I got an email end of last week from a friend who got me an adjunct teaching gig at the university where he works, in the Minnesota State system. He's a guy I've known for several years and I had collaborated with him, writing an open textbook for the course he got me a section of in his department to teach this semester.

He said they had an opening for an American History professor coming open, due to a retirement. The way the system works, when there's an opening the university HR staff checks a list of retrenched faculty to interview first, and they found an American Historian who had been retrenched in 2023 from a different university in the system (they're all struggling).

My friend said he ha asked HR about me, but he was told my name was not on the "retrenched" list. He was writing me partly to let me know. I responded to him that I assumed that was because I didn't have tenure. My Dean and Provost at BSU had urged me to apply for tenure during my final year, since I was eligible and had been planning to apply for tenure and promotion before I was retrenched. But then my union, the Interfaculty Organization (IFO), told me it wouldn’t count for any type of contractual claiming rights for other jobs in the system unless I already had been promoted and granted tenure before my separation date (May 7, 2024). And unfortunately the President of BSU declined to make a decision before the time he typically processed tenure and promotions in June. He was probably quite busy -- actually I'm being sarcastic here. He's pretty useless, incompetent, and uncaring. In any case, I didn’t get tenure.

After all I did, above and beyond the call of duty, for BSU, I thought that was pretty shitty. Neither my Dean nor the Provost had the will or the political capital to do anything for me, which was disappointing. I don't blame the Dean; her job has been hell the past several years. And although I have a hard time believing the Provost was ever acting in good faith, he has subsequently resigned or perhaps has been forced out of BSU as a scapegoat, so I guess keeping his head down and choosing his battles didn't pay off for him. That said, the IFO didn’t exactly go to bat for me either, after all the membership dues I paid in. So maybe I'm better off not landing another job in a university in this system.

Ironically, the IFO local president who really didn't go to bat for me is now facing the same situation I faced last year. He was informed before the start of the fall semester that he will be retrenched at the end of the academic year. After finding out he was being laid off, he wrote a letter to the editor of the Bemidji Pioneer, suggesting "Bemidji’s taxpayers should consider whether a university that spends only a third of its expenses on instruction is really prioritizing education." He also noted that after faculty came up with a reorganization that saved the university about $1 million, "All the money professors saved in instructional costs last year was entirely eaten up by uncontrolled spending on facilities, administration and athletics." So at least that particular MinnState university doesn't really seem focused on delivering learning to students.

That said, the community colleges in the system seem to be a bit more stable and may be viable for the slightly longer term. I like the students and things seem to be going pretty well. I'm keeping busy and there seems to be a chance I'll continuing to be able to find history courses to teach in the next academic year. So although the work is a lot more contingent and gig-like, at least there's work!

Retrenchments Continue at BSU!

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