Under the cloud of possible layoffs of full-time faculty and a sweeping restructuring of the college, the Faculty Senate held its final meeting of the academic year.
The agenda originally called for a conversation among faculty about the final draft of President and CEO Kwang-Wu Kim’s advisory report, which outlines suggestions to close the college’s $38 million deficit.
The report was given to the executive committee of the Board of Trustees on Thursday, May 2 but was not shared with faculty, though Faculty Senate President Madhurima Chakraborty said that the senate was expecting to see the report.
Chakraborty said that just before the meeting, she received an email from Kim in response to her question about why the report was not shared with faculty. Kim told her that the board’s executive committee did not want to do that, she said.
She began the meeting with a heartfelt farewell to her colleagues, detailing the “uncertainty” in a year that saw a historic seven-week strike by part-time faculty, a financial crisis and Kim’s decision to step down this summer. This was Chakraborty’s last meeting after three years as president of the faculty body.
“This is such a f*cked up time,” she said.
The Faculty Senate’s Faculty Affairs Committee also released preliminary results of the annual faculty survey, which gauges everything from workload balance to salary to satisfaction working at the college.
In response to the statement, “I have no intention of leaving Columbia College Chicago in the near future” only 32 out of 109 respondents agreed or strongly agreed.
“While respondents have been very positive about their departmental leadership, morale remains very low,” Brendan Riley, chair of the Faculty Affairs Committee, told the Chronicle in an email.
Though he emphasized that the data has yet to be analyzed by the committee, Riley, associate professor in the English and Creative Writing Department, said that in comparison with previous years, respondents seem “very critical of the college’s priorities.”
Additionally, 95 out of 109 respondents said they were dissatisfied or extremely dissatisfied with “the effectiveness of leadership at the level of academic administration,” while only 17 responded that they felt satisfied.
The senate also announced its new leadership for the next term. Rojhat Avsar, associate professor in the Humanities, History, and Social Sciences Department, will be president of the senate for the next academic year.
Other members of the Executive Committee include:
- Ted Hardin, associate professor in the Cinema and Television Arts Department, as secretary
- Derick D. Jones Jr, assistant professor in the Science and Mathematics Department, as parliamentarian
- Jackie Spinner, professor of Communications, as vice president
- Jo-Nell Sieren, Assistant Professor of Instruction of Interactive Arts and Media, as an incoming member of the Executive Committee
Meanwhile, Columbia’s AAUP Advocacy Chapter scheduled two emergency town halls on Friday, May 3 and Monday, May 6 to address concerns over the college’s decision not to release the report ahead of the May 9 Board of Trustees meeting.
The trustees will vote on whether the college has met the condition for “adverse circumstances,” which allows the college to make the changes detailed in the report, including laying off full-time faculty with tenure appointments and closing academic programs. The process is outlined in the Statement of Policy.
AAUP President Joan Giroux said that the goal of the meetings is to discuss the lack of shared governance surrounding the report.
“The leadership of the AAUP chapter has conferred and decided that we need to find out from faculty what their thoughts are regarding the reversal of Dr. Kim’s decision to share the full report with the community,” Giroux said. “We are concerned about the lack of transparency and the lack of communication that has been ongoing.”
Copy edited by Vanessa Orozco
