By Tristan Weisenbach and Isabella Darcy
Managing Editor and News Editor
This fall was supposed to be Brenda Seals’ first of two semesters working on an alternate assignment instead of teaching, as part of the College’s faculty voluntary separation agreement that was offered this past spring.
However, because the College’s public health department was not given the ability to hire additional faculty to fill vacancies such as her position — which, according to Seals, they had been promised — she is now teaching one course this semester and two next spring.
“When you see other departments getting faculty hires and things like that, you have to feel like you're a low priority on the administration's list,” Seals said.
Along with 34 other faculty members or librarians who took the voluntary separation agreement this past spring — which was offered to those over the age of 60 or who have been employed by the College for at least 20 years — Seals’ time at the College will conclude at the end of this academic year, with at least some of these soon-to-be vacant positions not being immediately filled.
In addition to these departures, which represent a 10% reduction in full-time faculty, four other tenure or tenure-track faculty members have resigned from the College over the past two years, according to Matthew Wund, biology professor and president of the College’s chapter of the American Federation of Teachers.
Sixteen AFT professional staff members have also resigned from the College in the last two years, according to Wund. However, this number does not include any staff members not affiliated with AFT who have resigned.
Additionally, a number of the College’s administrative personnel have departed over the last year:
James Felton III, former vice president of inclusive excellence
Jennifer Keyes-Maloney, former associate vice president for government and community relations
Lisa Grimm, former interim dean of the school of humanities and social sciences
Taras Pavlovsky, former dean of the R. Barbara Gitenstein library
Amanda DeMartino, former executive director of athletics
While staff, faculty and administrative personnel leaving the College is not inherently atypical, the voluntary separation agreement exacerbates the level of departures to be higher than normal.
Many of these newly vacant positions have not been filled either, and may not be in the short-term future, according to multiple sources.
Why staff are leaving
For over six years, Barry Beal held the position of assistant director of athletics for communications and game operations at the College. After a positive experience in the role, Beal decided to move to Penn State – Berks to become their athletic director — a job he was able to obtain because of his time here.
“If anything, TCNJ is a victim of its own success in that way in the athletics world, that it helps its employees get the experience where they can move up,” Beal said.
According to Beal, it is typical for athletic staff to move schools frequently when new positions open up. DeMartino also left the College to accept the position of athletics director at another school, Colby College.
DeMartino did not respond to a request for an interview.
Teresa Nakra, a former professor of music, design and creative technology, left the College after 19 years to accept the position of director and professor of music and technology at Stevens Institute of Technology.
“In the normal course of events, faculty and staff come and go for all sorts of reasons, including opportunities that arise because of TCNJ's strong reputation for excellence and productivity,” Nakra said in an email statement. “I'm grateful to this campus community for supporting and encouraging my development as a teacher, scholar, creative technologist and higher education professional.”
Felton is now working as vice president of equity & inclusion at Fordham University. In an email to The Signal, Felton said he appreciated his time at the College, and left his position to pursue his “long-time dream of working at a major university in the vibrant heart of the world's greatest city—New York.”
In an email statement, Grimm told The Signal she enjoyed her time working at the College over the past 15 years, highlighting her positive experiences collaborating closely with President Michael Bernstein on his LIONS Plan initiatives and with other former faculty and administrators in various capacities. She said she made the decision to leave after coming across an opening for a permanent dean position at Widener University.
“I’ve been building my career in academic administration and felt I was ready for a permanent dean position,” Grimm said. “I knew that with an interim President and Provost, it would be some time before the college would be able to appoint an HSS dean. The position at Widener became available and I discovered that it was a perfect fit for me personally and professionally.”
Another staff member who left the College in recent months, who wished to remain anonymous, told The Signal they decided to pursue another job opportunity because there wasn’t room to grow at the College.
“I ended up at the College for six years, and in that time, I hadn't gone anywhere…and so I knew if I wanted to have any kind of growth, I had to switch jobs,” the staff member said.
While the former employee said they’ve enjoyed their new position working in New York City, they miss the culture and the people of the College. However, they think the College needs to improve the resources and opportunities that it provides to professional staff.
“I think it's important to know that just like faculty, staff have professional ambitions…and if TCNJ wants to keep effective staff, they need to have some opportunities for growth because otherwise they'll have to leave in order to find opportunities to advance themselves,” the former staff member said.
