In an email sent to Bucknell University faculty and staff last month, provost Wendy F. Sternberg announced that the university press would cease operations on June 30, 2026, citing a need to redirect funds to more “student-focused” functions. Bucknell University Press staff, including director Suzanne Guiod, will “fulfill all existing author contracts,” but will no longer be accepting new work, per Sternberg.
On September 3, the Association of University Presses (AUPresses), of which Bucknell UP is a member, released a statement saying that they were “surprised and disappointed” to learn of the planned closure. The organization said that it has reached out to Bucknell University officials in the hopes of coming up with “a mutually beneficial reimagination of the press,” per the statement.
Bucknell UP employs two full-time staff members and one half-time. They also receive reviewing and editorial support from Bucknell faculty members. Press employees will retain their positions through the end of the fiscal year, per Sternberg, who added that the university’s “top priority” was “ensuring the well-being of those directly impacted.”
The press, which was founded in 1968, boasts a catalog of more than 1,200 titles and particularly highly regarded in the fields of Iberian, Latin American, Irish, and interdisciplinary 18th-century studies. In its response to the announcement, AUPresses noted that “a remarkable near 30% of the press’s titles published over the past year have received an American Library Association’s CHOICE ‘Highly Recommended’ rating.”
In addition to its student internship program, Bucknell UP provided professional development opportunities for the university’s Presidential Fellows until the undergraduate scholarship was discontinued in September 2024.
While Sternberg acknowledged the press’s scholarly success, she reiterated that “its primary mission supports the scholarly community, and not Bucknell undergraduates.”
Sternberg said that “the door remains open to alternative paths forward for the Bucknell Press” in her announcement. “I believe there is great potential for the Press to be reimagined in a way that supports undergraduate education,” she added.
A spokesperson for AUPresses countered Sternberg’s claim that Bucknell UP does not support undergraduate education in its current form. The organization “believes that quality undergraduate education is in fact bolstered by the presence of a healthy, award-winning, and intern-training university press on campus,” the spokesperson told PW.
In its statement, AUPresses doubled down on this view: “Bucknell University Press has also enriched and advanced the university’s educational mission by providing substantive internship and apprenticeship experiences for Bucknell’s undergraduate and graduate students, offering direct, hands-on experience in a robust professional publishing house to the next generation of scholars and publishers.”
AUPresses has also offered to facilitate a press review for Bucknell in the hopes of “an improved outcome,” the spokesperson told PW. This would involve a “comprehensive assessment of a member’s publishing program, internal workflows, market-facing activities, and overall financial health,” per the spokesperson.
Several attempted university press closures in recent years, including at the University of Missouri Press in 2012 and University of Akron Press in 2015, were reversed in response to community outcry, with support from AUPresses. “In each instance, the Association and the community have rallied to support the press and work constructively with administrators and campus stakeholders to achieve a better outcome,” AUPresses told PW.
Sternberg’s announcement did not mention the Trump administration’s slashing of university budgets. The AUPresses spokesperson reiterated that “the university has at no point indicated that its decision has been forced by federal research funding cuts.”
