Florida Memorial Fires Professors To Resolve Accreditation Troubles

Miami FL

16 March, 2022

4:34 PM

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By Bianca Marcof, Miami Times Staff Writer, the Miami Times Mar 15, 2022 With the looming risk of losing its accreditation, Florida Memorial University is laying off at least four tenured professors in an effort to cut costs. It's one of the drastic measures the institution is taking to remain accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), including the elimination of a total of 18 faculty and staff positions and 16 degree programs across its schools of education, arts and sciences, and business. In November, The Miami Times reported that the university's board of trustees voted to cut "underperforming" academic programs which would lead to staffing reductions, after it was placed on yearlong probation as a result of being unable to meet financial standard requirements. The school said the move was an effort to put it in a more sustainable financial position. Until now, it had not revealed which programs and positions it would eliminate. The recent cuts have been met with a formal demand letter alleging claims of discrimination, and complaints to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on behalf of four tenured professors that were notified they'd be out of a job by May. Attorney Randy Fleischer is representing professors Richard Yaklich, William Hopper, Abbass Entessari and Telahun Desalegne, as first reported by Miami New Times. The layoffs occurred in several departments including music, chemistry, environmental sciences and mathematics. Florida Memorial University has discontinued these 16 programs. (Courtesy of Florida Memorial University) "We just want to see if the university is going to be reasonable and follow their own procedures or if they're just hellbent on terminating these older professors," Fleischer told The Miami Times. Sharee Gilbert, FMU's director of communications, told this paper that the university will not comment on pending administrative actions. As for discontinued programs, she revealed that the targeted programs produced less than five graduates over a five-year period, according to an assessment conducted by strategy consulting firm Gray Associates. "Decisions such as these are not easy to make – they are certainly decisions most businesses and organizations have had to make more recently. The decisions were a part of a data-driven process, which in turn created data-driven results and were not personal in any way," she said in a written statement. "Data proved it to not be of benefit to keep faculty and staff on and to keep programs open that were underperforming." Fleischer argues the letters of termination were provided without proper notice or cause, and that the terminations are discriminatory because the professors are over 50 and 60 years of age. "They're all tenured professors," he said. "They've been here for 20, 30 years. And they were just given this letter, 'We're eliminating your position, we're eliminating your department, we're eliminating the courses that you teach and you won't have a job next year.' And they just violated their procedures in doing that." Gilbert wrote that the university has "operated in a sense of transparency, sending out mass communications, holding town hall discussions, and disseminating videos to faculty, students, staff, alumni, and stakeholders, keeping everyone apprised as to what to expect." Whether that included a warning beforehand to affected employees is not clear. In the Miami New Times article, Yaklich, 57, expressed his belief that his position was eliminated in retaliation for being vocal about issues at the institution, even having disagreements with FMU President Jaffus Hardrick during board meetings. Yaklich has worked at Florida Memorial for 22 years. "This just really hurts," he told Miami New Times. "And to be honest with you, to be my age – it's going to be very hard for me to even try to secure another position." The Miami Times is the largest Black-owned newspaper in the south serving Miami's Black community since 1923. The award-winning weekly is frequently recognized as the best Black newspaper in the country by the National Newspaper Publishers Association.