Larimer News

Greeley Tribune recently issued the following announcement.

The University of Northern Colorado officially wrapped up its academic year over the weekend with commencement ceremonies and celebrations, but the final month of the semester was marked by dissatisfaction among some students and teaching faculty, leading to multiple discussions with upper-level administration including president Andy Feinstein.

The issues boil down to what those students and faculty say is a lack of transparency and communication by the university in not renewing teaching contracts and the decision to close three foreign language programs including French and German.

“There was a lot more going on behind the scenes that I was not aware of,” said Neal Jeppeson, a senior and European Languages and Cultures major who expressed disappointment earlier this year with the loss of his program and others within the World Languages and Cultures Department. “It’s all the same motivations, and it’s not an unrelated issue. I think it’s all one related problem, which is a lack of transparency from the president and administration.”

Since early April, there’s been a student-led rally on campus to raise awareness of grievances along with an impromptu town hall and a roundtable meeting — all to initiate dialogue with Feinstein and other administrators, including interim provost Lisa Vollendorf and vice president for student affairs Cedric Howard.

University officials cited declining enrollment as the reason for not renewing contracts of six teaching positions known as contract-renewable faculty in three colleges and for closing three majors in the World Languages and Cultures Department. All of this comes even as Feinstein maintains the university is in a strong financial position.

“It has a human impact, and I feel terrible about that,” Feinstein said. “I certainly don’t enjoy learning that a college has not renewed a contract of a faculty member who has been a good teacher and certainly someone who the students have enjoyed in and outside of the classroom.”

UNC’s undergraduate enrollment dropped 28% from 10,232 in fall 2018 to 7,357 in fall 2021, according to the university. UNC projects undergraduate enrollment will decrease about 10% this fall from a year ago to about 6,650 students. Undergraduate enrollment is significant at UNC because those students are the majority of enrollment.

Though enrollment is an ongoing challenge, Feinstein said Friday the $77.1 million cash in reserves the university is projected to have on June 30 is an indicator of UNC’s strong financial health. This is an increase of $20.6 million over the university’s cash position a year ago, and it’s money in the bank available for a rainy day.

Spokesperson Deanna Herbert said this is the strongest cash position the university has been in for a number of years.

“We must continue to actively manage our efforts around the budget in order to sustain this position,” Herbert said.

Managing the university requires examining its full academic portfolio to “ensure we are investing in new programs and existing programs that have student demand and, at times, make the hard decision to suspend or discontinue low-enrolled programs,” according to Herbert.

“It’s a shifting of where we’re putting our resources,” Herbert added.

A sign of the university’s financial health also lies in a figure known as its Composite Financial Index, or CFI. The CFI is used in higher education nationally to help schools monitor financial health related to strategic actions over time. It includes four basic ratios, and those are translated to a “strength factor” on a scale of 1-10 and weighted.

UNC’s CFI was 2.80 in 2011. The index dropped to 0.44 in fiscal year 2016 and rose to 3.15 in fiscal year 2021.

Feinstein said when he arrived at UNC in July 2018, the university was in a trend of deficit spending at about $10 million a year.

University officials said long-standing issues with single-digit enrollment over the last few years were behind the decision to suspend bachelor’s degrees in European Languages and Cultures, and Kindergarten through 12th grade French and German Teaching Emphasis and Licensure. Minors in French and German were also suspended.

With the programs’ closures, no new students are being accepted into the programs. The university emphasized it would help students currently enrolled in the programs to graduate in a timely manner with the degrees they selected.

Jeppeson said he was not familiar with the university working with students in those majors to finish out their coursework. He said there was confusion about what professors were teaching classes in the department.

“It’s unlikely we’ll get the quality of education that we’d otherwise be getting,” Jeppeson said.

UNC said there were eight students enrolled in the three programs as of late April. Herbert said the College of Humanities and Social Sciences’ student success resource center and faculty advisors were working with each student.

“The changes in academic positions were made in programs with low or declining enrollments,” Herbert wrote in an email. “When we have programs with such small numbers, that environment doesn’t provide the high-quality educational experience that our students deserve.”

There were seven students enrolled in all three programs during the fall 2021 semester, according to UNC. A recent peak for those majors came in 2019 when there were 15 students in the program. There were eight in fall 2020, 14 in fall 2018 and eight in fall 2017.

Closing French and German programs

French professor Christine Moritz in the World Languages and Cultures Department was one of five contract-renewable faculty members in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences notified of the reduction of her full-time employment status for 2022-23.

Moritz, an associate professor who’s been at UNC for 17 years, said one of her concerns about the closure of the French and German programs is the growing scarcity of foreign language teachers nationwide.

According to Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan fact tank in 2018, 20% of K-12 U.S. students were enrolled in foreign language classes compared with a median of 92% of European students who are learning a language in school.

