URGENT: Your Help Needed - A Colleague and a Program in Peril!

[Boris Wolfson]

Dear Colleagues,

Some of you may have already heard about a terrible situation at the
University of Florida, which has just announced an outrageous set of plans
that involve eliminating tenure-track faculty positions in foreign
languages.  I wanted to share with the list a message from our colleague
Ingrid Kleespies (AB Harvard, PhD Berkeley), who describes the specifics
of the situation and appends some information put together by her
colleagues.  I understand that appeals made on behalf of some other
faculty members targeted for termination are having a real effect - the
list of people to be fired originally had 20 faculty on it, and now four,
including another Slavist have been removed from it, i.e. spared.  Another
colleague reports:

> I was told that the University President Machen said that he welcomes
> additional information from people and that if he gets enough valid
> information he might "pull" certain people off his list. Tuesday Machen
> will be meeting with the Board of Trustees who will be asked to approve
> his cuts and layoffs. So we have a very narrow window. I.e. the new
> deadline for any additional information is next Monday the 12th.

As you see, this is an outrageous situation.  Ingrid Kleespies is one of
the most promising and brilliant young Slavists working today, a model
colleague and scholar.  Please read on to learn more about the situation,
and if you are able to help, please keep in mind that your message is
likely to have a meaningful effect.  Please feel free to spread the word
to those colleagues who may not be subscribed to SEELANGS.

With thanks in advance,

Boris Wolfson, USC

 ==========================================================================

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I am writing with very sad and shocking news regarding my position at
the University of Florida.  On May 5, I was informed that I am one of
approximately 20 tenure-track faculty slated for lay-off due to the
severe budget crisis facing the university.  While no rationale has
been officially offered as to why I and my colleagues were
specifically targeted, two things are clear: foreign languages are
slated to receive the lion's share of the restructuring and layoffs,
and tenure track faculty in the affected departments seem to have
been targeted based on date of hire.  I am among those most recently
hired in the Dept. of Germanic and Slavic Studies, although this is
my 4th year of employment here.

The affected departments are: Asian and African Languages, Romance
Languages, Religion, and Germanic and Slavic Studies.  No other
departments within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences are
targeted for layoffs.  In addition to the proposed cuts to tenure
track faculty, the budget cuts call for the merger of all languages
into a Department of Modern Languages, with the exception of Spanish
and Portuguese, which will become an independent unit.  The plan also
calls for the elimination of three established and long-running PhD
programs, those in Philosophy, French, and German.  118 staff are
slated for reduction.

Beyond my/our personal distress at this situation, we are shocked at
the evisceration of programs dedicated to foreign languages and
cultures.  UF has launched an intensive campaign in the last several
years promoting the internationalization of the campus and recently
completed the construction of the Senator Bob Graham Center for
Public Service.  One of the three points in the Center's mission
statement concerns the need to seek solutions to problems confronting
policy makers in the area of homeland security.  The Center hopes to
do so by "by supporting courses and degree programs in less commonly
taught languages, critical thinking, analysis and area studies."
Clearly, losses to programs such as Arabic, Russian, and Asian
languages will be a direct impediment to this goal.

We feel strongly that, if approved, these cuts will constitute an
enormous blow to the University of Florida's core educational
mission.  These cuts will also send the signal to young scholars of
national reputation that being hired tenure-track at UF provides no
assurance of an equitable and fair consideration for tenure, even for
those doing everything right -- establishing stellar national
reputations and demonstrating outstanding performance in the classroom.

We are writing you today to ask for your support.  If you feel that
these cuts are unwise, and in particular, if you feel that you might
write a letter or brief statement of support for Russian Studies and/
or for me personally, this would be enormously appreciated.  Also, if
you can think of other people whom it might make sense for me to
contact, or who might be interested in lending their support, then
please feel free to pass this on or give me their contact
information.  The situation is time-sensitive: the President has
stated that it is possible to make some modifications to this plan,
but it is critical that feedback arrive earlier rather than later in
order to maximize its impact.

