by Logan Meriwether, Student Reporter
Three Northwestern professors have left their jobs since the summer of 2019, and their positions will remain vacant.
The English, social sciences and science departments all have vacant positions because teachers have left. Teachers in those departments say they have heavier workloads in order to keep up with the amount of students in their classes.
Dr. Kathryn Lane, an associate professor of English, said having those positions filled would help to lighten the load.
The English department is down one faculty member: professor Jennifer Page. Page left in 2019, and Victoria Hendricks temporarily replaced her. But Hendricks could not stay long because she was having a baby. Page’s position remains unfilled.
Dr. Richmond Adams left the university during the summer of this year, and he was replaced by Dr. Matthew Lambert.
Lane and other members of the English department started a job search to fill Page’s position, and they received several job applications, she said. But the plug had to be pulled on the hiring process because of budgeting issues.
Lane said she plans to reevaluate the situation this year to see if the department still needs to fill the position. She said it will ultimately be left up to administrators, but she and the other faculty members in the English Department are arguing that it needs to be filled.
“The reality is that it limits the classes we can offer,” she said, “and it means that composition classes have to be more full.”
Lane said she likes to give a lot of feedback to her students to help improve their writing.
Her classes are full, with 24 students each. It makes it hard for her to give the students one-on-one attention. It takes her several hours each night, she said, to get everything graded, and to give students feedback.
Dr. Bo Hannaford and other university administrators look at the budget each year to determine where to adjust funding. With a 3.95% reduction in Northwestern’s state appropriations and lower enrollment because of the coronavirus pandemic, they did not feel like it was necessary for the time being to refill those positions.
Administrators looked at data and saw a higher number of students taking concurrent classes in those departments and felt it would be a good way to save money by not filling the vacant positions at this time.
Hannaford plans to look over the budget closely and monitor the number of students enrolling in the next school year. He said he hopes to make a proposal to President Janet Cunningham and Vice President for Administration Dr. David Pecha to fill those positions.