SUNY-ESF students remain concerned by abrupt removal of 3 department chairs

Two weeks after a sudden SUNY-ESF policy change, students at the college continue to question why three faculty chairs were abruptly removed from their positions.

The three chairs were told to step down from their positions in a Jan. 11 meeting with SUNY-ESF President Quentin Wheeler and Nosa Egiebor, the college’s provost and executive vice president.

Several students said they felt university administrators did not give them complete answers as to why the chairs were removed so quickly, and so close to the start of the spring semester.

“My concern is not with the actual decision, but more so with how it was executed. There was very little transparency in the decision-making,” said Christopher Ludlam, a junior bioprocess engineering major.

In a campus-wide email to students on Jan. 14, Wheeler said the decision to implement a policy limiting chairs to two three-year appointments, “has a number of advantages such as routine infusion of new ideas and development of leadership skills among faculty.”

The three chairs — David Newman of the forest and natural resources management department; Donald Leopold of the forest biology department; and Gary Scott of the paper and bioprocess engineering department — were removed because they had been serving longest in their positions, he said. They will remain on as SUNY-ESF faculty.

In an interview with The Daily Orange on Jan. 18, Wheeler said all chairs at the university will eventually be rotated out.

Ben Taylor, president of the college’s Undergraduate Student Association, said students were primarily concerned with the timing of Wheeler’s decision and the lack of communication surrounding the department chair shake-up.

Students got an email about the chair removals days after faculty and staff first received notification, Taylor said, which resulted in students first hearing about the issue through Facebook.

“They should have done it the same day as the rest of campus,” Taylor said.

Some students, such as Molly Devlin, a junior biotechnology major, were concerned with how quickly the department chairs were removed, months before they were initially scheduled to step down, in August.

She said the action seemed unnecessary and that she still had questions about the university’s decision.

Other students were concerned about potential issues with programs directed by the department chairs who were removed by college leadership.

Neil Goodman, a junior paper engineering major, said members of the paper and bioprocess engineering department are uneasy with the shake-up because the department had been preparing to welcome almost 50 international students next fall. The department has also been planning to launch a new major with multiple concentrations, Goodman said.

Autumn Elniski, a bioprocess engineering Ph.D. candidate, said the shake-up was difficult for graduate students.

“My projects are all with the department chair,” Elniski said. “So, now my group of graduate students are going in, not knowing exactly what they are supposed to be doing because our chair has now been removed and replaced with an interim chair who has never really worked with us before.”

Taylor said when SUNY-ESF makes decisions he knows will be controversial, he tries to make sure administrators speak with students.

About 350 students attended a town hall with Wheeler and other administrators on Jan. 18, where they asked questions about the department chair removals and other university issues.

Though Taylor said administrators were able to clarify some student questions, he added that students seemed disappointed overall with the answers they received.

Ludlam also said he hoped the meeting would have provided clarity about the department chair removals, but instead it only made him more confused. He said he felt administrators had a hard time responding to questions directly.

Students repeated similar questions, Devlin said, and she felt Wheeler did not answer them thoroughly.

“It kind of seemed like he was talking around stuff,” she said.

Wheeler said in the Jan. 18 interview that he understood why people might be upset by the decision to remove the three department chairs based on partial information. Some information about the removals was withheld “out of respect for individuals” and not to embarrass “anyone,” he said.

As a group, department chairs have not been fully engaged in a “deliberative, collaborative process as part of senior college leadership,” Wheeler said in the interview.

“I can’t help but feel the students have little influence on the vision of the president,” Goodman said. “That said, I fully recognize it’s not the students’ job to run the college, but now more than ever I get the feeling Dr. Wheeler simply doesn’t care what we think, say or do.”

Devlin said professors have continuously urged students to speak up about matters within the school throughout her time at SUNY-ESF, but she doesn’t know how student voices can be heard and that it doesn’t seem to do anything when students try to be active.

Ludlam said that, although he believed students were respected as a group and the college gave students a “seat at the table,” he felt administrators treated students as inferiors.

On Friday, SUNY-ESF’s Graduate Student Association released a statement expressing “disappointment” in the university’s decision to remove the department chairs.

If the removals occurred with greater consideration, the university could have avoided frustration on campus, according to the statement.

Taylor said the Undergraduate Student Association is in the process of collecting student feedback in a Google Form. The organization will base future decisions based on that feedback, he said.