As scrutiny mounts over Ben Sasse’s abrupt exit from the University of Florida and his expenditures as president, the school is facing another hurdle his successor must confront: smoothing over relationships with faculty.
Under Sasse, university relations with faculty members frayed over concerns with financial transparency, the state’s move to end tenure and the controversial curriculum at UF’s new Hamilton Center, a think tank and college established by the Florida Legislature last year.
UF announced last week that a longtime provost, Joe Glover, will return to the University of Florida as its top academic officer, replacing the provost appointed by Sasse, Scott Angle.
Glover, who spent 15 years at UF and had a consistent but at times contentious relationship with faculty, left shortly before Sasse arrived. He started as provost at the University of Arizona this July, even buying a home in Tucson. But one month into that job he announced he was leaving at the request of interim UF President Kent Fuchs.
As pressures mount, changes in top leaders have begun. Angle will return to his previous position as senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources and head of the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences when Glover returns in September.
Fuchs and Glover are returning to a campus where faculty at times questioned their commitment to standing up to state pressures. Now that they’re back, here are a few of the issues they’ll be expected to address.
Tension over state policies
Angle’s brief tenure as provost was marked by choppy relationships in rolling out initiatives driven by Sasse and state officials.
UF completed its first post tenure review this summer. The process was mandated by a new law, and many faculty saw it as replacing the institution of tenure in Florida with a five-year contract.
At a faculty senate meeting Thursday, one faculty member proclaimed: “Tenure is dead.”
UF’s review found about 1 in 5 cases did not meet expectations or were unsatisfactory. Five were let go, and the rest were put on performance improvement plans. The Board of Trustees recently approved 4% raises for faculty who performed well.
By contrast, Florida State University found all candidates who went through the process in satisfactory standing.
Faculty union grievance coordinator Churchill Roberts recently said he’d been “up to his earlobes” in calls from faculty. One faculty member who was found unsatisfactory was globally recognized in his field of study, Roberts said. His director couldn’t think of how to write a performance improvement plan. Roberts felt it was a violation of due process.
Some faculty are not hopeful that Glover will be different in this sense. The origin of the post tenure review was believed to be initially designed by a provost in 2021, and many faculty at the time felt administrators did not do enough to protect them.
In an interview, Fuchs said he supported the idea of a post tenure review as long as it was devoid of politics.
It’s not the only occasion Sasse’s administration and faculty clashed. Unlike his predecessor, Fuchs, who attended each faculty senate meeting, Sasse distanced himself after initial meetings.
Sasse hired former U.S. Senate colleagues and personal friends as advisors and administrators and often leaned on his inner circle, which at times was at odds with established ways at the university. Student newspaper The Independent Florida Alligator this month published an article detailing Sasse’s spending on hiring former allies — including a $4.3 million increase in salary expenses for his office compared to Fuchs.
After spending $4.7 million on a consulting report and embarking on alistening tour for ideas of how to revamp the university, Sasse also announced the allocation of $130 million in funds to strategically support these ideas. Some went to individual research proposals, while others went to departments.
Faculty union chairperson Meera Sitharam said the “chaotic” way the process unfolded led some to question who was advising him, and that it “came across as unresearched as shoddy.”
At Thursday’s faculty senate meeting, Fuchs told faculty he had no interest in being “a program manager” for national funding organizations and planned to return allocation decisions of individual research projects to provosts, deans, department chairs and other faculty.
In a letter to the union, Sitharam called for transparency and an account of where another $190 million in state funds received over the past two years has gone.
Hamilton Center controversies
Another flashpoint occurred over the Hamilton Center, the nascent think tank and soon-to-be college.
The center, which is focused on “the ideas, traditions and texts that form the foundations of Western and American civilizations,” has been met with skepticism since it was mandated and funded by the state in an increasingly politicized climate.
In an interview, Fuchs acknowledged that no one on campus had asked for the center, but that he was impressed by the work that had been done so far.
“If we’re going to do it … then let’s do it in a way that it is world-class, the very, very best, and so that it adds in a positive way to the reputation of the institution,” he said.
The university sought support for the center’s new curriculum from faculty in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, which offers similar courses.
Shortly thereafter, six faculty members — three department chairs and three graduate coordinators — in the college were sent letters saying they would be investigated and could be terminated, with little explanation as to why.
College dean David Richardson launched the inquiry over a complaint that originated in the Hamilton Center. Richardson has since stepped down, and the inquiries were dropped.
Roberts, the union grievance coordinator who sat in on one interview that he called a “fishing expedition,” compared the situation to being sued by a best friend because of how closely chairs and deans work together. A spokesperson for the university said neither Sasse nor Angle were involved in launching the investigations, but several faculty didn’t believe that the dean made the decision on his own.
Roberts called it “a rookie mistake” that likely wouldn’t have happened underFuchs and Glover.
“These are faculty here upwards of 20 years, distinguished scholars, and you treat them like they’re criminals,” he said. “It really caused bad feelings. What it did to faculty-administration relations is just beyond belief.”
Currently, five of the university’s 16 colleges are being led by interim deans. But even experienced leaders like Fuchs and Glover are viewed skeptically by some faculty members.
Ben Smith, a faculty senator from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, asked Fuchs if he would ask the university’s general counsel to close out a lawsuit filed by three faculty members at the end of Fuchs’ first term. The faculty alleged they were forbidden from testifying in a case against the state — one of the earliest examples of the state’s desire to exert more control over state universities.
“It would be a symbolically huge thing,” Smith said.
Sitharam said Glover may be in an improvement in some ways, but that ultimately faculty needed to band together before the school’s next president is selected.
“Administrators come, go, and even come back,” Sitharam wrote in an email to the union. “They may yank the reins, for their own purposes or in service to their imagined political bosses. They may even get headlines along the way — sometimes good, more often bad. We should not let these headlines distract us, because what really matters is our trust in one another, our commitment to act in solidarity.”