SUNY-ESF removed three department chairs from their positions last week, abruptly shaking up leadership on a campus where tensions between faculty and university administrators have flared in recent weeks.

As the university moves to implement a new policy limiting department chairships to two three-year appointments, David Newman, chair of the forest and natural resources management department; Gary Scott, chair of the paper and bioprocess engineering department; and Donald Leopold, chair of the environmental and forest biology department, were told to step down from their positions in a meeting with President Quentin Wheeler and Provost and Executive Vice President Nosa Egiebor last Wednesday.

The president, in a campus-wide email to students Sunday night, said the decision to implement department chair rotations “has a number of advantages such as routine infusion of new ideas and development of leadership skills among faculty.” He said Yale University and Cornell University are schools that have enacted similar policies.

The three chairs will remain SUNY-ESF faculty members and “will have the opportunity to contribute to College leadership in other ways,” according to a draft of a new major academic plan released by SUNY-ESF last Thursday.

In an email to his department’s students Monday night, obtained by The Daily Orange, Newman said he originally believed he would be stepping down as department chair in August. The university administration took “abrupt action, against the advice and overwhelming objection of the FNRM faculty, to make the change immediately,” Newman said in the email. He also said he did not know who the new department chair would be.

Multiple SUNY-ESF faculty members said they were concerned about how quickly the three department chairs were removed.

“It shows really poor leadership to do it five days before the start of the spring semester,” said Kelley Donaghy, a chemistry professor at SUNY-ESF and former executive chair of the college’s Academic Governance body, in an interview. Students and faculty are worried they will not have a department chair to speak with if they need issues resolved, Donaghy added.

Donaghy said a student in a department whose chair was removed approached her Tuesday morning to discuss unsettled conflicts with a faculty member. Normally, Donaghy would have referred the student to their department chair, she said, but there was no official chair the student could approach.

“The students have not been told who they should talk to in the case where they need a department chair,” she said.

Leopold, who was also removed last week, said in an interview the spring semester is the most active in terms of administrative duties, adding that “we have some huge things that we’re working on.”

He said he believed the rotation plan was a “nonsense” idea that was a cover to remove the chairs from faculty leadership. Leopold added that Wheeler, in last Wednesday’s meeting, “made it crystal clear that he blamed us for his failures.”

In another email obtained by The D.O., Newman told colleagues last week that Wheeler said in the Wednesday meeting he needed to “change the dynamics on campus.” Newman also told Syracuse.com on Tuesday that Wheeler said he was tired of faculty resolutions criticizing his leadership.

Newman declined to be interviewed for this story. Scott, the third chair removed, did not return multiple requests for comment.

Tensions concerning Wheeler’s leadership have been brewing at SUNY-ESF for years. Academic Governance, the college’s governing body, voted no confidence in Wheeler in November 2016 after faculty grew increasingly frustrated over the president’s leadership.

Last month, Academic Governance passed a resolution calling for increased consultation between faculty and administrators. According to the resolution, administrators have repeatedly failed to consult with faculty on decisions to increase the student population and reduce university-based financial aid, among other things.

And during a faculty union meeting last Thursday, faculty discussed two motions: one requesting Wheeler’s contract not be renewed, the other requesting the United University Professions State Chapter union review the financial situation at SUNY-ESF. The two resolutions will be voted on paper and results will come in February.

Wheeler was not made available for an interview on this story. But, in a statement Tuesday night, Wheeler said the three chairs were removed because they had been serving longest in their respective positions.

The removals, which took place during the winter break, were timed so that faculty, staff and students would be on campus and have access to information, the president said.

Faculty needed to be on hand for consultation in selecting the new department chairs, Wheeler added.

“Had we waited until the end of the semester, many of our researchers and students would have been off campus for the summer and, perhaps, in the field and largely unreachable,” Wheeler said in the statement.

Wheeler said in the campus-wide email to students Sunday night that “a great deal of information circulating on campus is uninformed, inaccurate and misleading.”

Despite his removal as chair, and his frustration with the chair rotation plan, Leopold said he and his department have been working toward the success of Wheeler and SUNY-ESF. But he said working as chair “isn’t a whole lot of fun” and he did not receive significant compensation for leading the department.

“We’re not trying to be reinstated,” Leopold said. “I don’t want to be a part of this mess anymore.”

Published on January 17, 2018 at 11:29 pm

Contact Jordan: jmulle01@syr.edu | @jordanmuller18