Amid Layoffs, Quinnipiac Keeps Building

A week after Quinnipiac University professors sent a letter to university administrators decrying recent layoffs and demanding that the university rehire faculty and staff, the university appeared before the Hamden Inland Wetlands Commission to start the approval process for a new student wellness center it plans to build this fall.

In March, the university notified its faculty and staff that every employee would be receiving a pay cut of 3 – 5 percent due to lost revenue resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. In the same letter, President Judy Olian wrote that the university would also slow its spending on capital programs like campus improvement and building projects.

On June 15, the university held a webinar with faculty and staff and announced that it was laying off 38 employees, effective July 1. It also furloughed about 130 employees, also effective July 1, with furlough lengths ranging from two weeks to six months, according to Associate Vice President for Public Relations John Morgan.

The university did, however, restore employees to their regular base pay, eliminating the 3 – 5 percent salary reductions. Morgan said that members of the Management Committee and Leadership Council took pay cuts of 5 – 10 percent, which remain in effect. Olian took a pay cut of 20 percent for the next school year.

On top of those layoffs and furloughs, many adjunct faculty will not be given classes in the fall. Fulltime professors will pick up extra courses, but not extra pay, while many adjuncts will be out of a part-time job. The cuts to adjunct budgets vary from school to school.

On June 24, a group of professors sent a letter to the university demanding that it rehire the faculty and staff it laid off. The letter also asked for more transparency about the university’s finances, and for the university to include its faculty and staff in its financial planning decisions.

As of Thursday, the letter had garnered 199 signatures, about half of them from faculty. The other half came mostly from alumni and students.

Meanwhile, this past Wednesday evening, representatives of the university appeared before the Hamden Inland Wetlands Commission to present preliminary plans for a new ​“health and wellness center” at its Mount Carmel campus.

The new center will be an attachment to the existing athletic and recreation center. Vice President for Facilities and Capital Planning Sal Filardi said the university is not yet releasing its cost estimates for the project.

Morgan said that even with the new health and wellness center, the university has slowed its capital spending in the 2020 – 2021 fiscal year.

“Our facilities master planning process is guided by a 10-year vision with capital projects that go hand-in-hand with our strategic vision,” he wrote in a statement to the Independent. ​“While that vision still holds, we are slowing our capital programs and reducing our originally planned capital spend for 2020 – 2021 by nearly $10 million as we address the budget pressures brought on by COVID-19. Every decision was labored over, considered from every perspective, and ultimately made to protect the university’s future and fulfill our academic mission.”

Morgan said he could not divulge the capital budget total for the year, either before or after the $10 million reduction.

Meanwhile, some professors said they are not pleased that the university has laid off their colleagues but continues to spend money on building.

“While students’ education and health are both clearly important, it’s unclear to me how the university administration is able to continue with a building project when faculty and staff who are essential to the quality of students’ education have been laid off,” Associate Professor of Philosophy Rebecca Bamford wrote in an email to the Independent. Bamford said she speaks only for herself, ​“in a purely personal, individual capacity.”

Professors Send A Message

On June 12, a Friday, now former Assistant Professor of Accounting Paul Goodchild got an email saying administrators wanted to meet with him the following Monday at 2 p.m. via the Zoom teleconferencing app.

That Monday, the university held a virtual town hall with faculty and staff, in which administrators announced they would be laying off 38 people. As the newest hire in his department, Goodchild said that after listening in on the webinar, he was pretty sure he knew what his Zoom meeting later in the day would be about.

He was right. He was told that he was laid off, effective July 1, and that if he signed the severance package the university gave him, he would get pay until the end of the month. The package included a non-disclosure agreement, so he said he could not give too many details. When he spoke with the Independent, Goodchild had not yet signed the package.

He said he has already filled out 30 job applications. Of those 30, only three or four were in New England. And getting hired may be tough because the academic job market is not in good shape at the moment, and the traditional hiring period is from November to March, he said.

Goodchild said he is one of four faculty that he knows of in the School of Business who were laid off. The school’s dean, Matthew O’Connor, did not respond to an inquiry about how many faculty the school lost.

After the June 15 webinar, professors started a Google document to draft a letter to the administration. Somewhere between 10 and 30 people worked on drafting it, said Associate Professor of English Kimberly O’Neill.

The letter is addressed to Olian and to the university’s top administrators.

“We ask for a transparent report of your financial calculations and decision-making process and the immediate reinstatement of all those affected,” the letter reads.

While the letter focuses on faculty layoffs, it says the undersigned also support the reinstatement of laid-off staff.

“Your decision to lay off, furlough, and reduce the appointments of faculty and staff, unilaterally and in secret, strikes at the core of Quinnipiac University’s educational mission and the well-being of our community,” it continues.

The university has not shared a ​“detailed accounting” of its financial situation, the letter says. It could have used the expertise of professors to help make cost reductions, but instead, it laid off employees without receiving faculty input. It also mentions the fact that ​“capital programs have been ​‘slowed’ rather than halted.”

The layoffs ​“fail to adhere to your legal and ethical obligation to share governance with your faculty,” the letter says. Traditionally, faculty ​“are responsible for personnel issues within their departments.” It cites a supreme court case, NLRB v. Yeshiva University 444 U.S. 692 (1980), which used the premise that tenured faculty are managers to determine that they could not unionize. The letter notes that the faculty handbook also requires consultation with the dean and members of departments for decisions about department reductions.

