Ten years ago, Wittenberg University celebrated the success of its $75.5 million “Defining Moments” fundraising campaign.

A persistent Great Recession later, it faces a painful time of redefining its brand of liberal arts while facing a $7 million budget gap in a shifting educational market.

Laurie Joyner, who succeeded Mark Erickson July 1 as university president, said Wittenberg has about five years to address $4.5 million in delayed repairs to the campus and buildings; to restore $1.5 million in debt payments taken annually from the university’s endowment rather than its operating budget; and an excess $1 million in endowment diverted each year to operating expenses.

In the university’s current configuration, “we’re not able to cover all our expenses,” she said.

The university has frozen salaries, tightened its belt and done “some of the less painful things,” Joyner said. But what may at first have appeared as short-term problems of reduced class sizes and overuse of the university’s endowment have become “more of a structural issue.”

“Even as I was hired, I wondered, ‘How could this have gone on as long as it did?”

Joyner’s assessment was confirmed this fall when the freshman class fell 39 students short of the 560 projected, creating a budget shortfall of about $800,000.

“I have asked each vice president to identify all the cost containment and revenue-generating ideas possible in moving forward,” Joyner said. “Everything is on the table.”

At noon today a rally is scheduled at the Benham-Pence Student Center to protest Wittenberg’s move to change companies that provide its housekeeping services.

The university says the change will cut costs by $600,000 a year or 40 percent. But it also means long-term employees who choose to apply for jobs with the new provider will see their wages and benefits slashed by about as much.

Robin Inboden, who chairs the faculty executive board, described the campus mood as tense. She called the problem real and added that some long-time faculty “could see this coming for a while, but … couldn’t stop the train.”

Joyner said, “We’re committed to impact the core of the operation (the faculty and academic programs) as little as possible.”

In addition to the housekeeping cuts, Wittenberg has changed its health care insurance provider; rebid its insurances; changed its retiree healthcare program and reduced its match to faculty and staff retirement programs.

Still, jarring cuts to the faculty are all but certain.

In an attempt to pencil out how to wrest $3 million out of the academic program in the next five years, university Provost Chris Duncan came up with 22 staff positions from a faculty of 141.

Joyner said the mention of any numbers makes her cringe, and Duncan has some regrets about having shared his “back of the envelope” math.

“I don’t think any reasonable person thinks Wittenberg University is going to cut its way out of this problem,” Duncan said. “We have to have (more) revenue. And that depends on student enrollment.”

But because cuts will be required, Duncan has asked the faculty’s Educational Policies Committee, or EPC, to consider eliminating some of the programs or course offerings: geography, music, computer science, French, Japanese, dance and the physical activity requirement.

Peter Hanson, a chemistry professor who chairs the EPC, said the programs being considered are ones that tend to have fewer majors.

“Nobody is arguing these programs have no place in the liberal arts setting,” Hanson said. “But we had to start someplace,” and said given that necessity, this “seemed to be the right list.”

The committee this week will finish a series of hearings about the programs then will consider the next step. If it decides to pursue the cuts, it will meet with each program involved to prepare reports for the full faculty, which then will vote on the matter before submitting recommendations to the Board of Directors.

Joyner’s goal is to have a recommendation for the board’s May meeting.

Duncan called the prospect of cutting programs that teachers and students have loved and alumni have found so important in their lives heartbreaking.

“On the other hand,” he added, “not being here in 10 or 15 years is more heartbreaking.”

Inboden said that while faculty members who have been involved in campus governance were not as surprised by unfolding events, others have been thrown into states she says are akin to the stages of grief.

“You’re definitely seeing some people in denial and anger and bargaining, the whole nine yards,” she said.

Joyner said one of her challenges is to engage and empower faculty and staff, “so that they can become part of the solution.”

“The greatest resource of this institution is its faculty,” she said. “Individual faculty members care so much about their areas, and there’s great potential for them to see how they can extend those areas in all sorts of ways.”

On the revenue side, the university hopes its School of Community Education can attract more working students and students interested in completing their degrees. A nursing program is being considered.

Collaborating with other Ohio colleges and universities on new programs is another possibility, Joyner said, including links with “flagship” programs like Ohio State University.

“They’re great with graduate programs,” Joyner said, and with Wittenberg’s track record of sending students to graduate programs “we might consider 3-2 programs,” in which a student would complete three years at Wittenberg, then proceed to two more years of graduate work at Ohio State.

“Obviously these are academic questions (that would involve the faculty), but institutions all over the country are trying to do these things. We don’t have to write the playbook.”

Inboden agreed, saying, “I think we have a great college here, and if we can get back to the numbers (of students) we were at even a few years ago, we could be in a much more stable place pretty quickly.”

David Wishart, an economics professor who chairs the faculty budget committee, also expressed “complete confidence we can successfully resolve our current financial problems.”

He called a Wittenberg education one of the great values among liberal arts colleges.

Joyner said Wittenberg has surmounted similar challenges in its 167 years, “and I have zero doubt that we’ll do that again.”