Texas A&M librarians give up tenure status in academic reorganization

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Dozens-of-Texas-A-M-librarians-waived-tenure-17193669.php

Probably you won't be able to read the article. So, here:

Changes at Texas A&M University’s libraries department this spring led 28 librarians to lose their tenure or tenure-track status, outraging some faculty and raising questions about the administration’s intent.

The reorganization of A&M’s University Libraries became one of the most heavily contested pieces of a wider structural overhaul at the College Station flagship campus — particularly as the changes coincided with Texas legislators’ attacks on faculty tenure and politicians’ attempts across the country to control the books and resources that librarians carry.

And it is one of many decisions that leaders at the traditionally conservative university made this past year which some students, faculty and staff contend were regressive and unaligned with their desires.

Aggie administrators have denied accusations of censorship. President M. Katherine Banks told a working group that the shuffling of personnel was intended to make the libraries a place exclusively for servicing students and faculty, not for conducting librarians’ own research, said Julie Mosbo Ballestro, interim dean of University Libraries.

Texas A&M University officials met with members of the libraries several times between January and April, according to Kelly Brown, associate vice president in the division of marketing and communications.

“Our libraries need to evolve with the needs, technology and advancements being realized at other top universities,” Brown said Monday. “This effort is meant to streamline and merge the libraries to update and simplify operations, while creating a new academic resource program that is in keeping with best practices across the United States.”

On HoustonChronicle.com: Texas A&M students, donors are fighting over the university’s soul. One conflict? A campus drag show.

Several librarians said the administration only explained its reasoning recently, after months of them worrying and asking for clarification. And certain promises weren’t entirely fulfilled, they said.

Sierra Laddusaw, a tenure-track librarian, said she decided to leave A&M for another librarianship. She noted that many people in academia are beginning to support the A&M librarians who opposed the changes, but she said it is coming too late.

“It felt like it was an entire uphill battle,” she said. “Now that people have really, finally started to pay attention … It’s already over. Y’all didn’t pay attention when we were sounding our death knell.”

The changes stemmed from the wider attempt to alter the university’s structure, prompted by an October report assessing the school’s organizational efficiency. Administrators received feedback on the study, issued by MGT Consulting, and President M. Katherine Banks in December released her own report called “The Path Forward,” announcing what recommendations she would heed and which she would modify or nix.

MGT suggested the university fold the libraries into a newly formed College of Arts and Sciences, which Banks did not follow. She said she planned to make University Libraries a “service unit,” keeping it as a separate entity but stripping it as a tenure home for faculty.

Tenured and tenure-track faculty would be “accommodated in a new departmental home with a full-time appointment in the University Libraries,” or they would remain in the libraries and convert to a staff status, she said in her report. While some people did find new departmental homes and some stayed in the libraries as staff, the end result was still slightly different than first announced.

People who wanted to maintain their faculty status had to find new departments to go to, and be accepted by them, said Julie Mosbo Ballestro, interim dean of University Libraries. People with established relationships in other departments had an easier time, and some faculty were not accepted into new departments.

And no one has a full-time appointment to the libraries — an “appointment” meaning designated working time in another department. The faculty librarians who found new departmental homes will spend a maximum of 70 percent of their time with University Libraries this coming year, Mosbo Ballestro said.

Academics tend to value their faculty and tenured statuses for a number of reasons. Faculty, who are usually instructors, get the benefits of being involved in a network of people across campus who are similarly committed to research. And faculty can receive tenure, which provides a level of job security and safeguards the freedom to teach and conduct the research they choose.

Many but not all universities provide academic librarians faculty status or the option of pursuing tenure, according to the Association of College & Research Libraries. Texas A&M does not have a library sciences program to train future librarians, where faculty librarians might most naturally teach.

In total, 24 faculty found new academic departments, and 53 moved to “staff” status. Those former faculty in the libraries were made up of tenured, tenure-track or nontenured employees at the flagship, which technically includes the satellite campuses located in Galveston and Qatar, A&M officials said.

Of the 53 who converted to staff, 19 people waived their tenure and nine people waived their tenure-track status, the interim dean said.

Mosbo Ballestro added that the librarians’ movements came down to personal choices, including whether they prioritized keeping their faculty statuses or whether they felt personal commitments to remaining fully in a traditional university library space.

“They have a lot of heart,” she said. “This was a really hard decision.”

One librarian, who remained anonymous to protect her position , said it is hard to know how the changes will affect the type of work the staff librarians will do, the services they provide, or their accessibility to students and other faculty and staff.

“I have fears, I don’t know if they’re founded or not,” she said. “Definitely some people, including me, are concerned, if not about censorship, about change in direction.”

Texas A&M has already faced a number of questions about censorship during the 2021-2022 academic year. Many Aggies told the Houston Chronicle in April that A&M administration has made multiple decisions last year without listening to the input of students, faculty or staff — including a now-reversed decision to stop print publication of the student newspaper The Battalion.

Mosbo Ballestro said the libraries are investigating whether it is possible to maintain academic freedom for staff members, and she said she is creating a new task force for the evolution of the library and its future on campus. She denied rumors that the libraries will entirely digitize or convert to office space.

University Libraries has a strong reputation, being ranked 8th nationally among public universities in 2020 by the Association of Research Libraries. At the time, Texas A&M Libraries had 5.9 million volumes, 1,700 databases, 121,000 e-journals, and 1.8 million e-books, according to the university.

Several librarians said they feared for the recruitment and retention of staff, which Mosbo Ballestro seconded. But she said she sees areas that should still attract potential employees.

“We work at a great university, we have a lot of people who have ... lots of expertise in the libraries,” she said. “I think we can build on that.”

 

REMOVING TENURE AND FACULTY STATUS FOR LIBRARIANS AT TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY WOULD BE “FUNDAMENTALLY MISGUIDED”

https://pen.org/press-release/removing-tenure-and-faculty-status-for-librarians-at-texas-am-university-would-be-fundamentally-misguided/