Professors at Kean University must be in their offices at least four days a week starting this fall, and will teach on Fridays and sometimes Saturdays, under a set of plans designed to raise enrollment and make professors on the New Jersey campus more available to students.
Administrators say the new plans will allow the public university to get more use out of classroom buildings that have been virtually empty at the end of each week and also give students greater access to professors.
But Kean’s faculty union, which is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, says the administration never consulted with professors about the change in office hours, and in a complaint to the state’s Public Employment Relations Commission has sought an injunction to stop the change.
One attraction of an academic career has long been the flexibility it affords professors. Unlike most American employees, professors typically don’t do most of their work in their offices or their classrooms. Many complete their research and writing at home, in laboratories, or in libraries. Indeed, many faculty members say they chose the profession over higher-paying careers in business, law, or medicine because academe largely allows them to set their own schedules. Some are on their campus only two or three days a week.
Jacqueline Keil, an assistant professor of sociology at Kean who serves on the union’s executive council, accused administrators there of micromanaging the faculty. “I see it as a warning sign” to other universities, she said. “What is happening at the university is an administrative attempt to gain greater control over faculty time.”
The Faculty Member on Duty
The plan at Kean has two components: a new course schedule and new work rules for faculty members. The new schedule, which is to begin next spring, will make class meeting times shorter and more frequent. For example, some courses that have been offered on Mondays and Wednesdays for 80 minutes each day will instead meet on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for 50 minutes each, faculty members say.
“If you reapportion courses and spread them out throughout the day and across the week, you can put more people on campus,” said Kenneth B. Sanders, associate vice president for academic affairs. “We have fixed costs in regard to heating, air-conditioning, and lighting. This is an effort to better utilize our resources.”
Mr. Sanders said that is important because the state-budget allocation for Kean has been cut by $4.5-million for next year. By using more days of the week for class time, he said, the university can add more courses and boost enrollment, allowing it to bring in more money and hold down tuition increases.
Under the plan on faculty work rules, Kean professors must be in their offices for two hours a day, four days a week, starting this fall. Faculty members are required to hold only about half that many office hours now, and they have been allowed to schedule them around their courses. Also under the plan, some department chairs will schedule professors’ office hours to ensure that at least one faculty member in the department is available throughout the day.
“Our most valuable resource is human,” said Mr. Sanders. He said the administration wanted to “provide better service to students and distribute faculty effort.”
A Help for Students?
But representatives of the faculty union at Kean object to both the new faculty office hours and the new course schedule. They say a schedule that requires more-frequent class meetings will be inconvenient for students, many of whom work full time and cannot commute to the campus an extra day each week. The skyrocketing cost of gasoline is already having an effect on commuter students across the country, prompting many of them to switch to online courses (The Chronicle, July 8).
“Our student body is overwhelmingly working-class individuals,” said James A. Castiglione, president of the Kean’s faculty union and an associate professor of physics. Rather than come to the campus more frequently, students will simply take fewer courses and take longer to graduate, he predicted, or simply transfer to another university.
As for the new office-hour requirement, union representatives say professors are already in frequent contact with undergraduates, particularly by e-mail because that is more convenient for students who work. Creating more office hours will not necessarily help students and will cut into time faculty members have reserved for research and writing, some professors have complained.
Ms. Keil, the sociologist, commutes to Kean from Manhattan by train, about an hour and a half each way, three days a week to teach. She doesn’t do much of her research or writing on the campus because she shares her office with another professor. “I can’t really get a lot done there,” she said.
Under the new work rules, Ms. Keil’s department scheduled her to hold office hours next spring that do not coincide with the classes she will teach. For example, on one day she will be required to hold office hours from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m., but she doesn’t teach that day until 4:30 p.m. “I might be available to students who walk in, but it won’t be for the students I’m teaching,” she said. “If students need to see me about a paper or an assignment or a lecture, this is not necessarily convenient for them.”
‘The Product of Months of Conversation’
The faculty union says administrators imposed the new rules on office hours only after professors joined students in a demonstration last May against the new course schedule. “This was retaliation,” said Maria del Carmen Rodriguez, who is the immediate past president of the union and an assistant professor of counseling. That is why the union is seeking an injunction, she said.
Mr. Sanders said faculty members had been consulted on all of the coming changes, and he called the charge of retaliation ridiculous. “This is the product of months of conversation,” he said.
Mark Lender, interim provost and vice president for academic affairs at Kean, said many professors already were on the campus five to six days a week, doing teaching and research. “Our good researchers look at all this and essentially say, So?,” he said. “The folks who are making these arguments are not among our most active researchers.”