Indiana University of Pennsylvania on Friday notified 81 faculty members — including the entire faculties of several departments — that they will be out of work at the end of the academic year.

Although IUP officials previously announced the proposed job cuts, actual notices went out Friday to those slated to lose their jobs.

“We’re still kind of absorbing the shock,” said David Chambers, a political science professor who is vice president of the IUP chapter of the faculty union.

He said the reductions, when coupled with retirements and nonrenewal of temporary contracts, would bring the job losses to the equivalent of about 128 full-time posts.

The cuts at the school with 10,067 students would eliminate the entire faculties of several departments, including journalism and public relations, information systems and decision sciences and developmental studies, Chambers said.

This week, IUP President Michael Driscoll said the school was closing enrollment in five programs in the College of Fine Arts as part of the restructuring designed to cope with a 33% enrollment decline over the last decade, culminating in a $16 million budget shortfall this year.

The notifications at IUP were among more than 100 issued to tenure and tenure-track faculty members at Indiana, Edinboro, Lock Haven, Cheyney and Mansfield universities. The five schools are among 14 state-owned universities in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education.

IUP, the second-largest university in the system, took the brunt of proposed job cuts. Faculty cuts elsewhere include 21 at Edinboro, six at Cheyney, two at Lock Haven and three at Mansfield.

Job reductions at Edinboro followed the announcement that the school, where enrollment has plummeted by 50% since 2010, will eliminate 21 academic programs with low enrollment.

Declining enrollment and increasing costs have prompted the state-owned universities to look for cost reductions across the board.

At IUP, the faculty reductions come on top of the elimination of 111 non-faculty posts since July 2019, university spokeswoman Michelle Fryling said.

Jamie Martin is president of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties of APSCUF, which represents 5,000 faculty members and coaches at the 14 state-owned universities. She said financial problems at the universities are due in large part to years of underfunding by the state.

Martin said APSCUF will continue to negotiate with the schools to seek alternatives to the proposed job cuts.

“Not only are faculty cuts a blow to the professors themselves, but, by extension, layoffs take opportunities away from students,” Martin said. “Retrenchment is devastating at any time, but these letters are threatening to take away livelihoods and health care in the middle of a global pandemic.”

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