By Derek Hawkins

CLARIFICATION APPENDED (SEE BELOW)

Minutes before the Faculty Senate went into a rare closed-door executive session yesterday afternoon, Provost Ahmed Abdelal announced he would resign at the end of the academic year.

Citing a desire to move forward in his career, Abdelal told a full session of the Senate, assembled in the Raytheon Amphitheater, that he would postpone his resignation to the end of the academic year to give the university adequate time to find a successor.

“I always think of what’s next,” Abdelal said. “It was very important to have an orderly process. Sometimes people just announce they are leaving in a short period of time and that’s not really good for any institution.”

Abdelal had not previously discussed his resignation with the Senate, and the announcement came as a shock to many faculty members who attended the meeting.

“It was a surprise to almost everyone in there,” said Carole Hafner, associate professor of computer and information science. “The general feeling was of regret because most of the faculty had a very high opinion of him.”

Abdelal’s move to resign comes amid mounting tensions between the faculty and President Joseph Aoun’s senior administration.

In recent months, many faculty members have expressed concerns of a lack of “meaningful input and participation in major decisions and university governance,” said Carol Glod, chair of the Faculty Senate Agenda Committee.

Glod said a majority of the concerns stem from an interaction between the Faculty Senate, the Senate’s leadership, the president and the provost that has changed in the past year as the university has transitioned between presidents.

“There’s a concern with the faculty that [that interaction] has diminished, and has not been invited, and that’s not in spirit of how the university has been governed traditionally,” Glod said.

Abdelal, who became provost in August 2002 under former president Richard Freeland, has been both praised and criticized for decisions he made in the five years he spent in the position.

In winter 2004, under Freeland’s leadership, Abdelal introduced the Academic Investment Plan (AIP), a $75 million program designed to hire at least 100 tenure-track professors in five years. The program was acclaimed, particularly in its first year, for bringing an array of field experts into various university departments.

“The faculty was appreciative of the AIP,” said John Portz, chair of the political science department. “We have undergone a dramatic physical change here recently, but Freeland also wanted to build the academic infrastructure. The AIP has become the face of that transition.”

Shortly after Freeland’s departure last fall, President Aoun introduced the Interdisciplinary Faculty Initiative (IFI), a program intended to complement the AIP, in part through the hiring of 30 additional senior level faculty.

Like Freeland’s program, the IFI was well received among faculty members.

But in spring 2007, both programs came under fire from faculty and students when four lecturers from the College of Arts and Sciences were told abruptly that their contracts would not be renewed for the following year.

The professors – Tom Downard, Lincoln McKie, Gladys McKie, and Susan Picillo – who all lacked upper-level degrees, were dismissed under the hiring policies of Aoun’s initiative.

“The colleges are interested in having the best faculty that can do the best job in the classrooms and guide and mentor students,” Abdelal told The News in April, referring to the dismissals. “Our goal is to recruit the greatest and strongest available faculty.”

James Stellar, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said the inauguration of a new president may have put additional pressure on the provost, who is the chief liaison between the faculty and senior administration.

“He has a strong relationship with the faculty, but there’s been some concern raised … about the pace of change and whether we’ve been consulted properly,” said Stellar, who serves on the Faculty Senate. “I think that we’ve all admitted that there have been moments in the breakneck speed that we’ve been at where we’ve failed to touch base. But what I certainly hope we all conclude is that we’re all people of good will.”

Abdelal, who has also served as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and chair of the biology department at Georgia State University, said he first discussed his resignation with Aoun more than two months ago.

New career goals – he alluded to possibly becoming a university president – and a consideration for the time it takes to search for a new provost motivated Abdelal to fist raise the issue during the summer. But his decision to announce his departure publicly during the same week as yesterday’s Faculty Senate meeting was an “absolute coincidence,” he said.

Abdelal will teach biology at Northeastern while he focuses on his next career move.

“When I was chair, dean, and now as provost, I always try to figure out: Did I contribute to this and is this the right time for me to do something else?” he said.

– News Staff writer Ricky Thompson contributed to this report.

(Due to a reporting error, a page one story (“Provost announces plan to step down”) Thursday incorrectly stated that several lecturers from the College of Arts and Sciences were dismissed by the university as part of the Interdisciplinary Faculty Initiative. Among those lecturers: Tom Downard and Susan Picillo are now part of the School of Professional and Continuing Studies; Gladys McKie is under contract through the end of the spring; and Lincoln McKie is under contract as a lecturer until Dec. 31 and will then become an editorial lab director in the School of Journalism.)