The Decline Of Valparaiso University A Tragedy For American Lutherans
Look. We can keep posting this article all we want. But the article itself is all but an opinion. I personally would not take this article as anything but conjecture. As it stands all we can do is speculate as to what is going on. I think we all need to put our pitchforks down for now, and wait for more information to come to light. Every time someone makes a post in the News thread it always turns into a downward spiral. I'll admit I am guilty of this as well. Lets all just take a few steps back, and calm down.
For whatever it is worth, those who wish to signal support for theology may sign this petition that has almost 400 participants thus far.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mdtIrb04MNtQgo2o_ICTDYlwDPoP8n8ZE9gzDvguMyU/edit
I am a faculty here. The fact that the goal is to terminate involuntarily some folks including tenured ones is not a surprise. What is egregious is that ALL faculty who taught primarily courses that have the prefix associated with a program that is to be discontinued received a notification that their tenure might be withdrawn. The insane part is that some of these courses have still good enrollments because many of these courses are taken by non-majors as electives or as required by other majors. These courses need to be taught still and the faculty is still retained (for now) but he/she may lose tenure because it happens that those courses have a prefix associated with a program discontinued.
As a hypothetical example, imagine in the biology department that there are courses labelled BIO but also say ZOO from zoology. Suppose plenty students take these courses but it so happens that there is a tiny major called Zoology Major that is eliminated. Then all of a sudden the professor who had the misfortune to teach ZOO classes will lose tenure and become suddenly lecturer because, again, for now at least, he is still needed to teach those classes.
Even more absurd, some professors where hired (and tenured) to teach these classes before that major was implemented and since within a department, faculty rotate and teach most courses, it is just a matter of bad luck that someone taught a certain course too often that happens to be called like the program discontinued. And that someone could be the most valuable member of that department.
So instead of looking exactly where and who needs to be terminated they try to use this absurd criteria which affects people for which there is no justification to remove them. Again, many won't be removed but if this goes as planned they will suffer the humiliation of losing their status.
I am not among the ones affected by this but the overall morale reached a new low (if that is even possible) and at this point I am convinced it will spill over to students and their experience in the classroom. I said in other posts, this place won't be saved by abuse and incompetence.
All they had to do was to identify which department needs fewer people and make the case for termination on a case by case situation (taking into account performance and seniority which are good faith criteria). Alas, good faith is nowhere to be found
I would also add that we reached a point where it may be desirable (if possible) for faculty to reach people with real power over the administration or the board (such as major donors) because I don't believe anymore that these important figures actually know what goes on. Faculty as a whole is powerless unless, say, 90% of them don't show up to teach tomorrow. But most of them are just idealistic sheep marching peacefully to the slaughterhouse (no offense intended really, to an extent maybe I am as well).
@dejavu I agree with your sentiment. You should not be messing with tenure. When IUPUI decided to make the switch over to IUI and PIN. A lot of Computer Science profs jumped ship because they were not going to be offered their tenure with either of the "new" institutions. You shoot yourself in the foot if you mess with tenure
After I wrote the previous comment I thought that it may be useful to expand on the hypothetical example. Say 15 years ago the Biology department (hypothetically, I am not in Biology) offers various courses in botany, zoology, anatomy etc...All labeled BIO 101, BIO 102 etc... Then they hire professor X who happens to have a PhD in zoology and has more experience and interest in teaching zoology. But, crucially, he and all other members are qualified to teach all courses offered.
Fast forward 8 years, professor X is now tenured. Around that time, the department establishes a new major in zoology (different than the general biology major) and, as it is customary, some courses are now labeled ZOO 101, ZOO 102 etc... to make it easier to identify the courses required for that major but these courses continue to be taken by plenty of non-ZOO major students. Professor X, given his preference, gets to teach consistently ZOO courses.
Fast forward again several years and now ZOO major is discontinued. Professor X (but NOT the other members of the department) gets the tenure removed on the basis he is primarily teaching ZOO courses again despite the fact that he was not tenured in connection with the ZOO major.
I hope the absurdity is clearer now
@rezynezy When times are hard, tenured people can be fired that I understand. But using objective criteria. Say you have 10 tenured professors teaching subject X and we need only 9 of them. I would hope performance and seniority are taken into account in such a situation otherwise what is the point of career advance? I could have used my extra time watching movies rather than working toward promotion or, better yet, learn another skill. I don't wish on younger folks to lose their jobs but, again, what is fairer? drawing sticks? lottery?
@dejavu I doubt my opinion on who should be fired and who should not would serve anything towards conversation. I am a 20 year old CS major at a school going through a similar scenario.
Seniority should be taken into account as well as records as to what department you are teaching out of or were initially hired to teach. I would hope you don't fire the bio professor or deny them tenure purely because they were teaching zoology courses out of a matter of circumstance
@rezynezy I hope so too but I know at least one example of the scenario I described. That being said, we are within the process still...Departments have 60 days to respond and make the case for people on individual basis. So basically at this point we have a pool of people in the black list from which an unspecified number will be chosen to be terminated
@dejavu Pure objectiveness in this decision making on who gets sacked is not reality. Valpo, although I doubt this will happen, should also look at the levels of leadership and see which position can be weeded out. Like most colleges and universities, there is a glut of administrators providing far less value per salary and portray a figurehead persona.
@usc4valpo Pure objectiveness may not be possible but 50%-60% objectiveness is not too much to ask from people who took the responsibility to steer the ship. As far as administrator glut don't even get me started. Faculty always mention this but very little is done. In a way it is human nature. Who can vote himself into irrelevance? Who is gonna say, yes, it seems that I pull six figures here and not only I don't bring value but I actually create new work for others, please fire me. Vice-president for Diversity and Inclusion anyone? Regardless of your politics and opinions about DEI propaganda, ask yourself: does anyone actually believe this thing bring more students? Do they come because of it or despite of it?
Meanwhile, Valpo comes in as #8 in Indiana, out of 60.
@vu72 once again a really dumb poll. at least for undergrad engineering, Rose Holman is a far experience than Purdue.
