The April meeting of the Texas A&M faculty senate included repeating its opposition to the president’s decision to move 82 faculty librarians to either a staff position or teach in another department.
When a senate member asked if the president considered a March resolution calling on the president to reverse her decision, speaker Dale Rice said no action was taken by the president.
Rice said “our opposition fell on deaf ears. You know, it’s president Banks who makes these decisions. And she has not articulated anything other than turning it (faculty librarians) into a service unit.” And her decision is “likely to probably destroy a great part of our institution.”
Vice president N.K. Anand said the president made her decision based on feedback of the university’s outside consultant’s report.
Senate members then gave Anand examples of the negative impact of the president’s decision.
Senator Catharina Laporte said “This week, I learned of multiple librarians leaving the Texas A&M system and getting jobs in other universities. It would appear that it is almost intentional that they’re disbanding the libraries and want the librarians to leave.”
Laporte also said “When I have librarians asking for faculty positions and tenured jobs in our department, they actually have provided their CV’s (curriculum vitae’s). We’ve had to had a vote on it in our department. It’s very difficult for us to make decisions about this. There’s no guidelines on how we should evaluate them. (And) Some of them don’t teach.”
During the discussion, Rice said the faculty senate’s executive committee is scheduled to meet with president Katherine Banks April 18.
Click below to hear some of the comments from the April 11, 2022 Texas A&M faculty senate meeting.