Temple faculty union makes its case for a no-confidence vote against university leadership

Temple faculty union leadership late Thursday night made its case to members for a no-confidence vote against university leaders ahead of a Friday meeting.

The lengthy memo, sent to members of the Temple Association of University Professionals at 11 p.m. Thursday, said members will be able to decide on whether to authorize a vote of no confidence against any one or all of the following university leaders: President Jason Wingard, Provost Gregory N. Mandel, and board chair Mitchell Morgan.

Wingard, who formerly held leadership positions at Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, and Stanford, and Mandel, who previously served as dean of Temple’s law school, have led the university for less than two years, while Morgan, founder and chairman of Morgan Properties, has been at the helm for more than three years.

» READ MORE: From 2021: Temple hires Chestnut Hill resident and former Ivy League school dean as its next president

“We have heard clearly from our members that they have never seen things as bad as they are right now,” wrote the TAUP executive committee, which said it endorses holding a no-confidence vote. “We want to see our university succeed and our students thrive.”

The university did not immediately respond for comment about the union’s memo.

A vote on whether to authorize a vote of no confidence was to be held electronically after the meeting and remain open until Monday, the union said. Shortly after 3 p.m. Friday, Jeffrey Doshna, president of TAUP, said the results will be made public Tuesday. The voting is anonymous, and at least 20% of members of the bargaining unit must cast a vote for it to be valid.

The union action follows a 42-day strike by Temple’s graduate students that was settled earlier this week. While the administration’s handling of the graduate student negotiations may have been the impetus for considering a vote, union leaders have cited other areas of concern including noncontract renewals for some nontenured faculty, mounting public safety concerns, and vacancies in some key administrative jobs — the memo cites 15 top jobs of deans, vice provosts, and other leaders where there has been turnover in the last 18 months.

» READ MORE: Temple grad students overwhelmingly ratify agreement, ending their six-week strike

They also have raised concerns about university finances and problems in the offices of ethics and compliance and research, “to the point of threatening essential grants and jeopardizing established partnerships,” the memo said.

They cited Wingard’s seeming lack of presence on campus, including his attending the Super Bowl in Arizona and then a Temple program in Jamaica that kept him out of town for at least several days during the strike, including when students held a walkout. Deans, the union asserted, called an “emergency meeting” with Wingard and Mandel during the strike to air concerns because Wingard had not been making himself available, the memo said.

“Wingard is so rarely seen on campus that both undergrad and graduate students have been utilizing the slogan ‘Where’s Wingard?’ or ‘Where is Jason?’ ” the memo said.

And they said they have failed to hear a plan to address Temple’s enrollment decline — overall enrollment is down 14% since fall 2019 — while leaving open the vice president of enrollment management position for nine months. The university announced that position had been filled this week.

Over the last week, union leadership held meetings with 11 schools and colleges, gathering input on whether there should be a no-confidence vote, who would be the subject of such a vote, and general concerns about leadership.

They said they heard concerns in four major areas:

If authorized, the vote would be a first for the 2,600-member Temple Association of University Professionals in its 50-year history, and that has been a point of contention for some faculty who have asked why, given leadership struggles with other presidents — Neil D. Theobald resigned under pressure in 2016 — would such a vote be required this time.

» READ MORE: Temple faculty union to vote next week on whether to hold a vote of no-confidence in university leaders

Others have said it would send the wrong message to vote no confidence in Temple’s first Black president when he has had less than two years on the job and has been confronting post-pandemic problems like rising gun violence and a drop in enrollment, that are not in his control.

Some members also were concerned about such a move when TAUP is beginning its own negotiations with the administration for a new contract.

In the memo, union leadership laid out myriad concerns they said were cited by members during the meetings over the last week. Those concerns, they said, began when Wingard was hired and he talked about how higher education no longer is working and must change.

“The value of the college degree, in my estimation, has reached its peak and is on the wane,” he wrote in his new book, The College Devaluation Crisis, “thanks to a host of factors stretching from cost and affordability to curriculum relevance to rapidly evolving skill needs to advances in automation and technology — and including the disruption in the workforce due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

But he also said in the book that Temple can be a leader in making the necessary changes.

The union leadership cited a blistering piece about Wingard’s academic vision in the Los Angeles Review of Books, which calls Wingard’s model a “fantasy” that “combines mostly automated and ‘self-guided’ remote asynchronous coursework with ‘applied assessments’ that require ‘learners’ to pay for the opportunity to donate their labor to businesses who rebrand entry-level drudgery as cutting-edge training.”

They also asserted that the board of trustees under Morgan hired Wingard to push a “corporate vision.”

They cited failure to replace tenure faculty in a timely fashion, leading to “a radical decline in tenure lines” and criticized Wingard’s announcement during his inaugural address to expand Temple’s Los Angeles program while pushing budget cuts.

They raised the trips to the Super Bowl and Jamaica. The university this week acknowledged that Wingard attended the Super Bowl but said no university funds were used. Last year, however, the university did pay for his trip to the Super Bowl “to cultivate donors and to deepen relationships with alumni, students, and corporate partners.” They said he also visited Temple’s Los Angeles study away program.

The university did not answer questions from The Inquirer on how much money was spent during last year’s trip.

» READ MORE: Will Bunch | Temple is a campus in crisis. Jason Wingard is the wrong choice to fix it.

As for the Jamaica trip, they acknowledged the university paid for Mandel and Wingard to participate “in the graduation of master’s students who completed a Temple degree program at Church Teachers’ College in Mandeville, Jamaica.” The university said it was particularly important because the doctoral program was undergoing reaccreditation.

The university did not provide the cost or length of that trip when asked by The Inquirer.

The union also called out a $4.5 million upgrade to Sullivan Hall, the main administration building, where Wingard’s office suite is located. In response, the university said the 1935 building required upgrades and “a significant portion” was planned for and approved before Wingard arrived. The work included “elevator modernization, roofing repair, HVAC modernization, fire safety modernization, and renovation of the second and third floors,” the university said.

Faculty began discussing the possibility of taking a no-confidence vote in university leadership several weeks ago as the graduate student strike dragged on and concerns about safety mounted following the on-duty shooting death of Temple Police Sgt. Christopher Fitzgerald in February. Faculty were particularly upset that the university stopped paying for health care and tuition remission for striking members.

The union held a meeting March 3 and its executive committee announced the following week that the union would convene another meeting to decide whether to have a vote.

It’s unclear what impact the TUGSA settlement will have on the vote authorization decision.

At least one faculty member, psychology professor Nora Newcombe, said it changed her mind. She initially was supportive of the vote, but said earlier this week that now is not the time.

“There’s a lot that is terrible but it’s not utterly clear what the remedy is and who is responsible,” she said.