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YOUNGSTOWN -- The Youngstown State University-Ohio Education Association union is reacting to email notices the administration sent out Thursday to inform several tenure-track faculty members that they will be laid off -- some of whom are in programs not slated for elimination.
"We are in utter shock that YSU would cut faculty in programs that are healthy and that have solid enrollment," Susan Clutter, the YSU-OEA's president, said in a statement Friday.
The notices contradict what Provost Brien Smith and Neil McNally, vice president of finance and business operations, said in a virtual briefing Wednesday. They claimed layoffs would occur strictly in "sunsetted" programs with as few as zero students, Mark Vopat, union spokesman, said.
Instead, up to five email notices were sent Thursday, one to the director of the Center for Judaic Studies program, which falls under the umbrella of the history department and is in the "grow" category regarding enrollment and sustainability, Vopat noted. As a result, his contract will not be renewed, even though the professor could teach other courses in the department and 50 percent of his salary and benefits are paid an endowment, Vopat explained.
Emails also were sent to two professors in the Dana School of Music. Even though several specific majors, such as music theory, were eliminated in-house, the two professors were necessary to teach comparable programs elsewhere in the department under the general music major, he continued.
Vopat and Clutter also pointed to a memorandum of understanding between the administration and the YSU-OEA to extend the notification date from Monday to Nov. 22 for full-time faculty who were discontinued because of retrenchment. That would allow the Joint Retrenchment Committee an extra week to write a report objecting to program eliminations, the faculty union said.
"The ink wasn't even dry on that (memorandum) before people started getting their notices," Clutter said, noting the university was closed Thursday because of Veterans Day.
The union was to conduct an emergency meeting Friday to address the situation and try to answer members' questions.
"To be quite frank, many of these retrenchments seem targeted and retaliatory," because several faculty members who received the notices had been active in union contract negotiations and strike actions last year, Clutter continued.
The administration, however, in its own statement issued later Friday called the claim "baseless," saying the notifications are being sent out "as per the contract and a memorandum of understanding that allows additional time to appeal the actions."
Nevertheless, the administration admitted having sent the notifications Thursday regarding faculty reductions. The need to downsize is the result of an 18-month review of more than 140 programs, some of which had few or no students, at the same time as continued enrollment declines, the administration pointed out.
Consequently, YSU "must adjust program offerings and ensure that the programs the university offers, and that our faculty teach, are those that attract enrollment, help students and allow the university to survive and thrive," the administration said.