Since the fall semester of last year, over a dozen faculty and staff, including tenured professors, administrative department heads, and department chairs have left Roanoke College. Some view this as a response to the administration’s announcement of a higher workload for faculty without any increase in pay. This coupled with the other changes the college has dealt with in the past few years has left many students, faculty, and staff distrustful and angry towards the College and the new administration. This will be a multi-publication story. In this article, I discuss the administration’s point of view on the situation, in the next article I discuss the faculty response.
Frank Shushok and the new administration took control of Roanoke while it was already at a large deficit. President Shushok has said, “those schools that will be at the forefront will be those that are innovative, agile and willing to take calculated risks to be different.” The administration, in order to reduce this deficit, has taken large steps in the last two years to reduce spending and increase efficiency. One of those steps was the announcement last fall semester of a switch to a 4-4 teaching workload for faculty. Now some professors who were previously teaching 3 classes per semester are teaching 4. This change went into effect this semester, however currently only 23% of tenure track faculty are teaching 8 courses per year.
Some of this is because professors have received course releases for research, advising, and other academic involvements. Course releases and the overall workload is viewed rather differently by the various parties involved, which will be discussed more in-depth in upcoming issues. The switch to 4-4 was viewed as the best option versus cutting programs, positions, or academic courses. This switch allowed the college to save enough money to implement a 3% raise for all faculty and staff. Saving money on instructional costs helps avoid having those costs passed along to students. Gray & Associates, a firm that specializes in helping colleges make data-informed decisions, indicated that Roanoke College was spending approximately $4 million more per year on instructional costs than similar schools.
The administration also emphasizes that faculty have not been asked to do more work for zero increase in pay. They believe that it is possible to do quality teaching, despite some faculty claims, and that student success and education will not suffer. Roanoke College is one small school out of a larger wave of struggling liberal arts schools. The measures the administration has taken are based on successful schools, informed testing, and data from outside companies brought in to assess the college.
The administration has made it clear that every step it takes is meant to better the institution and focus on student success. The way in which the administration has changed things at the college though, has left some feeling undervalued and potentially left behind. In the next few issues, the Brackety-Ack will cover faculty, staff, and student responses to the changes the college has gone through. This will be done via interviews with multiple members of each group to get differing perspectives on the topic. Follow along with this story in-print or online for the next two publications on November 22nd and December 6th.
Mikaela Gantz
Editor-in-Chief
