President Daniele Struppa first informed all faculty and staff Oct. 23 of their “required” return to campus in the spring semester, an announcement that raised dissent from faculty.

Chapman held a COVID-19 town hall meeting Oct. 28 to discuss this transition to in-person learning, encouraging viewers watching at home to submit a question for review in order for it to appear in the chat. Yet only submitted questions specifically raised by Jamie Ceman, the vice president of strategic marketing and communications, were answered by senior administration panelists 

Thus, instead of addressing concerns that had to do with faculty’s health and safety, Chapman professor Shira Klein told The Panther mostly informational questions were acknowledged.

“I don’t like Zoom as much as the next person, but it’s all about the least bad option right now,” said Klein, a professor in the Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. “We’re looking to make a change. We’re looking for alternatives that we would like to suggest to this policy.”

Lisa Leitz, a Wilkinson College professor, told The Panther that according to the university’s shared governance policies, faculty are eligible to shape their individual curriculum, which can include the format of teaching. As stated in the faculty manual, “Chapman assumes that its faculty is composed of mature and conscientious persons who fulfill their responsibilities without close supervision and meticulous rules.” 

Two Chapman professors, who spoke to The Panther under the sustained condition of anonymity to avoid employment retribution, both said Struppa’s Oct. 23 email to all faculty and staff members felt “disingenuous.”

Both the Wilkinson College and the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts submitted statements to administrators signaling their distaste with the insensitivities faculty and staff faced. Paul Gulino, a Dodge professor who helped lead the college’s letter, told The Panther the issue not only lies in safety, but also the hybrid teaching model’s effectiveness. He said some professors currently teaching hybrid classes attest against it, due to technological difficulties and multitasking between two sets of students.

“There is currently a developing disagreement between the administration and a group of faculty, but we are working to find a collaborative way forward that will address the concerns,” Struppa told The Panther Nov. 3, declining to comment further due to concerns over inflaming the situation. 

Leitz stressed the fact that Chapman hasn’t laid off or furloughed any faculty or staff, but that health risks associated with a mandate to return to campus is not a solution that demonstrates much concern for faculty’s safety. Faculty can be granted at-home accommodations if they’re personally deemed high-risk, but older or younger family members with predisposed conditions are not factored into this consideration.

After Struppa expressed in an email Oct. 29 that some faculty “suggested that we screen the questions in order to make our job easier when we need to answer,” Leitz moderated a follow-up town hall Oct. 30 through Zoom. The event saw over 50 questions from the 233 faculty members in attendance – who had the opportunity to unmute their mics and speak directly to administrators.

“We’ve been working our (expletive) off … giving up summers which would’ve traditionally been used for research and writing … in order to better understand how to provide a meaningful experience online,” Leitz said. “We’re lacking the community of being together and that makes a big difference for how we treat each other.”

The meeting was around 80 minutes in length and raised concerns against higher administration’s presentation of concrete data that shows students want to return, studies that illustrate hybrid learning is more conducive to a successful education, complaints administration received about Zoom professionalism, on-campus building ventilation systems and the procedure professors should follow if students don’t comply with COVID-19 protocol.

Ceman asserted that questions from faculty during the Oct. 28 town hall comprised only 5% to 7% of the approximately 400 total questions asked. Due to the high volume of interaction, Ceman told The Panther that four individuals – one from Chapman’s Strategic Marketing and Communications department and three affiliated with the Office of Parent Engagement – worked to look for themes in questions in order to answer as many as possible in the time available.

“Having a separate forum where faculty had the ability to ask questions themselves versus going through a moderator, to me, was the right thing to do,” Ceman wrote in an Nov. 2 email to The Panther. “They deserve to be heard directly when they have concerns and a town hall is generally not the right platform for that.”

Students are not required to return to campus in the spring. Gulino told The Panther Nov. 4, that faculty will collaborate with the university’s Faculty Senate to discuss a more flexible approach. He noted that Struppa’s Nov. 3 email to all faculty and staff shared a sentiment of open discussion and an exchange of views and ideas.

“Provost Glenn Pfeiffer is working with our elected faculty governance to seek ways to incorporate faculty concerns into our next steps, and I know that our Chief Human Resource Officer Brian Powell is working with supervisors across campus to the same end for staff,” Struppa wrote to faculty and staff Nov. 3.

Leitz explained that professors worked tirelessly over the summer to upend their syllabi and reformat their course curriculum to better accommodate remote learning. Being a part of the solution instead of a variable in a predetermined plan would encourage faculty, instead of being left feeling “clearly not respected, clearly not valued – disposable,” a professor told The Panther.

As such, Keith Weber, a professor in the School of Communication, and David Pincus, a professor in the Crean College of Health and Behavioral Sciences, are respectively conducting data analyses on student and faculty preferences and experiences. Klein said this information will be handed over to the Chapman Faculty Senate to share with administration. 

The professors are currently in the process of gathering data to present to their colleagues and deciding the next steps to reintegrate curriculum to the classroom setting.

“I believe very strongly and passionately that no one should be putting vulnerable loved ones at risk – and that includes our staff,” Leitz said. “Some of the most beloved faculty members are some of the most vulnerable.”