Tim Clydesdale, former vice provost, did not leave the College, but said in an interview that he stepped down from his administrative position in August to return to the faculty in the department of sociology and anthropology because he was “ready to return to the classroom.”
Impact of departures on those who remain
“The job creep has been incredible where more and more responsibilities have been piled on, to the point where we're all kind of hitting a breaking point and looking for outside opportunities — even those of us who love it here,” said Karen Dubrule, program assistant for the department of sociology and anthropology and the environmental studies program.
“People have left for whatever reason and their roles have not been backfilled,” said Dianne Miles, program assistant for the departments of world languages and cultures and women’s, gender and sexuality studies. “You know that leaves staff with more work to do. I haven't heard about anyone who's gotten more work to do and more compensation of any kind.”
“We're kind of lacking in the dimension of different career stages [of faculty] when we're not hiring new tenure track folks and then all the more senior people are leaving,” Wund said.
“Formerly, the associate chair took care of everything having to do with students, and the chair took care of everything having to do with personnel, etcetera,” said Felicia Steele, chair of the English department, which eliminated its associate chair position, “and now I'm doing both jobs.”
“We are paying peanuts for this adjunct when he's teaching two very heavy courses, and he will be in the spring also. So I don't find that fair,” said Marimar Huguet Jerez, chair of the department of world languages and culture, in reference to an adjunct professor who is now teaching courses formerly taught by a full-time professor who left the College.
Many staff and faculty told The Signal that the departure of others has increased their workload, as many duties of those who left have since been shifted onto them. In most cases, additional compensation for increased workloads has not been offered, according to multiple sources.
Clydesdale said his former vice provost position was left “intentionally vacant this year” to help further reduce the College’s budget deficit. His work was distributed amongst other personnel.
Suzanne McCotter, interim provost, told The Signal that she picked up some of Clydesdale’s previous work, along with the assistant provost and the associate provost.
“We’re looking really carefully to see what the needs are before we quickly appoint new people,” McCotter said in an interview.
Dubrule and Miles shared another example that occurred over the summer, saying their job descriptions were changed and the departments they oversee were switched without giving them or their department chairs any advance notice.
“We were literally just kind of presented with a new job description, like ‘here it is, and please sign it and don't ask questions,’ basically,” Dubrule said. “So we were all kind of caught off guard.”
With more responsibilities, Debrule has less time to make extra contributions to her departments. Being busier this semester has driven her to “shut off [her] email the minute [she walks] out the door and really try not to check it.”
Miles, who was previously the program assistant for one department, now oversees two. She said it was “shocking” to be given so much extra responsibility with no prior input from her.
The number of classes being offered this semester is less than typical, according to data provided to The Signal by Luke Sacks, the College’s head of media relations. This fall semester has the least number of scheduled classes compared to the previous three fall semesters, with an average of 150 fewer classes. Spring semesters always have less classes offered when compared to fall semesters, according to the data.
McCotter cautioned against comparing class numbers this early in the semester, though. She said some course types, such as some independent research and graduate courses, don’t get added to the total count until the end of the semester.
However, multiple people that The Signal spoke with said their departments scheduled “tightly” this semester. Because of this slight shortage in available classes, some transfer students were only enrolled in three courses instead of four, and some first-year students were enrolled in 300-level elective classes, according to multiple sources.
Dubrule said her department made the decision to open two online asynchronous classes last-minute before the start of this semester to account for the influx of students in need of courses.
In the biology department, many faculty members including Wund are now teaching more courses than they are supposed to because of the lack of faculty.
“I'm doing pretty much my entire year's worth of teaching this semester, since my department needed me too,” Wund said. “And so I'll have a lighter load in the spring, but we just needed to offer sections in my department.”
According to Wund, his department hasn’t hired a tenure-track assistant professor in six years, and while there have been a few visiting professor hires, these faculty are temporary and do not assist in scholarship or advising.
“That limits our ability to do the kind of mentoring and student interactions and scholarship that, in part, make this place special, because it's just fewer people are trying to do the same amount of work,” Wund said.
However, Wund said he is optimistic despite the challenges that have come to light this semester. He is positive that everyone at the College is working hard to solve these issues, and have the students’ best interests in mind.
“The administration, the faculty and the staff are working hard to solve this problem together, and we may not always agree on the solutions,” he said, “but everyone's working hard and with the motivation to preserve what's excellent about TCNJ.”
