University instructors have finally received good news after several semesters of uncertainty — they will no longer be receiving termination notices each semester.
Instead, the University will revert back to its old policy, under which instructors who had been with the school for two years or more became contracted employees who must be notified at least one year before termination.
The decision came after the University’s department of Academic Affairs gave individual colleges the authority to contract their instructors for longer than a semester, if the deans so choose.
In wake of budget cuts over the past year and a half, non-tenured University instructors had been contracted on a semester-by-semester basis in order to give the University the authority to make deep cuts if necessary. Now, if deans plan to terminate instructors, they must give them at least one year’s notice.
“It’s cruel to have instructors out there who are living from semester to semester,” said Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Jack Hamilton.
Gaines Foster, dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, is extending his instructors’ contracts and said it was embarrassing for hard-working instructors to teach on a semester-by-semester basis.
“The college is ecstatic that we can get out from under those termination notices,” Foster said. “We need our instructors, and our instructors do a great