Unshared governance

The Chancellor has mentioned that an APR-like process has not occurred at UNCG in some time. This is true. STG got help digging into the historical records of the faculty senate and noticed the last time, the faculty reacted in much the same way: tenured/tenure-track lines shall not be terminated without external evaluation of the impacted programs. 

"Be it resolved that the Senate does not endorse any process of the Academic Program Review resulting in termination of a tenure or tenure-track faculty member without an impartial, external review of the affected program."

Full document below. 

Jumping back to the present, let's walk through how shared governance has most recently been ignored.

Documents below will step chronologically through interactions between faculty and the administration.

First, the UNCG AAUP chapter asked Eastern Michigan University accounting professor to provide an external look at UNCG's finances. The report is included in full below, but there are some solid tl;dr summaries out there (like this one). Administration declined to meaningfully engage with faculty about the contents of this report, instead relying on giving sound bites to external media to try to rebut the data. They claimed since the analysis was done by a professor, of course he'd be trying to defend faculty.

The Bunsis Report

The results of this report agree with an earlier analysis solicited by Faculty Senators. STG found this excerpt interesting: 

·      The University lost $20 mn on investments in FY2022. However, the University gained $94.3 mn in investment income in FY2021 and $12.8 mn in FY2020, more than offsetting the loss in FY2022. 

So, depending on the years chosen for fiscal projections, administration could be overexaggerating negative impacts to the University's financial situation.

Faculty were given an initial version of the APR rubric on 10/9 and asked to provide 1000 word "contextual statements" if in the lower two categories. These were due by the end of October. Finalized program rubric data were posted 10/23 after numerous corrections were suggested by faculty. Many errors remain uncorrected simply because faculty were flooded: a long-standing tactic of this process has been to overwhelm with information and requests and demands so no one has time to do due diligence.

Faculty senators passed a resolution for faculty to be present and involved in phases 2 and 3 of the APR

Next, faculty attempted to slow the process with a petition so that everyone could check the numbers and work together to determine how the metrics tabulated by rpk GROUP would be used. 

Petition to suspend or discontinue the APR process

While they were drafting that stunning nothingburger of a response... The College of Arts and Sciences was attempting due diligence, reviewing all the 1000-word contextual statements provided by departments ranking "Approaching Expectations" and "Needs Examination" in the APR rubric. 

CAS Budget and Planning Committee Report, 12/1/23

At a CAS Assembly meeting a few days later, discussion revolved around all the ways the APR process had, up to that point, been a train wreck. Rubrics were released October 23, and departments had until Nov 1 to draft "contextual statements," aka "fight for your department and subject in 1000 words or less." Further, the Assembly pointed out the administration's steamrolling over previous resolutions made by the faculty senate and failures to respond to reasonable requests for further discussion before any decisions were made.

Short windows for response were hallmark of the process: 21 days for the Budget & Planning Committee to review the rubric and supplied information from departments. What was the hurry? (STG will answer this rhetorical question literally: the rush was fully intentional to create confusion and take away time for careful thought, discussion, and pushback.)

Later, they'd learn that programs they were told they didn't need to consider ended up in the elimination list.

The General Education Council, aware that removal of several of the foundation pieces in a house of cards may have unforeseen consequences, passed a resolution strongly disapproving of the proposed discontinuations and closures. Many of the proposed closures include courses that support the recently adopted Minerva's Academic Curriculum, which would increase pressure on remaining departments to create new classes, enlarge existing ones, or face the very real possibility of students being unable to fulfill their MAC requirements in 4 years.

General Education Council says this is not a good idea

The next day, the faculty voted on a resolution to censure the Chancellor and Provost. STG does not have the full, final resolution as the Faculty Senate has yet to post documents for the 2023-2024 academic year; we suspect this is intentional. The vote to censure was successful, 25-10 with 39 eligible voters.

Since this vote, STG has heard that select Faculty Senators have been bullied by other senators who wish to expose how they voted. EDI is being used as a weapon: for the sake of EDI, we need to make sure the votes were representative of the faculty! Everyone witnessed this again at the Faculty Senate meeting on January 31 at which anonymous letters were read accusing faculty of racism for voting to censure a Black chancellor. 

Faculty Senate votes to censure Chancellor and Provost

Faculty Senate also resolves that terminating faculty lines requires external review

Predictably, the response to this resolution was also a resounding... NO.

Our favorite excerpts from the letter below include, "[the APR is a] process grounded in the chancellor’s authority," and all the claims that they did actually seek feedback, particularly in the forms of meetings without agendas and sessions in which they spoke at an audience, not with them. It's their party and they'll fire people if they want to: you would fire too, if you had the power to!

Back to academics! At the January 31 faculty senate meeting, the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee courageously read a resolution that basically reads: why the hell didn't anyone ask us about any of this? 

That would be assuming education is a core part of our mission, we suppose. Profits are more important! We hereby humbly suggest the UCC rebrand itself as the Undergraduate Cash Committee should they want the administration's ear in the future.

Undergraduate Curriculum Committee notes they were never consulted

By now, it is clear that the faculty are not core to the University's actual mission, and it looks like they're pissed about it tbh. January 31 (a lot happened at this meeting), the Senate voted on a resolution decrying the APR process for violating the constitution of the general faculty in that the administration is very clearly intending to eliminate faculty lines. See also, the very first document at the top of this page: faculty in 2012 already said no to that, unless external evaluation is provided. The 'external' part is important, as a neutral party would not be seeking to serve university profits over educational concerns.

Faculty senate points out many violations of constitution of the general faculty

2/28: College of Arts & Sciences votes on resolutions of no confidence in Dean Kiss and Provost Storrs.

3/13: General Faculty meeting held to vote on resolution of no confidence in Provost Storrs. It passes, 181 : 158.