Results of last week’s faculty vote of no confidence in President Shirley Ann Jackson were announced at the Faculty Senate meeting held Wednesday afternoon in the Heffner Alumni House. By a vote of 149 in favor, 155 against, and 16 abstaining, then-President of the Faculty Senate Achille Messac declared that the vote had failed. Turnout for the election was high at 63.4 percent.
The vote prompted Jackson to call a meeting of the full faculty to “discuss where we are and how, together, we can continue to move Rensselaer forward.” This meeting was closed to strictly faculty and invited members of the administration. Students present at the meeting were asked to leave, including reporters and photographers for The Polytechnic and officers of student government. The reason given for this was to allow an open and free dialogue between the president and the faculty without anyone holding back.
During the meeting, Jackson read a statement outlining her position on The Rensselaer Plan and what she believes should and should not be done in the coming weeks and months to solve the communications problem on campus. She spoke about how The Plan was important for RPI, and needed to be driven “hard and quickly, since we had no time to lose.” She also spoke about the desire and need for engagement between the faculty and the administration, and what needed to be done on both sides to foster that.
Jackson also described what engagement means: “Engagement does not mean that everyone does everyone else’s job. It is not the role of the administration to do the faculty’s job. It, likewise, is not the role of the faculty to do the administration’s job. Clarity comes from knowing the difference.” The full statement is available on RPI’s News and Information web site, http://news.rpi.edu/.
Jackson said after the meeting that she was pleased with the way the meeting went, and hopes to have more like it in the coming weeks and months. She said she will continue to meet for small dinners with 15-20 faculty and other “less-structured interactions,” such as the meeting she recently had with the Physics Department. The important first steps have been taken, she felt, and the campus will be moving forward.
“Everything is not going to be perfect overnight, but you have to lance the boil in order to heal it, and I think we’ve done that,” she said with hope. She concluded, “It’s been an interesting exercise, not easy, but important, and that’s the real message here.”
According to Jim Napolitano, the new president of the Faculty Senate, approximately 10 faculty members asked questions of Jackson following her statement on a range of topics. Some wanted to emphasize the point that things aren’t in good shape, he said, while some wanted to thank Jackson for holding a meeting and really trying to start to solve the problem.
One professor said at the meeting that while he was sorry that Jackson had to endure the vote of no confidence, he would not apologize for it because the results broke the bubble of perception that there was a small but vocal minority of professors concerned about the direction of the school. The vote, he said, showed that it is a widespread concern and the realization of this will be invaluable in helping solve the problem.
He was echoed by another professor who pointed out, “an ounce of consultation is worth a pound of communication.”
Messac said that the turnout for the no-confidence vote was “far and away the largest number of votes we’ve ever had.” Out of the 505 eligible voters, 320 cast votes—73.5 percent of tenure-track faculty, 52.9 percent of the librarians, 51.7 percent of the research faculty, and 19.9 percent of retirees. By contrast, the December 2005 governance survey turnout was 35.6 percent, and 37.2 percent for the December 2004 governance survey.
Napolitano said he remains optimistic, even after the recent events. “We have serious problems,” he explained. “There’s no doubt about that,” but described that he and most of his fellow faculty believe in the essence of The Rensselaer Plan and there just needs to be more discussion about how to facilitate cooperation.
The e-mail list that was set up by the provost’s office to encourage open communication among faculty regarding the no-confidence vote will be kept open indefinitely. The Faculty Senate regarded the list, which generated hundreds of e-mails over a few days, as an “amazing tool” and asked that it remain open as long as faculty members can opt out of the group.
