Pictured Above: In a memo to the Board of Trustees, the Faculty Senate Executive Committee had pointed criticism of the performance of President Steve Currall and Provost Ralph Wilcox (left). But professor Barbara Hansen objected to what she called “inflammatory words” in the memo.
Courtesy of USF
By Nancy McCann
An autumn of angst and anger for USF faculty came to a boil Wednesday as faculty leaders urged the Board of Trustees to slow down what they call a rush to judgment on “enormous” budget cuts.
In a six-page, pull-no-punches memo sent by the Faculty Senate Executive Committee and endorsed in a 63-3 vote by senate members, the committee called on the trustees to:
** “Pause the process of strategic realignment” and layoffs until there is a sound plan for the changes.
** Get the faculty’s input.
** Be honest about the reasons for the huge cuts and “the specific nature of the apparent financial mismanagement that got USF to this point.”
“A pause and slow-down will head off the potential long-term damage that could follow from rushed balancing of the budget being implemented in the absence of a shared strategic plan,” the senate memo says.
USF President Steve Currall said later in a statement that he appreciated “the constructive and thoughtful letter.”
The faculty leaders “raise a number of important points and I look forward to further discussion at the appropriate time during future meetings with the Faculty Senate and Board of Trustees,” he said.
But neither Currall nor trustees Chair Jordan Zimmerman seem inclined to slow things down.
Zimmerman could not be reached for comment by The Crow’s Nest. But he told the Tampa Bay Times that “the president, the provost (Ralph Wilcox) and the team have brought everyone into the process to make sure it’s inclusive, and they’re making the best decisions they have to make.”
On Friday, Zimmerman invited the Faculty Senate Executive Committee to meet with him, Currall, Wilcox and members of a new trustees task force on Tuesday to discuss the issues raised in the committee’s memo.
Currall’s administration is “committed to working with the Faculty Senate as we go through the strategic realignment process,” Zimmerman said in a letter to executive committee members.
On its strategic realignment website, the administration says the deadlines it is working to meet were set by the trustees, who “decided that the university must urgently take action to address current budgetary circumstances.”
“USF leadership has deemed it most advantageous to our strategic priorities to expedite our financial realignment,” the website says. “Delaying realignment only creates additional challenges.”
At issue in the clash between faculty and the university leadership is the budget shortfall caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has drastically curtailed USF’s operations and dramatically cut its revenue.
The state has told each of Florida’s 12 public universities to plan for an 8.5 percent budget reduction – which for USF would be $36.7 million – this fiscal year, with an even deeper cut of 10 percent likely in the 2021-2022 fiscal year.
To meet the pandemic budget shortfall and cover what the USF administration calls “$57 million of investments (that) were previously made in programs without permanent funding identified,” university leaders launched the “strategic realignment” that now imperils both academic programs and jobs.
In carrying out the realignment, Currall seems to have the support of the trustees, who last month enthusiastically endorsed his performance as president.
Simmering since summer
But the faculty is another story.
Criticism and resentment about the work of Currall and Wilcox, the provost, have been simmering since the summer.
In June, shortly after the death of George Floyd prompted a national resurgence in the Black Lives Matter movement, 88 black professors and staff members signed a call to action to Currall. They said that “targeted anti-racist policies, procedures and an adequate grievance process must be established (or improved) to effectively address systemic racism.”
In September, all six members of the diversity committee at the College of Arts and Sciences resigned, saying their voices were being ignored.
In mid-October, the university announced that the College of Education would be dismantled and reimagined into a school of education for graduate students. The stunning move prompted widespread opposition, and the administration eventually backtracked, saying it would continue to offer undergraduate degrees but leaving the College of Education itself in limbo.
In turn, the faculty at the College of Education responded with a lengthy statement asserting that trust between the faculty and administration “has been irreparably broken.”
Wilcox sprang the news on education faculty during a meeting on Oct. 14, then “answered a total of four questions before moving to his next meeting,” the faculty statement says.
