TOPEKA — Emporia State University’s proposal for dealing with financial strains identifies reasons the school will use to get rid of tenured professors, including market considerations, enrollment, revenue and employee conduct.
Faculty members say they are concerned by the lack of communication they have received from administration about its plans, and the short notice they were given to respond before the university seeks approval from the Kansas Board of Regents next week.
Some faculty members, including English professor Rachelle Smith, wondered if their jobs or departments will still exist in another year.
“It’s so frustrating,” Smith said. “There’s no communication. Faculty retreating like adversaries. And who loses? The students.”
The university announced Wednesday it was seeking Board of Regents approval for plans to overhaul the campus workforce, but it wouldn’t provide details of those plans. The Board of Regents is scheduled to review the proposal Sept. 14.
Shawn Keough, an associate professor of business administration and the Faculty Senate president, distributed a draft of the university’s plans to faculty members via email Wednesday night.
Keough, who didn’t immediately respond to an interview request for this story, told colleagues in his email that the president had met with him and Kim Simons, an associate professor of physical sciences, shortly before the public announcement. However, Keough said, the public announcement was “misleading” because the university hasn’t actually submitted the plan to regents yet. Hush gave faculty members a 10 a.m. Monday deadline to provide feedback, Keough said.
Keough asked faculty members to review the draft and prepare for an emergency meeting on Friday.
“I know that reviewing the draft will raise a lot of questions,” Keough wrote in the email. “However, be aware that after you have read the draft, your level of information will be the same as Kim Simons and I.”
Under a temporary policy authorized by the Board of Regents, state universities can seek to eliminate tenured staff as a way of responding to “extreme financial pressures.” No other university has taken this step.
The draft of ESU’s “framework for workforce management” says university finances require reorganization or elimination of unspecified programs and curriculum.
Under the draft proposal, the university may eliminate any employee based on factors that include, but are not limited to: low enrollment, cost of operations, reduction in revenues for specific departments or schools, current or future market considerations, restructuring “as determined to be necessary by the university,” realignment of resources, performance evaluations, teaching and research productivity, low service productivity, and conduct of the employee.
“It’s simply a long list of reasons we can terminate anyone and everyone, including tenured faculty,” said Dan Colson, an associate professor of English who represents the department in the Faculty Senate. “When we are not really told what’s coming in advance, it’s hard not to view that as an aggressive action toward faculty.”
The draft also outlines the way employees will be notified of their dismissal and an appeals process.
Kelly Heine, chief marketing officer for ESU, said the university has been “analyzing everything from one end of campus to the other since early this year,” and began working on the “framework” for eliminating staff and programs in June.
