With the departure of Matthew Bonzo, who taught philosophy at Cornerstone for 26 years and told RNS in May he had been pushed out after refusing to sign an oath of loyalty to the president, the faculty directory is also lacking a full-time philosophy professor.
Several humanities division majors, meanwhile, including creative writing, literature, publishing, linguistics, philosophy, music, and history and civic studies, are no longer listed on Cornerstone’s website.
Cece told RNS that the creative writing, literature, publishing and linguistics majors are being merged with the English major, and students will still have the option to concentrate in these areas. History and civics courses are being integrated into the social studies secondary education program, according to Cece, and the general music major has been discontinued, though Cornerstone will offer majors in music production and worship ministry as well as a music minor.
But the students in affected majors remain concerned about who will teach the remainder of their requirements. Several students told RNS they were disappointed by the swiftness of the changes, which barred the community from celebrating the departing professors, who have been teaching at the university for seven to 30 years.
“I get that Cornerstone has to make decisions based on what they can accommodate and what they can do, but I just feel so sad that they had to do it so quickly. They had the whole next semester lined up,” one science student and incoming senior told RNS. “All these specialized classes these professors have handmade from scratch, are they going to just hand it to adjunct and say, teach this?”
All students in the impacted majors will be able to complete the degrees they enrolled in, said Cece, who added that Cornerstone’s enrollment is growing and is now at 1,800 students.
Moreno-Riaño, meanwhile, told WoodTV in June, “The humanities are still very central to who we are, deeply integrated into our general-ed core program.”
This article originally appeared here.