Since then, it says, “beyond a couple of brief responses to questions,” the faculty “have not seen or heard from Provost Wilcox.”
The month since the announcement “has been marked by obscurity and unilateral top-down directives at odds with norms of faculty consultation and governance,” the education faculty says.
Now, education professors are expected to reimagine a school of graduate education with “absolutely no guidance on how to proceed …. Either the initial planning for implementation was absent, or intentionally chaotic.”
In a memo dated Oct. 30, 20 department chairs, directors and campus chairs in the College of Arts and Sciences raised similar issues.
They denounced administrators for moving too hastily and unilaterally, cutting too deeply and skirting the guidelines of transparency and honesty stipulated in the university’s Principles of Community.
“To treat the current budgetary shortfall as a pretext for sudden and drastic restructuring is a mistake,” they said. “Intelligent strategic realignment requires care, consideration and time.”
‘Inflammatory words’
The memo to the trustees that was endorsed by the Faculty Senate on Wednesday echoes many of the same points and questions.
First on the list of “serious concerns” is that the administration is taking actions in “the wrong order.” A final strategic plan for budget cuts has been set for presentation by a university working group in May 2021, but college deans have been told to submit budget cut targets later this month.
Although the administration calls the budget cut targets “‘proposed’ and ‘negotiable,’ ” they should come after strategic planning, not before it, the memo says.
“We are not alone in identifying this concern,” the memo says, noting that “local legislators, school superintendents, business leaders, faculty, staff, students, and deans” and some of the trustees are uneasy with the hazy planning process.
While the $36.7 million in budget cuts this fiscal year seem reasonable, the faculty memo says, the administration needs to fully explain the reasons for the $56.9 million in cuts planned for the 2021-2022 fiscal year.
“Given that the second year of cuts are entirely attributed to budget imbalances,” the memo says, “what is the specific nature of the apparent financial mismanagement that got USF to this point?”
The memo says “faculty are perplexed” with decisions that “appear to be compromising both (USF’s) national image and its community responsibility” and with the lack of a “full, coherent plan for USF’s future.”
The proposed budget cuts, which are “egregious in their disregard” for faculty and staff, reflect a lack of “commitment to the kinds of robust curriculum and visionary planning that are hallmarks of the best public universities” and a failure in “even a minimal standard of shared governance,” the memo says.
The current process “violates the spirit” of USF policies and “the administration’s own process flow chart,” and will result in fewer classes being available to students, larger class sizes and higher teaching loads for faculty, the memo says.
During Wednesday’s meeting, Barbara Hansen, a professor in the Morsani College of Medicine, was one of the three members to vote against supporting the memo to the trustees.
“There are some inflammatory words in here that I do not consider necessary nor appropriate,” she said. “And I think I would have liked to have had time to edit out the things that I think are either overly inflammatory or disrespectful.”
Senate members should have been given several days to study the proposed memo, Hansen said.
“It’s too important a letter, and now it will hit the public media, and I believe … there will be some misunderstanding of some of the language.
“At least it’s hotter than I would have liked to see.”
But several other members of the Senate praised the memo, which member Barbara Lewis – a digital learning librarian at the USF Libraries – called “an excellent representation of all of our discussions.”
The memo “does a really good job also of setting the proper tone that expresses our concerns but also that we want to participate, we want to be part of the process, or any future action,” she said.
Kerry Myers, a clinical professor in the Muma College of Business, said he had shared the “very excellent memo” with colleagues and “received numerous responses showing very, very strong support.”
‘Pause the process of strategic realignment’
This is the memo sent to the Board of Trustees on Dec. 2 by the Senate Faculty Executive Committee. The memo was endorsed by the Faculty Senate in a 63-3 vote.
FS-Memo-to-BOT‘Trust has been irreparably broken’
This is a memo from the faculty at the College of Education that was shared with the Faculty Senate on Dec. 2.
USF-College-of-Education-Faculty-Call-for-Respectful-and-Transparent-Decision-002
