US provide full or near full funding guaranteed. It’s clear DAAP’s MFA funding has fluctuated over the years, but this is the most dramatic planned cut we are aware of to date and will impact current students’ ability to complete the program. This decision will cause us financial hardship, and has the potential to affect immigration status and vital health insurance coverage, and it has already affected our lives greatly, involving moves, leaves of absence, and applying for alternate programs and opportunities. This decision also makes a huge impact on the accessibility of the program to the non-affluent and otherwise marginalized future artists, designers, planners, and other essential creatives, in Cincinnati and the greater midwest region. Further, it does not reflect the University’s claims to “enhance the quality of life for everyone with whom we connect” [UC Equity, Inclusion and Community Impact statement]. The DAAP MFA web page currently states, “scholarships, graduate assistantships, teaching assistantships, travel fellowships, and research grants are available” for future admitted applicants to the program. We wish the School would offer a more realistic depiction of the type of program the DAAP MFA will become to its applicants and potential cohorts.

We assert the University should center its students and be accountable to them, across all programs, regardless of the students’ ability to fund their own education. We each made several personal sacrifices in order to accept the opportunity of the UC MFA program, like so many of our peers across disciplines

Like other graduate programs, MFA students are employed by the University to help run DAAP art facilities and teach undergraduate courses, as part of their financial aid packages. While graduate student instructors receive a fraction of the pay that faculty receive, they are afforded the implicit security of a role for most of the two years of their program. Adjuncts and other non-permanent faculty are evaluated constantly to maintain job security. This is commonplace in comparable programs across the country. UC undervaluing its non-tenured faculty and graduate student employees takes the form of sub-standard salaries, a lack of employee benefits and job security. If presented with the opportunity for a graduate assistantship, MFA students are paid under $800 a month to design and teach jam-packed undergraduate studio courses. Not only would the possible dissolution of the MFA program affect the ability to attract new students to DAAP, but it would also greatly impact the workload of adjuncts and other faculty as they will no longer have access to Graduate Assistants or instructors to teach foundation courses.

We demand at a minimum a continuation through the 2024-2025 academic year of the funding packages offered to us upon admission. We demand wages equal to 20 hours of labor for teaching and assisting in undergraduate classes, instead of the limit of 10 we currently receive.

We were blindsided by the news of our program’s funding cuts, though we recognize a national trend in the devaluing of labor and divestment from certain disciplines in higher education. A 2016 ArtNet article titled “After a Decade of Growth, MFA Enrollment Is Dropping,” is one of many similar art world analyses in recent years. It offers an understanding of the increase in MFA programs despite decreasing enrollment across the board: “MFA programs confer prestige on a school, burnishing its reputation, and are relied upon as effective advertisements in recruiting for undergraduate programs—which, being larger, employ the lion’s share of the schools’ faculty” (ArtNet, Boucher, Brian).

Cincinnati was recently named the #1 city in the nation for street art as seen in an article posted on March 8th by the University of Cincinnati, citing the vital role the Fine arts program has played in cultivating that reputation. They are still willing to advertise the Fine Arts program, while furtively making cuts to its funding, as an R1 research institution, we would expect better treatment for those pursuing terminal degrees in their field.

Cincinnati’s creative community is historically profound and maintains strong roots within and outside for profit and not for profit institutions. . Much of the local creative class also sustains itself through other forms of labor, notably in the restaurant and service industry which gives Cincinnati its “vibrant, Midwest hospitality” [UC “Points of Pride”]. Cincinnati’s creative community is an intergenerational population of many talents, racial and economic backgrounds, and positive contributions. That “vibrant, Midwestern hospitality “ and overall centrality as an arts and culture hub in the region most always creates more profits for tourism and real estate industries than for the individuals and artists involved. While the value of human life is leveraged internationally, we are not ignorant of the profit-incentive that drives a public university.

We have been supported by all of the faculty, as they have each worked to adjust pedagogically in the face of such drastic changes. One can read and sign on to the open letter they wrote calling on the University of Cincinnati to fully support the MFA program at the link below.

A Cincinnati without an MFA program is a Cincinnati without a clear path for local and regional artists to make a name for themselves more broadly. A Cincinnati without a funded MFA program is a Cincinnati that excludes emerging artists. A Cincinnati without the DAAP MFA program alienates generations of artists who have passed through these studios and crit rooms and mirrors decisions by other large cultural institutions in the city to maintain a veneer of radical equity at the expense of genuine, enacted care.

We call on the Cincinnati community to support our statement and our collective actions moving forward. We call on the artists and arts workers, and the people of Cincinnati’s love of the arts to take note of this failure and manipulation. We hope the University’s lack of value in its students and staff offers insight into a greater issue within our community. We call on other creatives to join in coalition, together, we can use our skills, values, experiences, and dreams to create a community in which we can sustain our art practices. We recognize the lack of access to art-making city-wide created by housing and food insecurity, rampant policing, and the devaluing of artistic and other marginalized forms of labor. We uplift the power of collective care and action to provide for us what the institutions (of all kinds) do not.

Please reach out to us at: cincinnatistudiomfa@gmail.com

Or send your comments / questions/concerns directly to the school at: DAAPSOA@ucmail.uc.edu

Sincerely,

First-year MFA Cohort (Graduating 2025)

The College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning

University of Cincinnati

Faculty Open Letter - openletter.earth/open-letter-to-the-university-of-...

Council of Graduate Schools - cgsnet.org/resources/for-current-prospective-gradu...

[UC Equity, Inclusion and Community Impact statement]

https://www.uc.edu/about/equity-inclusion.html

(ArtNet, Boucher, Brian) news.artnet.com/art-world/mfa-programs-enrollment-...

#1 city in the nation for street art uc.edu/news/articles/2024/03/usa-today--cincinnati...;utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter-03202024&cerkl_id=18869696&cerkl_ue=VcVyaOoxMFsJVkp6nFTaGuNKVJAdHdDNVW62yhKBTyc%3D

[UC “Points of Pride”] https://www.uc.edu/pride.html