AACC faculty on March 4 passed a vote of no-confidence in Provost Tanya Millner.
A vote of no confidence means the faculty has lost trust in Millner’s ability to do her job as vice president of learning.
“She doesn’t hold herself accountable to faculty,” Suzanne Spoor, an English professor, said. “She doesn’t see herself as accountable to a faculty relationship.”
The vote of no-confidence is not binding; that is, the faculty has no authority to dismiss or otherwise punish a vice president. Instead, the vote makes AACC President Dawn Lindsay and the college’s Board of Trustees aware that the faculty is dissatisfied with Millner’s performance.
Heather Riordan, a math professor and the president of The Faculty Organization, or TFO, said the vote came after faculty complaints that Millner did not include them in decisions affecting academics, as the college’s charter requires.
Spoor said one recent example is Millner’s decision to cut classes with fewer than 15 students. Another is the decision to stop allowing some faculty to teach fewer than the required five classes per semester so they can devote time to non-classroom projects, like planning events or advising student organizations.
“Most of us teach five classes, but sometimes we’ll get extra pay or a course release so that [we] would only teach four classes,” Spoor said. “Dr. Millner decided to take away our pay for a lot of those duties.”
Millner declined Campus Current’s request for a comment.
Communications professor Zoe Farquhar said some faculty raised concerns about the vote.
The main argument raised in opposition was that a no-confidence vote might damage the relationship between faculty and college administrators,” Farquhar said. “But the majority of faculty concluded that the underlying issues were already damaging that relationship.”
During a budget workshop nearly three weeks before the faculty voted, former Board of Trustees Chair Nadine Chien read a statement in support of Millner.
“This board fully supports the president and her team as they move forward with the work,” Chien, who remains on the board but has stepped down as chair, said. “And we support Dr. Millner as she leads us through this period of necessary change. Our obligation is not to preserve comfort and it is to preserve the mission.”
At a full board meeting the following week, Riordan objected to Chien’s making a statement before the faculty had publicly shared the reasons for the vote of no-confidence.
“The board has definitively put itself on the record without having heard from the faculty,” said Riordan. “This board has used its authority to undermine the democratic process that is so important to this college.”
Riordan added: “Should the issue of faculty confidence [in] Dr. Millner come ripe,” Riordan said, “we hope it will be received with an open and evidence-based mindset and through the prism of the best interest for this college and our students.”
In an email addressed to “dear colleagues,” AACC president Dawn Lindsay said: “I believe the challenges we face at AACC can and will be resolved by the people at AACC. We can have our differences and disagreements, while still upholding our commitments to our mission, values and community.”
Lindsay added: “The question is, where do we go from here?”
