Associate dean, department head resigns in protest of program eliminations at UNCG

The campus of UNC-Greensboro (Photo: UNCG)

An associate dean and department head at UNC Greensboro resigned Wednesday in protest of the process used to identify programs that may be cut on the campus, pointing to a lack of transparency and “egregious behavior from senior administration,” according to a resignation letter obtained by Newsline.

Charles Bolton, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and interim head of the university’s anthropology department, tendered his resignation in a scathing letter to the college’s dean, John Kiss. Programs in Bolton’s own department were on a list of 19 potential eliminations the university released last week. That list, and the process university administrators used to create it, has been hotly debated since.

“I have come to understand that some of the decisions made to place programs and courses on the discontinued list — specifically, the BA in Anthropology, the MA in Mathematics, the minors in Russian and Chinese and the course in Korean — have not been made in a fair, transparent and collaborative way in which the university has repeatedly described the APR [Academic Portfolio Review] process,” Bolton wrote in his resignation letter.

“Both the BA in Anthropology and the MA in Mathematics scored in the ‘Meets expectations’ section of the rubric that the administration largely developed and approved,” Bolton wrote, noting the language minors and courses were not scored in the rubric as part of the portfolio review at all.

“The [College of Arts and Sciences] Budget and Planning Committee did not recommend that any of these programs/courses be discontinued,” Bolton wrote to the dean. “And my understanding is that you also did not initially recommend that any of these programs/course be discontinued.”

That’s a sentiment with which faculty and students have largely agreed, with the campus faculty senate passing a unanimous resolution last week objecting to the process. Public forums for faculty, students and alumni have seen furious resistance to the cuts, questions about the process and highlighting of errors in the process and announcement.

Bolton alleged that Provost Debbie Storrs pressured Kiss to eliminate the programs and courses.

“I believe that you went along with these suggestions in the reasonable belief that to do otherwise would put other programs in the College of Arts and Sciences in danger of being added to the discontinuation list,” Bolton wrote. “Of course, that strategy has proven to not be entirely successful.”

Bolton went on to charge that Kiss agreed to the discontinuation of the master’s program in mathematics in the hope that the Ph.D in the same program would be kept off the list. That didn’t work, Bolton said, as both programs could be eliminated.

Bolton has held administrative positions for 31 of his 34 years in academia. That includes a decade as director of an academic center, 15 years as a department head at two separate institutions, and more than six years as associate dean at UNCG.

“I know egregious behavior from senior administration when I see it,” Bolton wrote, calling the addition of the programs he cited to the list of possible cuts a “heavy handed and capricious decision made by one individual (Provost Storrs) in an unfair, nontransparent and uncollaborative way.

“Certainly not a model of shared governance in an academic environment and not actions worthy of an institution like the University of North Carolina Greensboro.”

A university spokeswoman declined to comment on the resignation Wednesday afternoon, saying it is a personnel matter.

Kiss, who last week accepted a provost position at Florida Tech, addressed Bolton’s letter at a faculty senate meeting Wednesday afternoon.

“I looked at all the programs and worked with my three associate deans,” Kiss said. “We had a robust internal discussion and part of this we worked with Provost Storrs and discussed the programs. We came to a consensus. I think Chuck is giving his interpretation.”

UNCG Chancellor Frank Gilliam was in Raleigh Wednesday for committee meetings of the UNC Board of Governors, where its members and UNC System staff praised the current process at UNCG and said more universities should regularly undertake similar actions.

Gilliam will make final decisions about program eliminations on February 1, after receiving final recommendations from Storrs.