I've taken the liberty of attaching some talking points below about
the cuts, the UF Russian program, and my position.  If I can provide
any further information, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Letters should be addressed to
UF President Bernard Machen (jbmachen at UFL.EDU) and should cc:
Provost Joseph Glover (jglover at aa.ufl.edu)
Professor Christopher Snodgrass (snod at ENGLISH.UFL.EDU) of the UF Faculty Senate
Will Hasty, Chair, Germanic and Slavic Studies (hasty at ufl.edu)
Amie Kreppel, Director, CES (kreppel at ces.ufl.edu)
Professor Michael Gorham (mgorham at ufl.edu

Best Regards,
Ingrid Kleespies


TALKING POINTS

1) A few words about the UF Russian Major and Russian Studies Program:
At full strength, the Russian Studies faculty delivers an extremely
high number of student credit hours per faculty member per semester,
an impressive figure considering faculty members do 100% of the
language instruction. (These are enrollment-capped courses.)

  All peer and top-ten public institutions have full-fledged Russian
programs, most with their own PhDs. Even without the advanced degree
programs, UF Russian Studies equals or surpasses programs at peer
institutions in the number of majors it produces and the number of
student credit hours it generates. The program can boast a noticeable
upward trend in both student contact hours and Russian Majors.

  2)  About Ingrid Kleespies:
UF hired Dr. Kleespies in 2005 as a "target of opportunity,"
competing successfully against outside offers from top ranked Slavic
departments.  She has since established herself nationally as a
rising star in Russian literary and cultural studies, with
publications in three different leading peer review journals: Russian
Literature, Slavic and East European Journal, and Slavic Review, and
more publications in the pipeline.

  She has developed 5 new courses in her 6 semesters at UF, all of
which have been central in delivering the Russian Major to our
students. Kleespies is currently in the process of developing the
mandatory Special Topics Majors Seminar for Fall 2008.

Her courses in literature and culture have also demonstrated cross-
disciplinary appeal. She has done more than her share (~75%) of teaching
in intensive, entry-level language courses that are critical sowing
grounds for the Russian major.  In her 4 years of employment she has
developed a corps of ardent fans and followers among Russian majors and
has been a huge asset in generating new majors.  She has an average
⌠Overall instructor rating■ of 4.91 out of a possible high of 5 (based on
available 2006, 2007 data), significantly above departmental and college
means.

She has regularly volunteered for university service duties above and
beyond the normal expectations of tenure-accruing faculty, most
recently serving as a ⌠Preview■ adviser for incoming freshmen in
Academic Advising and as Undergraduate Coordinator for Russian for
the 2008-2009 academic year. She has served on several departmental
committees, including search committees for new positions in Czech,
German, and Slavic (2004-05, 2005-06). She also served as Director of
the UF Summer in Prague Program 2005.

3) The Broader Consequences of Laying Off Tenure-Track Faculty
These proposed faculty layoffs will do great damage to UF's
reputation.  It will take decades to rebuild the core strengths now
being sacrificed for short term reasons.  The precedent of laying off
tenure-track faculty in the middle of their pre-tenure career will
serve as a huge hurdle to *all* departments at UF in the future.
What young scholar is going to choose to come to UF and invest time
in building a record there when the university shows that there is no
security on the investment?

The proposed cuts are not targeted equitably.  Rather than spreading
the pain of budget cuts across the university, these cuts target it
at sections where it causes the most extreme result (faculty-
layoffs).  Of the roughly twenty colleges and professional schools
with the university, the College of Liberal Arts and Science (CLAS)
was disproportionately affected by the faculty lay-offs, comprising a
full 80% of the total (16 out of 20 lay-offs total).  In terms of
research, targeting languages for cuts has direct adverse effects on
other disciplines, such as Anthropology, History, Political Science,
not to mention new endeavors such as the Graham Center.

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