Events at the University of Dubuque

On March 19, 1999, the Board of Trustees announced its Plan for Transformation, a plan developed without faculty involvement.  Under the Plan, the University would eliminate 23 of its 37 majors/programs and also would terminate the services of several faculty and staff.  The Board unanimously approved the Plan on April 28 despite recommendations from two faculty committees to not implement the Plan as it had been presented.  Internal discussions of the Plan focused on the financial situation at UD and that the Plan would provide financial savings due to budget "adjustments" (reductions) in programs, salaries, athletics, tuition discounts, and operating budgets.  External discussion of the Plan focused on the transformation of the University from a liberal arts institution into a Professional University with a liberal arts foundation.  Also, the Plan would help the University achieve the goals of its new Mission, Vision, and Action Plan.

On Wednesday, May 12, just three days before graduation, President Bullock, accompanied by an attorney and a security guard, told several faculty members who chose to meet with him that their contracts would be terminated.  On Thursday, May 13, the Human Resources Director, accompanied by security, hand-delivered termination notices to fourteen faculty members in their offices, classrooms, or homes.  These fourteen represented one-third of UD's full-time faculty for undergraduate instruction!
 

The faculty members who received the termination notices were:  all three members of the History/Political Science Department, both members of the Math Department, the sole members of the Departments of Chemistry, Music, Foreign Languages, and International Studies, and five of the seven members of the Department of Business and Economics.  Ten of these faculty members were tenured and four are non-tenured.  Eleven of the fourteen hold Ph.D. degrees.

The fourteen faculty members have a total of 227 years of service to the University of Dubuque.  Of the ten tenured faculty members, nine of them have served UD for at least 17 years and three have served UD for at least 29 years!  All of the termination notices included a 12-month advance notification.

Two of the fourteen have found other employment beginning this fall.  In July, UD offered some of the fourteen faculty members a "Faculty Transition Agreement" under which the faculty member would voluntarily agree to sever ties with UD.  Three of the fourteen accepted the terms of this Agreement and will not return to UD.  On August 11, just two weeks before the fall term was to begin, five faculty members, including the two members of the Math Department, were given notice to clean out their offices by August 20.  The University informed those faculty members that they would be performing no duties during the fall semester and that it was unlikely that they would perform any duties in the spring.  Despite this, the University is honoring its contractual obligations to these five.  Only four of the original fourteen who received the termination notices will be teaching at UD during the 1999-2000 academic year.

A few of the courses that the terminated faculty members would have taught have been canceled.  Part-time instructors are teaching many of the remaining courses these faculty members would have taught.  For example, the University hired three additional part-time instructors to teach the mathematics courses scheduled for the fall at the same time it relieved the two tenured members of the Math Department of all duties.

It is interesting to note that all but one of the fourteen faculty members receiving termination notices had signed on to actively defend themselves in the recent lawsuit filed by the UD Board of Trustees.  The one member who did not sign on for legal representation was not employed at UD when the lawsuit first began.  The Board of Trustees took the faculty to court in March 1998 asking the court to declare the Faculty Handbook an "administrative policy" rather than a legally binding contract.  The Handbook had been in effect for eight years and had been treated by both the faculty and the Board as a contract that could only be changed by mutual agreement.  The judge ruled in June 1999 that indeed the Faculty Handbook is a contract yet the Board of Trustees can amend the Handbook without the approval of the Faculty Assembly (the faculty as a whole).

Julia K. McDonald
jmcdonald_udbq@hotmail.com
 
 


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This page was last revised on November 7, 1999.