Some articles and e-mails have been written recently about the non-renewal of a few lecturers in the College of Arts and Sciences. We wanted to write this letter as the topic is important and deserves community conversation.

The situation that is unfolding now began years ago when the students, administration and faculty agreed to hire more professors under what we came to call the Academic Investment Plan. It calls for the hiring of 100 new professors during five years and we are now finishing year three and planning year four. In addition, our new president, Joseph Aoun, added the Interdisciplinary Faculty Initiative to hire an additional 30 professors to teach and do scholarship between colleges and programs at the intersections of disciplines. These new professors, 130 in total, bring or will bring the teacher/scholar approach to undergraduate education that should not only enhance classroom learning, but better allow other important activities like involving undergraduates in research.

The other side of that very positive hiring initiative is that we will be relying less heavily on lecturers. While lecturers typically bring a high level of teaching to departments and programs, their contracts are usually set up to focus on teaching alone.

The teacher/scholar model we committed to expand also requires deep commitment to the generation of knowledge and the ability to mentor students in knowledge creation. This type of restructuring can be difficult for Northeastern and, of course, particularly difficult for these few lecturers themselves.

The transition includes trying to identify alternative appropriate positions for them in the university or elsewhere in the greater Boston area. In discussing this process, we must balance the privacy needs of the individuals involved with the institutional needs to discuss the policy. So, we cannot discuss specific examples. Yet we do want to discuss the institutional restructuring that is underway.

A couple of other points need to be made. First, we are not trying to turn away from the value we have traditionally placed on integrating practice with classroom learning. We have a deep appreciation for our co-op partners who provide great mentorship to our students during their experiential learning time. Also, we continue to value the practitioners who maintain their real-world expertise while also doing some teaching and/or mentoring in their areas of proficiency.

Second, the staffing changes are not driven by saving money. While all administrators are aware of how expensive college is these days, we are determined to give our increasingly academically more prepared students a stronger cohort of committed and powerful scholar/teachers.

Finally, we are aware that this re-structuring has created some anxiety. To help reduce that anxiety, we invite further contact and can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected], with the necessary provision that any dialogue must honor individual lecturer privacy.

– James R. Stellar is the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Susan Powers-Lee is the executive vice provost.