They Complained About Their Office. Then Kean U. Took Their Jobs Away.

Heather E. Connors got good news in December. Because Kean University values its general-education faculty, a letter from the provost said, any lecturer who returned in the fall would get a pay bump, including her.

But in March another letter arrived, this time bearing bad news. The provost would not be recommending Connors, who teaches writing, for reappointment.

In fact, 10 of the department’s 18 lecturers would not be recommended for reappointment, even though all 18 received the same letter that Connors did in December, said James A. Castiglione, president of the New Jersey university’s faculty union.

The December letter said that Kean was investing “substantial resources to continue its ever-improving graduation rates,” and that general-education faculty members were “a critical component in our delivery of academic services to our students.” (Kean has a six-year graduation rate of 49 percent.)

And yet over the past three weeks or so, without warning, more than half of the department’s lecturers have been told they wouldn’t be coming back next year, Castiglione said. Why? According to Castiglione, Connors, and other lecturers whose contracts weren’t renewed, the department was being cleared of the people who had spoken up the loudest about their working conditions, which they said weren’t quiet enough, or private enough, to talk confidentially with students.

The lecturers “were advocating for the best interests of their students, directly with the president,” Castiglione said, “and they’re being fired for doing so.”

A Kean spokeswoman disputed that assertion. Karen Smith, vice president for university relations, said in an email that administrators “fairly and equitably review each lecturer’s contributions in teaching and service” to make the recommendations for reappointment. “We recognize that people who are not recommended for another contract are often upset and may put forth explanations that are irrelevant,” she said.

“It’s unfortunate that the collective-bargaining unit’s leadership makes it a practice to mislead the public by misconstruing the facts,” she added.

Kean has seen its fair share of controversy during Dawood Y. Farahi’s tenure as president. The union, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, voted “no confidence” in Farahi in 2012, after inaccuracies in his résumé surfaced. The university has also suffered accreditation woes; in 2012 it was put on probation. Farahi also drew criticism when the public university bought a $250,000 conference table, a purchase that was later deemed illegal by the state comptroller.

Faculty members have described Kean as a “hostile” environment in which to teach, Castiglione said. For the believers, the lecturers’ experience is one more piece of evidence.

Marketing Calls

General-education lecturers at Kean teach entry-level courses in writing, mathematics, and research methods as well as something called “Transition to Kean,” the university’s freshman seminar. The job has a heavy teaching and advising load, and is ultimately very student-focused, Connors said. Most faculty members teach five or six courses a semester, and each lecturer has 70 to 90 student advisees, she estimated.

And within the past two years, lecturers were told to call students who had been accepted to Kean but had not yet put down a deposit, said Straubel Cetoute, a math lecturer who was recently told his contract wouldn’t be renewed.

“We were literally doing marketing calls to students pretty much on a weekly basis,” he said.

When asked about the policy, Smith, the spokeswoman, said that Kean, like many colleges, “has involved faculty in student recruitment for years, including calling incoming freshmen to welcome them to campus and answer questions about their programs.” Most recently, she said, “they received training on the use of new software to help them more efficiently reach accepted students.”

More trouble cropped up last year, when the department’s faculty members were told they’d be changing offices. At the time, each lecturer had a private office. But they were soon moved to a “bullpen”-style cubicle-based floor plan, with short dividers between desks, Castiglione said. Lecturers were immediately worried about the lack of privacy for their advisees.

“The cubicles are very close to each other,” Cetoute said. “Any conversation can be heard.”

Students often talk with general-education lecturers about difficult classes or disciplinary problems, Connors said. Sometimes they disclose personal problems, including mental-health issues. The lecturers said they worried about potential violations of federal student-privacy law, and they wanted to make sure that the students felt comfortable. The open office can get noisy, and everyone can hear everything, the lecturers said. It wasn’t that they needed private offices for their egos, Connors said. It was so they could do their jobs.

Smith, the spokeswoman, said the newly revamped Center for Academic Success, where the lecturers work, contains “the appropriate balance of open office space and private spaces for confidential conversations.”

‘Watching My Colleagues Just Crumble’

In October, President Farahi met with the lecturers at a luncheon. During the lunch, he asked them what they thought of the new space. “He sort of put us in this position very directly where we had to answer,” Connors said. “And we had to answer truthfully.”

Shayla Ward, who teaches English, said she was the first person to speak up. Ward said she’d told Farahi, “No, we are not happy with the space.” Ultimately, she said, they’d make do. But was this set-up ideal? No, she told him.

Cetoute said they’d given the president examples of students who were emotional or vulnerable, some of whom had to be taken by a lecturer to a nearby art gallery for discussions because there was no privacy in their office space. After the lunch, it seemed as if Farahi had heard them, Connors said. But she remembers thinking that the meeting “might come back to bite us,” she said. “And it did.”

The contract nonrenewals came without warning, the lecturers said. The 10 people who were told they wouldn’t be returning to the university were all people who had spoken up at the luncheon, Connors said. Ward, Cetoute, and another lecturer in the department, who asked to be anonymous because she feared retaliation from Kean, said the nonrenewals were retaliatory. Castiglione agreed.

In an email, Smith, the university spokeswoman, said that Kean’s personnel recommendations “are based solely on what is best for our students, and any suggestion otherwise is entirely false.” More than 90 percent of Kean’s lecturers seeking renewal of their annual contracts will be recommended to the Board of Trustees, and that figure is “roughly consistent” with prior years, she said. As with any institution, not everyone meets the evaluation standards, Smith said.

The departing lecturers don’t buy it. “If Kean U. claims to care about students,” Ward said, “they have a very strange way of showing it.”

Kean serves many students of color, first-generation students, and students who work multiple jobs, Ward said. Many lecturers in the general-education department were first-generation students themselves, she said. Many are women and people of color, so they understand where their students are coming from, she added. “On many levels we relate to the students we’re bringing in,” Ward said. “And now you’re taking us away.”

Many lecturers have established relationships with the students they teach and advise. “That is what is most hurtful,” Ward said, “is having to leave these students behind.”

By gutting the department, “you are throwing out a bunch of knowledge,” said Connors. “You are throwing out connections that people have made with their students.”

The hardest part of the past few weeks has been “watching my colleagues just crumble,” said one lecturer who was not renewed. Many of the general-education faculty members are Kean alumni. Recently, that lecturer peeled a Kean sticker off her car. It left a permanent imprint, she said.

She’s sad, she’s angry, and she’s hurt. “I always wondered” what it’d feel like to be let go, she said. “I don’t, anymore.”

Emma Pettit is a staff reporter at The Chronicle. Follow her on Twitter @EmmaJanePettit, or email her at emma.pettit@chronicle.com.