The School of Cinematic Arts is cutting the Expanded Animation Research + Practice program, leaving the students who are not graduating this year searching for new departments to call home. The Master of Fine Arts program will be discontinued effective June 30.

In a statement to the Daily Trojan, SCA said it reached the decision after a routine review of its degree programs, citing declining enrollment as the reason for the program’s cancellation.

Sheila Sofian, the director of the XA program and a professor of cinematic arts, said that while applications to the program were lower this year, the year prior saw record-breaking levels.

“I’m not sure why, when there’s just one anomaly, one year, that would be enough to cut a program,” Sofian said. “Just one single year, it’s not a pattern.”

Sofian said she was told about the University’s decision to end the program in a meeting with Elizabeth Daley, the dean of SCA. During their discussion, Sofian said she realized there was no point in fighting for the program; the decision had been made.

“I felt kind of helpless,” Sofian said. “I felt really bad for our students. We promised this amazing experience and program to them, and here it’s being taken away from them.”

Sofian described the experience as “devastating.” After Sofian’s initial meeting, XA students were officially told about the decision over Zoom on Thursday morning. According to Einar Arnason, an adjunct assistant professor in the department, he and other adjuncts received no communication from the University, and he found out thanks to a student.

Sofian said it’s been difficult to hold classes because students and instructors in the program are so upset.

“How are we supposed to do schoolwork and go about classes as [normal] when we receive such shocking and abrupt news,” said Judy Zhao, a first-year student in the Expanded Animation program. “It’s been a little mentally taxing and distressing; we’re just not able to complete class work as normal.”

Zhao said she turned down a full-ride scholarship at another university to be a part of the Expanded Animation program because she wanted the specific resources and faculty offered in the department. The experimental nature of the program — with a class that focuses on the art of motion in virtual space — drew Zhao in, on top of decorated faculty like Sofian, who won a Pew Fellowship in the Arts grant.

As a first-year in the program, Maya Chebrol said she is uncertain about her future at USC. While XA students will be given the option to join the Hench Division of Animation + Digital Arts, the more traditional animation department, for Chebrol, whose prime interest is environmental science rather than animation, the offer isn’t all that appealing.

“It’s not what I wanted when I came here, and I came here specifically to work with certain faculty and work with people under the Expanded Animation umbrella,” Chebrol said. “To be tossed into Hench or into another department was not something I had in mind when I came here, and not something I would want for the next two years.”

The decision has left some students, like Daniel Chit, a third-year in the program, with complicated feelings toward their approaching graduation.

“To be the last of the program and to not see cohorts … get the same opportunity to have XA on their diploma is disheartening,” Chit said. “To shoot down such a successful program … it’s damning, right?”

This past year, XA alum Xindi Zhang won a gold medal in the Alternative/Experimental category at the Student Academy Awards. Zhang said she couldn’t have made her animated documentary project, “The Song of Drifters,” if not for her time in the Expanded Animation program.

When Zhang first came to USC, she was in Hench, as the University had only just started offering XA. After taking a couple of classes in the new program, Zhang realized that XA was the place for her.
“The people who created XA … we all had a fundamental physical philosophical difference with the Hench program,” Sofian said. “They’re a little bit more industry-facing than we are, and we’re more auteur-driven.”

Last semester, the School of Dramatic Arts sunsetted two programs: the Bachelor of Fine Arts in technical direction and the Master of Fine Arts in dramatic writing. The semester prior, the faculty at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism voted to merge its three journalism master’s programs into one, a change that could be reflected as soon as 2027-28. Zhang said that program cuts like this should make people feel uneasy.

“It’s not a great look,” Sofian said. “I think a fundamental misjudgment may have been that they thought our students would be satisfied with being at SCA. But they didn’t come to USC for SCA. They came to USC for Expanded Animation.”

Arnason said that because of the XA department’s inclination to shy away from the more traditional industry focus that Hench has, it was a shame to see USC “squash” their efforts to push art further along.

“There’s this tendency, particularly in Los Angeles, for the industry to swallow up everything and influence everything,” Arnason said. “It’s very important in schools to nurture real artists who are pushing the medium.”

It’s concerning, Arnason said, that USC is jumping to cutting these departments, rather than trying to find other means of saving money and protecting faculty. This year, over 1,000 faculty were laid off, which USC said was due to a structural deficit.

“[USC is] losing a big part of the soul of the animation program, and, by extension, a lot of the soul of the School of Cinematic Arts,” Arnason said. “They’re thinking in short economic terms, as opposed to what a university should be thinking about, which is the values it represents.”

Correction: A previous version of this article stated that the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism merged its three journalism master’s programs into one. The article was updated Thursday at 3:30 a.m. to reflect that the merger has not yet occurred but could occur as soon as the 2027-28 school year. A previous version of this article also quoted Sheila Sofian as saying enrollment in the Expanded Animation Research + Practice program was lower this year but record-breaking in the previous year. The article was updated to clarify she meant “applications to the program.” The Daily Trojan regrets these errors.