Moritz attended a teacher employment fair in late March at UNC, where she spoke with school district representatives from seven states including Colorado. Moritz heard those districts would start a foreign language program if they could find a teacher.

UNC graduate Toni Theisen taught French and Spanish for 40 of her 47 years in the Thompson School District in Loveland. Theisen earned her master’s degree in teaching French from UNC in 1993. She’s a member of a variety of foreign language teaching organizations and associations — an alphabet soup of groups at the state, national and international levels.

When UNC announced its plan to close the French and German programs, representatives from many of those organizations wrote to the university to express strong disagreement.

“The fact of the matter is French is a popular language, and we do a lot of trading with Canada in French,” Theisen said. “It seems like what you’re doing is taking steps back to make students monolingual. It’s sad.”

Moritz said there’s been a lack of promised marketing support and follow through on that support from the university for world languages programs for many years.

In an email to the department in May 2016, Laura Connolly, dean and professor emerita in economics in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, suggested the world language faculty meet with UNC marketing representatives on advertising beginning the following spring and then “launch an awareness and recruiting campaign” in summer 2017.

The promised marketing support never materialized, Moritz said.

In fall 2017, all German majors were closed to new enrollments, though a German minor was available. The same year, foreign languages went through a reorganization to include the creation of the new European Languages and Cultures major — now on the way out — with an emphasis or concentration in French, German or Spanish.

The major was established in response to a “pause” on the German major in 2016, according to World Languages and Cultures Department chairman Donald Holman, and to a request by Connolly to replace French and German liberal arts majors with a program with more appeal and requiring fewer resources.

The European Languages and Cultures major opened for enrollment in spring 2019 with 13 declaring for the major. There were 17 in 2020.

Holman started in fall 2017, and it was under his leadership that the department was able to create the new major, Moritz said.

Connolly’s 2016 email also said her office would begin research to learn what kind of opportunities students were looking for in French and German to “inform the direction the programs may want to take.” Moritz said the research was completed and provided very little useful information and clear comparisons to inform the UNC programs.

Moritz said it’s important to provide background to the “low numbers” the university is referring to for majors, minors and classes. She said some of the department’s French and German enrollment numbers have been low for the last three years but not all of the courses.

Some language classes are capped at 25 students, she said. She had a French 101 class in fall 2020 with 17 students for a 68% enrollment. A journalism and media studies class capped at 58 students had 17 enrolled for an enrollment rate of 29%.

This spring there was a geography class at 55% enrollment (36 students), a psychology course at 47% full (38 students) and a math class at 30% full with nine students, Moritz added.

“Enrollments across the university are low in many program areas,” she wrote in an email. “Our course enrollment numbers were improving before COVID hit.”

Enrollment impacts decisions

The World Languages and Cultures Department faculty in late April disputed the university’s take on the enrollment numbers in an email to colleagues in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences is one of five colleges at UNC. Colleges include schools and departments.

On April 13, Connolly sent an email to College of Humanities and Social Sciences faculty and staff to clarify information about the changes. She presented the information in a fact-and-correction format — laying out the university’s position and disputing misinformation. Feinstein later shared Connolly’s email with the university community.

Connolly wrote two other programs in the World Languages and Cultures Department would be continuing — undergraduate and graduate Spanish along with the Asian Studies Liberal Arts major and minors in Asian Studies, Chinese and Japanese.

A “Hispanic Heritage” course is not being eliminated, Connolly said. A requirement for a bachelor of arts in Spanish will continue to include a “Heritage Speaker Option.” A 300-level “Spanish for Native Speakers” will not be offered in the fall at the request of Spanish language faculty.

In Asian Studies, there was “some discussion” between faculty and administration about potentially pausing the K-12 licensure programs in Japanese and Chinese because of “extremely low enrollments and to help relieve the heavy teaching load for the Asian Studies faculty,” according to Connolly. The pause will not be in effect and no decisions have been made at this time on the future of those programs, according to the email.

Connolly is retiring on June 1.

Holman responded on behalf of his department two weeks later. He noted there were 54 major programs at the university graduating between one and six students in May 2020. He also wrote 25 programs graduated seven to 15 students, and 25 majors had 15 or more graduates.

The email also noted as of this spring, the number of 11 registered majors in European Languages and Cultures — one of the majors slated for closure — is the same or higher as 20 other majors in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

“We see this as a strength of our university,” the department email said. “Students have options as well as the support of dedicated faculty in a wide variety of fields which helps them to be successful in the specialty in the specialty they choose.”

Holman, an associate professor of German, said a drop in enrollment only applies to 100- and 200-level courses because of COVID-19. A change in liberal arts curriculum also impacted the department because 100-level language courses were no longer allowed as electives, he added.

“Our 300-level German courses, on the other hand, enjoyed double digit enrollments even just last year — including 12 and 15 students — comparable to and even better than some other programs,” Holman wrote in an email.

