WVU Professors Get Their Layoff Notices
Amid the sweeping elimination of degree offerings and faculty members’ jobs at West Virginia University, professors are left with possibly hopeless appeals.
By Ryan Quinn (Inside Higher Ed)
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| Reed |
Last week, Provost Maryanne Reed told the Faculty Senate that the 143 positions the board approved axing would only result in 69 people receiving layoff notices. But, she said, that’s because “there were a significant number of faculty that voluntarily retired or resigned.”
“I realize that is of little solace for those faculty members who will be losing their positions,” Reed said. “I recognize this is going to be very difficult on those individuals and their families. I think we all know people who will be impacted.”
WVU’s enrollment has dropped 10 percent since 2015, far worse than the national average and unusual particularly for a flagship university. University officials, projecting a further plunge over the coming decade, said they might need to cut $75 million from the budget and targeted low-enrollment majors, alongside pursuing reductions outside the faculty ranks.
But the 28 eliminated academic programs included, among other things, all foreign language degrees and the only math graduate degrees at the institution, which is classified as an R-1 (“very high research activity”) institution and offered the poor state’s only math Ph.D. program.
Reed gave her remarks as WVU was sending layoff notices to individual professors, making the universitywide number of terminations even more personal. April Kaull, a WVU spokeswoman, said the notification process continues this week.
WVU’s timeline for the layoffs, posted online, said the notifications would be sent to individual faculty members “by Oct. 16 (week of).” But a termination notice provided to one faculty member says these “notifications began on Sept. 18, 2023, and last through Oct. 31, 2023, with the vast majority of individuals being informed by or before Oct. 16, 2023, that their position is being eliminated.”
After the board’s vote, faculty members learned that eight additional untenured colleagues in the John Chambers College of Business and Economics wouldn’t have their contracts renewed after May—cuts that go beyond the 143 that the university and national media fixated on....
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| Kaull |
Professors have been sharing details about the layoff notices individually on X, mirroring how they broke the news in early August of just how many positions and degree offerings the university was planning to eliminate.
“WVU math faced a tough day yesterday as we learned of 16 people being cut as part of ‘Academic Transformation,’” Ela Celikbas, an assistant math professor, posted Oct. 11. “Out of these, 10 faculty are ‘volunteered’ to leave, and six were riffed,” meaning laid off as part of a reduction in force.
Celikbas, who didn’t return requests for comment Monday, wrote, “We don’t know if there will be more cuts. I didn’t receive an email—so I guess I’m not riffed. Yet, my feelings are far from cheerful. It was a sleepless night, contemplating the unfortunate loss. One of the tenure-track faculty who will be riffed was in their fifth year—just like me—with hopes of going to tenure next year. I had the privilege of being part of the hiring process of some of the newer faculty members who volunteered to leave WVU.”
Rose Casey, an assistant English professor, posted Oct. 3 on X, “Update: my job is safe, and I’m relieved. But that’s only because *eight* people in English have retired or resigned early. Eight. I grieve, genuinely, over losing these colleagues. And as our chair has told our dean, many of those who remain are on the market. We will be a husk.”…. . CONTINUED
