POCATELLO, Idaho (KIFI) – It’s the talk of the town in Pocatello, the statewide budget cuts leading to a complete structural and organizational redesign at Idaho State University. As part of ISU President Robert Wagner’s Bold Path Forward Initiative, the university is undergoing major changes to reallocate money and lessen the deficit.
These changes have led to university-wide layoffs of over 40 faculty and staff. Joseph Crupper is the current Administrative Assistant for the Department of Geosciences at ISU, and was informed he was being laid off a few weeks ago by the university provost and HR department.
Crupper expressed that he was met with nothing but respect and apologies during his layoff meeting. He also knows these decisions are coming from the state level, not ISU administration.
“I’m not bitter with ISU, at the end of the day, they had to cut the budget somewhere. I’m bitter with the Idaho legislature,” said Crupper. “I think they have to maintain a certain kind of callousness because they’ve locked themselves into a position of unsympathetic policy.”
He said he would take another job at ISU if possible, but has little hope for other statewide positions. Laid-off employees are put on the priority list for state jobs, but Crupper says the opportunities in his field of work will be slim following the cuts to higher education.
“I don’t have a lot of hope because it’s not just ISU that’s experiencing these cuts,” he said. “It’s all the other universities and state agencies. And the way that they’re talking in the legislature, it doesn’t really seem like they’re going to stop with just higher education.”
Chelsea Wilkerson is the top Administrative Assistant with the Biology Department and is also losing her job on June 20. She said she had never heard of the “last to hire, first to fire” system until this month, but it’s how ISU has gone about their layoffs.
“I had a little bit of hope when I recieved the email that I could be taking over another employee’s position because I’ve been here longer,” Wilkerson stated. “But I didn’t want her to lose her job either, but I talked to the Provost and he informed me that I was being laid off.”
Wilkerson shares the same sentiment as Crupper that ISU’s administration has handled the situation with as much respect for the employees as possible, and that ultimately, it isn’t their fault ISU employees are losing their jobs.
Now, these employees feel the weight on a daily basis of not only losing a job they love, but leaving the students of the program without their expertise.
“The biology department needs an admin,” Wilkerson said. “How are they going to run without an admin? That is impossible.”
“The things that I used to do are going to be pushed onto faculty and other staff members,” said Crupper. “The students aren’t going to get the personable treatment that they used to get in geosciences because people are going to be stretched thinner.”
Crupper is the 2025 award recipient of “Staff Member of the Year” at ISU, and feels his position is necessary to the success and positive experience students have in the geosciences department.
“It’s really upsetting to me, not only because I’m losing a job that I wanted to keep, but I also know that the students are going to be getting a less good version of what they have been getting,” he stated.
Crupper and Wilkerson both planned to stay in their positions with ISU until their retirements. They expressed gratitude and love for the work they get to do with the university, and know it will be deeply missed.
In her time at ISU, Wilkerson reinvented the Biology Department website and takes care to make announcements and update the graduate board in the hallway of the Physical Sciences Building.
“It’s a lot of those little things that I do, and the bigger things too, but it’s the little stuff that’s going to be forgotten about when I’m gone,” she said. “I do little things to make the place nice and pleasant and they’re just going to go by the wayside.”
Crupper is nervous about the culture in his department significantly changing in the absence of he and his fellow laid-off coworkers.
“I am on call for whenever something happens,” he said. “Whether that be as serious as a student emergency or as simple as giving a snack to somebody who needs one. And it’s that kind of culture that is going to be lost in this. It’s the type of culture that lent to a lot of people nominating me for Staff Member of the Year, and I’m really sad for everybody who is going to miss out on that experience.”
The organization reductions included 12 faculty eliminated positions, 11 administrative, and 21 staff members. ISU also stated that 68% of the new budget savings are coming from personnel reductions. It’s clear the university has restructured both it’s acadmic realm and personnel to best operate under the new statewide budget cuts.
Idaho State University announced the combining of the current College of Arts and Letters with the College of Education. The schools will now operate under the “College of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences” with an entirely separate “School of Arts.” The College of Health is also undergoing changes as it splits into the College of Nursing and Rehabilitative Sciences and the College of Pharmacy and Applied Health.
The Idaho State University website is available with more information about the Bold Path Forward and the university changes in 2026.
