Campus-wide hiring freeze will remain in place

Administrators announced Monday at University Senate that the current hiring freeze will remain in place until the economy stabilizes.

The freeze, which began in May, is not a hard freeze, meaning that administrators can approve the appointments of new faculty members if they deem it necessary.

Provost Michael Bernstein said that because the direction of the economy remains unclear, the administration has yet to set a date to end the freeze.

“All of us — by which I don’t just mean everyone at Tulane, but all of industry, all of America — is sort of sitting there going, where are we?” Bernstein said. “And we don’t know yet.”

Bernstein said that the administration implemented the freeze as a result of both the economic crisis and financial stress from Hurricane Katrina. He said that though nobody likes the freeze, Tulane is in relatively good shape compared to other universities nationwide.

“We haven’t laid anyone off, we haven’t furloughed anybody, and we haven’t taken money out of anybody’s pocket,” Bernstein said. “We froze salaries last year, and we didn’t give a cost of living adjustment. That distinguished us from an enormous percentage of colleges and universities out there. We’re proud of that.”

Despite the freeze, Tulane added dozens of staff members to its staff during the current academic year.

“We decided about less than a year ago that we’re going to implement a hiring freeze in the sense that when you want to hire, you have to come ask the relevant senior offices and you have to explain: What’s it for? Why is it essential? What are the budgeting implications? How did this happen?” Bernstein said. “What that allows us to do is just be very careful with the resources we are spending.”

Angelo DeNisi, dean of the A. B. Freeman School of Business, said that though the Provost has rejected some requests, the business school has hired new faculty since the freeze.

“I don’t know if this has been true for everyone, and times are a little tight, but we’ve been able to replace people when we’ve needed them,” DeNisi said.

Thomas Klingler, chair of the French and Italian department, said that the administration has permitted his department to hire visiting assistant professors.

“This allows our classes to be staffed by highly qualified instructors,” Klingler said. “However, since the positions are temporary, it’s not good for continuity and the long-term development of our department. This is especially so since the [visiting assistant professors] do not serve on departmental committees, so that the day-to-day running of the department must be done by a much-reduced faculty, at a time when we have a great deal of work to do in putting into place our new PhD in French studies.”

English Department Chair Rothenberg said that the English department has managed to handle the situation by prioritizing major-oriented and core courses.

“But I think that many departments are having difficulty staffing the courses that they used to offer for non-majors, the courses we like to offer for the general education curriculum, for students to try out as part of their liberal arts education experience.”

Along with the hiring freeze, Tulane has seen increases in enrollment, leading to larger class sizes. Even with the hiring freeze, Rothenberg said that the English department would reduce the enrollment cap in required introductory English classes next semester, which has steadily increased for three semesters and now rests at 17 students.

“The [post-doctoral fellows] are teaching the equivalent of an extra section, but they’re not getting extra compensation for that,” Rothenberg said. “That’s not fair really, but we’re going to rectify that right away [by decreasing the class caps].”

Rothenberg said that in response to the nationwide economic crisis, staff members are working harder than ever.

“There is a lot of pressure on us, but the faculty are devoted to the students,” Rothenberg said. “This is what we love to do. We’re scholars and teachers, and what we love to do is teach. So if we have to help out a colleague or take a slightly larger class, or maybe teach a course that we usually don’t teach, we do that.”