Students petition for professor
USC students have taken to the Internet to express their concern that USC professor Cecilia Woloch, a non-tenure-track English professor, is not being fairly compensated.
Utilizing Change.org, Kimmery Galindo, a former student of Woloch’s, began a petition with the intent to protest budget cutbacks to programs Woloch created. According to the petition, USC deans are pushing Woloch to resign by requiring her to “teach larger course loads for substantially less pay than tenured colleagues.”
“I thought at least if she could have support from lots of other people, she wouldn’t feel so alone in the process,” Galindo said.
Since it was created earlier this month, the petition has garnered more than 540 signatures of support from past and present students, community members and supporters not affiliated with USC.
Woloch has taught at USC for the last seven years. She is an established author of five published poetry collections, a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and has 20 years of experience outside the classroom — including working in a prison with the mentally ill. She has also created two programs within the English Department: “The Poet in Paris” and “The Writer in the Community.”
“That the administration has used those programs to try to recruit ‘transformative’ faculty — at five times my salary — while refusing to even mention my name in association with those programs, makes it clear to me that I’ll never be recognized or rewarded for my contributions,” Woloch wrote in a letter to USC officials.
Tenured professors are described by the university’s faculty handbook as those who are indispensable to the success of an institution in fulfilling its obligations to its students and society.
These positions are granted based on the significance and influence of a faculty member’s research, future contributions to academia and awards the faculty member has received. Woloch said she believes she has succeeded in doing these things, but a lack of university support has made her reconsider her value.
A professor’s tenure, or lack thereof, does not contribute to funding of their programs. Decisions of funding are made on a case-by-case basis depending on the school, program and ability to apply for grant funding.
“An academic decision about what programs will receive funding are not made on the basis of if it’s a tenured or not tenured person who is directing the program,” said Beth Meyerowitz, vice provost for faculty affairs.
Woloch created the Poet in Paris course within the Maymester program in the hopes of exposing students to French poetry and culture. The four-unit class takes students to Paris for one month over the summer.
The program has been cut from a $6,000 stipend to a $1,500 stipend, for what Woloch was told in an official memo, was “in the interest of equity.”
Chair of the English Department Margaret Russett recognized that Woloch’s position, if lost, would be difficult to fill, but said the choice goes beyond her department.
“It’s a faculty member’s choice about whether to stay or to go… If she feels she has better opportunities elsewhere then I would want her to do what she feels is best for her own career,” Russett said. “She’s a beloved teacher and I think it’s very appropriate for students to say that. With all that understood, the department cannot control her decision about her career.”
Some students, however, see the issue as representative of the bigger problem at USC.
“I think the tenure and non-tenure [title] is a larger issue that should be addressed. There is a crazy discrepancy between the two with resources,” said Betty Fang, a senior majoring in creative writing and business administration. “She’s doing things that, had she been tenured, she would’ve been promoted.”
Many of Woloch’s students are concerned that if she resigns a interesting learning opportunities and a valuable professor will be lost.
“I know at least in the creative writing community there will be a lot of discontent because Cecilia’s one of the best professors here,” said Jackson Burgess, a junior majoring in creative writing and narrative studies who Woloch mentors. “I would be willing to join in anything like a letter-writing campaign. When it comes down to it, I don’t know what there is to do against the bureaucracy that is USC administration.”
When asked if she would be officially resigning, Woloch said she is focused on the current semester.
“I am insisting that I keep my focus and my energies on the teaching I’m doing this semester and do the best job I can do,” she said. “Let me go out with a blaze.”
Editor’s note: The article has been updated to correct the names of the two programs Woloch created at USC. A previous version of the article incorrectly stated that Woloch created the Summer Poetry in Idyllwild and the Paris Poetry Workshop.
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I’m concerned about a couple of errors in this article and would like to offer some clarification about the issues at stake.
I haven’t protested “cutbacks to programs” that I’ve created — although there were cuts to the budget for this past year’s Maymester program — but a substantial cut to my compensation for directing the program. Like all NTT faculty, I’m compensated at a much lower per-course salary than tenured faculty. And now that it’s become clear that most Maymester courses are being proposed, designed, directed and taught by NTT faculty, the administration has recently changed the rules: whereas, initially, a faculty member had the option of teaching a Maymester course as one of her/his regular spring semester courses OR as an overload course, now Maymester courses can ONLY be taught as “overload,” which is an even lower rate of compensation than regular NTT compensation In my case, I had been receiving a $6,000 stipend for directing the Paris program. This fall, Dean Lamy sent me a letter saying that the Paris program would be continued with the “condition” that my stipend for my work as director be cut from $6,000 to $1,500. The reason given for this was: “in the interests of equity.” Again, since Maymester programs have become mostly the province of NTT faculty — who need to find ways to increase their income from USC, since NTT are contractually forbidden to teach at other institutions, and regular NTT salaries at USC don’t offer a “living wage” for Los Angeles — USC administration seems to be looking for ways to further reduce NTT pay as a way to cut costs.
In re the statement: ” She has also created two programs within the English Department: Summer Poetry in Idyllwild and the Paris Poetry Workshop.”
The two programs I’ve created for USC are “The Poet in Paris” and “The Writer in the Community.” The latter is a program that trains undergraduate creative writers to lead writing workshops in community settings; it also offers them the opportunity to gain hands-on experience leading workshops in local schools via JEP. Summer Poetry in Idyllwild was a conference I created in 1999, before coming to USC, and ran for ten years. It’s not, and has never been, a USC program.
In re the statement:
“A professor’s tenure, or lack thereof, does not contribute to funding of their programs. Decisions of funding are made on a case-by-case basis depending on the school, program and ability to apply for grant funding.
Again, my conflict with the administration has been over the issue of my compensation, and not the funding or budget of the program itself, so I’m not sure how Vice Provost Meyerwitz’s statement applies. But it seems clear that, since Maymester programs are mostly — if not exclusively — being run by NTT faculty, who don’t have recourse or the rights of tenured faculty, the administration is taking advantage of the opportunity to cut costs while further reducing NTT compensation. Now it seems that the administration is willing to lose a hugely successful program — admissions uses “The Poet in Paris” as a recruiting tool, and it’s a program I created based on my years of experience and my personal network in Paris — for the sake of saving $4,500 — a miniscule amount to the university, but a substantial percentage of my compensation. The chair of the English department even approached Vice Dean Dani Byrd about the possibility of the English department finding a way to replace the $4,500 in order to keep me on staff to lead the Paris program this year. Vice Dean Byrd, as I understand it, gave Prof. Russett an “unequivocal NO.”
As to “in the interest of equity,” see my comments above. Also, this begs the questions: 1) Are all tenured faculty compensated identically “in the interests of equity?” 2) Is there no such thing as merit where NTT faculty are concerned?
Thanks for your attention to this matter.
Cecilia Woloch
Associate Professor, Teaching
Department of English