UM professors upset over school’s plan to have in-person classes amid rising COVID cases
As Miami-Dade County reports thousands of COVID-19 cases each day, some faculty and staff at the University of Miami are pushing back at the school’s plan to reopen its campuses, feeling the administration has ignored their pleadings over personal safety.
The private university, based in Coral Gables, granted its nearly 17,000 students the power to decide how to learn, but didn’t do the same for many of its approximately 16,000 faculty and staff, some employees said.
Students had two choices: Take classes entirely online, or return to campus and take some classes in person and some online. UM encouraged professors with underlying medical conditions, as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to request accommodations, but that didn’t apply to broader issues of safety.
“I personally don’t feel safe teaching face-to-face,” said Scot Evans, a Faculty Senate member and the president of the UM chapter of the American Association of University Professors. “I’m not in any risk categories, and I don’t have any family members at home, but at the same time there’s so much uncertainty about this disease and its effects that I don’t feel comfortable being exposed.”
More than a dozen UM professors, lecturers and graduate students raised similar concerns with the Herald. Employees questioned UM’s top-down approach in the decision-making process, and more than 500 faculty members signed a petition seeking control over how they will teach.
A UM spokeswoman declined to arrange an interview Wednesday. Instead, she sent a written statement credited to Jeffrey Duerk, the executive vice president for academic affairs and provost.
In it, Duerk called the reopening process a “complex” one and said UM has been working with “faculty, deans, the Faculty Senate, Student Affairs, Facilities Operations & Planning, and numerous public health experts on safe solutions.”
Duerk said “all faculty were able to submit a request for teaching accommodations and/or modifications.”
Special meeting Thursday
Duerk, President Julio Frenk and Faculty Senate leaders received the petition Wednesday from faculty and staff, which called for the administration “to acknowledge the right of all teaching staff to decide for themselves.”
The Faculty Senate met with the provost and president’s staff Thursday to address these issues.
Evans said the problem stems from UM’s business model that treats the students as customers, and UM, like other universities, prioritizes those who pay tuition.
“But to do that and then not consult with those of us who are in the front lines in the classrooms just seems like a major oversight at best, and at worst, some type of exertion of power,” he said.
Students have until July 27 to fill out a survey letting the university know how they prefer to learn. That’s three weeks before classes begin Aug. 17. The deadline, professors say, leaves them little time to plan their coursework.
Being put in a ‘tenuous position’
John Funchion, an associate professor in the English Department, said he lives with someone classified as “at-risk” so he requested to teach online but said he hasn’t heard back from the university yet.
This summer, he taught a class in Gothic fiction and said he had more than a month to restructure the content for online delivery. He yearns for the same for the fall.
“We’re being put in a tenuous position because the closer we get to the fall semester, the harder it’s going to be to design a quality course,” he said.
Professors also remain troubled about new dynamics inside the classroom. Many challenged the impact of plexiglass barriers between them and students, and found it alarming that they would have to police masks.
“The common theme is the top-down control over course delivery and that coming from individuals who aren’t really spending any time in the classroom is just deeply problematic,” Funchion said.
When UM first released its plans for the fall, Funchion said he was fine with it. But the conditions have changed.
Since July 8, Miami-Dade’s positivity rate of COVID-19 cases has ranged from 16.7 percent to 26.5 percent, much higher than the maximum 10 percent public health officials like to see. On Thursday, the county reported 2,723 additional confirmed cases.
And throughout the escalating crisis, Funchion said he has felt excluded.
“We felt we weren’t part of any of the conversations, and that’s really distressing and upsetting,” Funchion said. “And if the end goal is to deliver the best educational experience for the students, then you need to talk to the educators.”
‘Not proud of how UM is conducting itself’
When asked in an interview last Friday about what it would take for UM to dial back its reopening plan, Duerk would not comment and told a reporter he didn’t want her “to get it wrong.”
Funchion said what managers at UM have indirectly said is the administration will only backpedal if Miami-Dade County enforces a stay-at-home order.
“The question I have is: Does the mayor and do the county commissioners know that they’ve been essentially tasked with determining how education is going to be delivered at the University of Miami?” he asked.
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On Tuesday, Frenk sent an email to the Canes community outlining safety measures, which include nightly curfews, no indoor events until Nov. 1, “random” temperature checks, “mandatory use of face coverings,” quarantines under certain conditions and answering health questions on an app every day.
Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, a professor and chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, sent him back a response, expressing her “disappointment” and saying she feels “alienated.”
Martínez-San Miguel said Frenk — a world-renowned health expert — shared misleading information in his email.
Frenk wrote: “This past Friday, Dr. Anthony Fauci was asked directly whether schools could reopen safely. His recommended approach was this: ‘You have got to say, ‘I’m going to try to open the schools, to the best of my ability. And if there are issues with activity of virus, try to mitigate it by some creative capabilities.’”
Martínez-San Miguel said Fauci referred to K-12 schools, and the complete transcript shows he also said, “The decision needs to be made state by state, depending on the infection rates in a region.”
“The quote shared is simply taken out of context,” she said.
Additionally, she criticized Frenk’s cabinet for a June 30 town hall, which didn’t allow employees to ask live questions. Instead, the “virtual event” appeared to be a prerecorded and scripted video.
“I was not expecting to be negligible or invisible as a human being and a faculty member in this University, but it has been happening for weeks, so I think I should share my thoughts with you,” Martínez-San Miguel wrote in the email. “I am not proud of how UM is conducting itself during a pandemic that endangers our health, safety and lives.”
This story was originally published July 23, 2020 at 1:46 PM.