The handbook also says the university is supposed to send individual letters of employment to its employees regarding the next academic year by May 15. The faculty who were laid off did not find out until a month after that.

“There are going to be huge economic costs across the world, so nobody thinks the university can continue to operate as it had been planning, but the faculty actually come with incredible expertise that they could use to figure out the best way to move forward,” said O’Neill (pictured).

She said she feels comfortable speaking out publicly only because she has tenure, and her position is relatively safe. She said she knows of other professors who do not have tenure who were afraid to sign the letter for fear it could affect their employment.

The university did not detail how decisions were made in a statement to the Independent.

“Approximately $10 million in new expenses related to COVID-19 and a slightly lower enrollment require us to address a budget shortfall of the 2020 – 21 academic year,” Vice President for Marketing and Communications Daryl Richard is quoted as saying. ​“Our goal was to minimize the impact on our faculty and staff to the greatest extent possible and to create a healthy learning environment for our entire community as we made these difficult decisions with care and compassion. These actions will position the university to navigate the next year successfully and to thrive and grow in the years ahead.”

Last week, the university’s management committee sent a response to the signatories of the letter.

“Because of the late enrollment deadline this year and Board of Trustee budget approval requirements, these decisions had a compressed timeline,” the committee wrote. ​“That timeline, the complexity of the system-wide judgments that were required, and the need for confidentiality in making these very sensitive decisions precluded a more public process.”

The full response is copied at the bottom of this article.

Health And Wellness Center Pitched

Wednesday evening, local Attorney Bernie Pellegrino appeared before the Hamden Inland Wetlands Commission to present preliminary plans for a new health and wellness center on the university’s Mount Carmel campus. His presentation was just a first step, and commission members must participate in a site walk before the application comes before the commission again in September for a vote.

The new center would be an L‑shaped two-story addition on the western and southern sides of the existing recreation center. It would require the removal of the tennis courts that currently sit to the south of the building.

Filardi, of facilities and capital planning, said he could not release cost estimates for the new addition. He also did not respond to an inquiry about estimated square footage.

On Wednesday, Pellegrino told the commission that the university aims to begin construction in the late fall, and aims to wrap up in July of 2022.

A preliminary site plan shows the addition running the full length of the western side of the existing recreation center, and then halfway along the southern side. There would be a courtyard between the addition and the existing recreation center. The addition is outlined in a black line in the site plan above. Click here to see more of the preliminary plan.

After a site walk, in which inland wetlands commissioners and the wetlands enforcement officer tour the site to see how construction will affect nearby wetlands, the application will come back to the commission for a vote.

Management Committee’s Response To Faculty Letter

To all signatories,

We, the Management Committee, write to acknowledge receipt of your letter dated June 24, 2020, and to provide a perspective on your concerns. We appreciate your candid feedback on recent decisions and know that they are motivated by a deep commitment to our university. As we all recognize, these decisions are framed by the unprecedented circumstances of this moment – two years of enrollment declines and now a pandemic of unknowable scale – forcing upon us very hard institutional choices.

Our university, as well as much of higher education, is facing a level of financial challenge not seen before. As a result, Quinnipiac’s academic and administrative leadership confronted extremely difficult choices to address the immediate financial crisis, while positioning the university for a strong future. 

Decisions that impact members of our community are especially hard and emotional. These decisions were made after much deliberation and soul-searching and decision makers weighed many factors, including impact on people, demographic representation and protection against adverse impact, preservation of pedagogical excellence, and distinction in our academic mission – today and in the future.

Deans and administrative heads sought input when possible from individuals in their own schools and units. We consulted also with the Senate leadership and Trustees as part of the process. Because of the late enrollment deadline this year and Board of Trustee budget approval requirements, these decisions had a compressed timeline. That timeline, the complexity of the system-wide judgments that were required, and the need for confidentiality in making these very sensitive decisions precluded a more public process.

During the Faculty Senate meeting last week, we shared additional details about these decisions including the number of non-tenured faculty positions that were eliminated among the total number of layoffs; that we didn’t renew contracts for some visiting professors and changed some teaching contracts from 12 months to 10 or 9.5 months, which is the norm among QU faculty; the process for making these decisions in accordance with established policies and procedures; measures taken to ease the impact on those affected by HR actions; and the budget balances required of institutions to demonstrate financial health. We hope that this information provided additional context for the process and decisions.

Going forward, we will continue our open communication between faculty and the administration, and we welcome your suggestions in areas that can be improved. We strongly encourage faculty leadership’s role in serving as a channel to disseminate information more broadly among all faculty. We also propose re-invigorating the Senate Finance and Future Plans Committee as a forum for regular exchange of budget and strategic information.

We value the caring and respectful relationship between the leadership and faculty of Quinnipiac, and we acknowledge the absolutely central role our dedicated and talented faculty have played in Quinnipiac’s rapid advancement. We look forward to our continued collaboration to meet the significant challenges ahead, as there are many. Together, we can be confident that we will overcome the present setbacks and emerge an even stronger community and distinguished University.

~ Members of the Management Committee