By Matthew Sotlar, John Ostapowicz and Nicarlyle Hanchard / The Jambar
The Youngstown State University Office of Academic Affairs hosted a town hall Nov. 18 at Tod Hall to discuss the new policies mandated and proposed by the Advance Ohio Higher Education Act.
Provost Jennifer Pintar, presenter for the town hall, said there have been numerous unexpected changes to policies at YSU, including changes to the academic senate and faculty workload policy.
“The academic senate policy was something that surprised just about all of us. This was originally in Senate Bill 1, but it got pulled out at the last minute and it was put into the budget bill,” Pintar said. “What the budget bill stated is that all academic senate and faculty senate, whatever you call it, across the state of Ohio, are advisory in nature. Only the board of trustees has ultimate authority.”
Additionally, Pintar also discussed changes to semesterly faculty evaluations.
“State law requires that we conduct annual faculty evaluations on every faculty member,” Pintar said. “State law also requires us to evaluate you on anything where you have 5% or more of your workload conducted during that academic year, so if you have three credit hours of reassigned time to a service coordinator, you have to put that in your annual evaluation, and tell us what you did and your chair and your dean review it.”
A topic of concern for many was retrenchment, a policy that reduces the workforce due to perceived worker redundancy, along with tenureship. Pintar said failure to post tenure could result in administrative censorship.
“The state gave us a number of things that you could do if someone fails to post tenure, it’s required by the state, anything from censure to remediation training to termination,” Pintar said. “Because termination is on there again … I said I would appoint the administration to decide whether or not someone’s going to be terminated from their position. I’m not putting faculty in that position, and I don’t think faculty can decide whether someone gets terminated or not.”
In response, Patrick Spearman, associate professor of Teacher Education and Leadership Studies, said faculty input should be prioritized in administrative decision making.
“When we just started with the lecture positions, the previous provost kind of just dismissed a whole bunch of lectures, and we got together several committees created basically to do what you’re saying right now. We got rid of these people, and we spoke on their behalf. It was mostly faculty and maybe one administration,” Spearman said. “We do this on a regular basis. Of course, we’re going to be fair, we’re going to be objective.”
Spearman also said that faculty should have a say in the decisions made from administration that involve staff.
“Faculty voices need to be in every stage of this, because we’re the ones that understand what faculty have to do, nothing against the administration. But if you’re talking about someone’s livelihood, I think that faculty voices need to be through the whole process,” Spearman said.
The law also impacts diversity, equity and inclusion training and programs, prioritizing intellectual diversity. It also prevents faculty and staff from engaging in strikes, restricts public university faculty unions and collective bargaining.
The board of trustees will meet in Tod Hall one final time for the fall semester Dec. 10 and 11 to discuss and vote on measures related to the law.