Provost under fire at Faculty Senate meeting

Speaking out of turn and raising their voices, faculty members argued heatedly with each other and with members of the administration in a chaotic Faculty Senate meeting Friday at USM’s Lewiston-Auburn College.

“I’m worried that if a vote goes one way, and the administration goes another, there will be something severed that will not recover,” said education professor Lynn Miller.

Following the heated debate, the senate voted to make official statements to the administration condemning what it called the forced merging of departments and calling for more faculty choice in academic reorganization.

The issue in question was a senate committee’s report on Provost John Wright’s ongoing plan to cut administrative costs, a part of the university’s overall reorganization process. The committee, led by professors Luisa Deprez and Ken Jones, submitted the report to Faculty Senate Chair Gerald Lasala March 28.

The report included two recommendations for statements from the senate to the administration. One statement in the report said any directive by the administration that forces departments to merge would be a violation of the University Governance Constitution.

The second statement called for an approach to reorganization that would maintain “academic integrity and foster improved services for students.”

The report also included a cover letter from the committee criticizing the administration. “The demoralizing effects that this top-down, unconstitutional process of reorganization has had on the university community will take years to recover from,” the committee wrote.

At the center of the controversy is the plan’s requirement for the equivalent of 12 full-time faculty in each department, which critics say could mean smaller departments being forced to join together.

A full-time faculty member teaches six courses a year, so two part-time professors teaching three classes each are equival to one full-time faculty position.

At one point in the contentious meeting, economics professor Joe Medley and Wright argued back and forth, out of turn, for over five minutes.

The estimated savings from the entire reorganization have been put at $1.5 million. Wright said the original estimate of savings coming directly from a 12-FTE requirement was $750,000.

Medley said the provost’s plan exaggerated how much the university would save from department consolidation. “The savings from forced mergers would be closer to $40,000, and could be as low as $17,000,” he said.

While Wright acknowledged that the target of $750,000 would probably not be met, he scoffed at Medley’s low figure.

Not all faculty members, were opposed to Wright’s plan. History professor Eileen Eagan criticized the report committee, accusing members of including personal biases.”The senate committee basically issued a diatribe and a polemic,” she said.

According to Medley, those opposed to the provost’s plan are not against departments coming together voluntarily, but to what he called “forced mergers,” a term Wright hotly contested.

“Merger is a loaded term, a term I have never used,” he said.

After the third time extension, the issue finally came to a vote, with the senate deciding 25-6 to adopt the statements made in the committee report. The affirmative vote means the statements are the senate’s official recommendation to President Botman about Wright’s reorganization plan.

Although the final decision rests with Botman, she took only a small part in the debate. Botman said she is waiting for the recommendation by Wright and the university’s deans before she makes her decision.

Wright said the recommendations to Botman are expected to be made the week of April 20.

Eagan said after the meeting she was disappointed with some of her colleagues. “Some of the faculty acted like morons,” she said. “If you’re going to reorganize, not everything is going to be voluntary.