This was not taken into account in the decision to close the foreign language programs, he added, because it’s been disregarded as disruptive to higher administration’s narrative.

Devastated by non-renewal of contract

Jeppeson, a contract-renewable faculty member and four other students formed a group dedicated to speaking out against the programs and faculty changes. The group, “Bears Who Care and Friends of Bears,” wants greater transparency and communication from the university.

Trish Jolly, a 1999 UNC graduate and beloved senior lecturer in the anthropology department, is the faculty member working with the students. Her contract was not renewed for spring 2023 after 16 years at the university. She will teach through the fall semester with a reduced contract and a corresponding reduction in pay.

Jolly said she makes $41,000 a year teaching, and she supplements her income with a faculty-in-residence position in Bond Hall, an on-campus dormitory. A single mother, Jolly lives in the hall in exchange for providing programming in the dorm and creating a community. Her son is a freshman at UNC.

Jolly said she was devastated to learn her contract was not renewed. UNC helped shape her into the person she’s become. Jolly was born and raised in Bolivia until she was 9. She believes in the university’s efforts and work for students of color, students with disabilities and first-generation college students — the first students in their families to attend college.

“It’s a rainbow of diversity,” she said. “That equity is life-changing.”

She’s also been galvanized by the movement to demand transparency and communication from the university. Jolly said “Bears Who Care and Friends of Bears” doesn’t have plans to end its work at the end of the spring semester.

The group has social media accounts on Facebook and Instagram. As of earlier this week, the Facebook group had more than 450 members. Jolly said they’ll use social media through the summer to communicate with students on important issues.

“My belief is students have a right to weigh in as stakeholders in their education,” she said. “When school starts, we’d love to have students understand they get to have a voice.”

Contract-renewable faculty positions are one-year positions. These faculty are primarily responsible for teaching in areas where there is a demand for classes, but neither tenured nor tenure-track faculty expertise is available, according to UNC. Contract-renewable faculty is one of four types of faculty contracts. The others are adjunct, tenure-track and tenure.

UNC’s Herbert said the university hired 15 tenure-track or tenured faculty in 2021-22. The university also has 11 active searches for other tenure-track or tenured faculty, and four other tenure-track faculty searches have been authorized. All of these will begin work in August.

UNC also said as demand for specific courses decreases, the university has less need for contract-renewable faculty because tenure and tenure-track faculty receive first teaching assignments.

Connolly’s April 13 email said three contract-renewable faculty members were informed their contracts would not be renewed for 2022-23: one in Geography, GIS and Sustainability, who was hired on a one-year appointment; and one each in economics and communications.

Five contract-renewable faculty members in humanities and social sciences were informed their full-time status would be reduced for 2022-23. One of these faculty members, a contract-renewable position in the history department, was later offered a full-time role when a tenure-track faculty member announced his departure.

Connolly’s email said two contract-renewable faculty members in the department of criminology and criminal justice did not accept offers of reduced full-time employment by the deadline provided. Their contracts were not renewed.

Mary West-Smith, an assistant professor in criminology and criminal justice, and Brian Smith, her husband and a lecturer in the department, were the contract-renewable employees who did not accept the university’s offer of a reduced contract by the deadline provided.

West-Smith said she and Smith were given 48 hours to agree to “about the most disadvantaged contract we could have.” West-Smith has taught at UNC since 2005 and Smith since 2011.

West-Smith and Smith were teaching four classes per semester each — 16 classes between them in an academic year — at the time they learned of the reduced-contract offer in late February. They were offered contracts teaching three classes per semester instead of four, but not a lighter workload, to go with a 40% pay cut.

“We wouldn’t have a service component with the new deal, but we would still have students for advising and we’d still be participating with the department,” West-Smith said. “That struck me as being extraordinarily unfair.”

West-Smith said she understands and acknowledges Feinstein inherited a financial mess when he arrived at the university in July 2018. She also knows COVID-19 has been a challenge for universities and enrollments nationwide.

But, West-Smith said, UNC leadership should’ve been willing to be more transparent and collaborative in its approach to problems including enrollment.

Like Moritz, the French professor who’ll be on a reduced schedule, West-Smith said she’s long favored colleagues in her department marketing the university to potential students through pitches and conversations with high school students.

West-Smith wrote the same, along with other thoughts, in an email to Feinstein, Connolly and Vollendorf, the interim provost whose role ends later this month. West-Smith said as difficult as the separation was for her and her husband, the university needed to take a different approach. West-Smith also said in her email she wanted to write to the administrators because there is a sense of fear of retaliation among faculty on campus if they speak about the decision-making process.

“The issue is how the decision was made,” West-Smith said. “’Transparency’ and ‘collaboration’ are buzzwords we hear, and there was zero transparency and zero collaboration when decisions were made.”

Original source can be found here.