A failure of institutional care

I just hit "send" on this letter to my dean and associate dean. Mic drop. I've never sent such a scathing letter, but it's definitely called for in this situation. I'm not expecting anything other than a "Oh, that wasn't how we intended to make you feel; our hands were tied" email.

Dear Dean Lawless and Associate Dean Lloyd,

When I wrote to Professor Land [my department head] to see if I could get a course release this fall due to having lung cancer plus complications from pulmonary embolism and COVID, I had no idea what I was in for. When faculty friends in other colleges have had health crises (ones that don’t warrant a full-semester medical leave), their department head or dean has simply said, “Don’t worry about teaching this semester. We’ll figure it out.” I figured the same would happen in my case. To be blunt, the way that my case was handled was a colossal failure of leadership. As my husband and I have shared my story with colleagues at PSU and other universities, everyone has been dumbfounded at the abysmal response from the College.

Essentially, I was caught between the Dean’s office, which told me it is impossible to grant a course release for medical reasons, and HR, which merely sent me a list of accommodations and told me I could contact “absence management” about a medical leave (with no additional explanations). No one took the initiative to help me figure out the options or solve the problem. Since department heads have essentially been stripped of meaningful decision-making authority about faculty matters, Professor Land did not have the option of granting me a course release, so I do not fault her.

Worrying about and trying to figure out my teaching situation for the fall compounded my stress during the most precarious time of my life. To resolve the situation, I had to schedule a Zoom meeting with HR and three department leaders while I was in the ICU four hours from home, battling lung cancer, pulmonary embolism, and COVID, wearing a hospital gown, and breathing supplemental oxygen through a tube in my nose. Let that sink in. If that sounds like a really bad situation to put an employee in, that’s because it was. If it doesn’t make you cringe, it should. In the end, it was a colleague in the meeting—not anyone from HR or the Dean’s office—who identified the solution: intermittent FMLA that will allow me to reduce my weekly workload.

After being discharged on August 10, I was home for 5 days. Last Monday, I had to go to the ER at Mount Nittany Medical Center with hypoxemia (difficulty breathing due to low oxygen). I spent 5 days in the hospital (3 in ICU) and was discharged on Friday. However, no one in the Dean’s office would know this because no one has bothered to check in on me since Kim’s email on August 4th explaining that the proper processes for course releases must be followed.

A faculty friend who visited me at the hospital studies institutional care* and how organizations demonstrate care (or lack thereof) for their employees’ well-being. When she mentioned this term, it immediately struck me: the way the College handled my situation is the antithesis of institutional care. The overarching message I received was that procedures must be followed; nothing else matters. It’s become painfully clear that in College of Education, protecting the institution and following its rules are more important than safeguarding employees’ well-being. The College leadership is following the letter but not the spirit of the law.

These events have led me to wonder whether my treatment is part of a broader pattern in the College or whether my case was an anomaly. I cannot think of what would justify such horrendous treatment of any faculty member, much less a full professor who has devoted 17 years of her academic career to the College and University. The way I was treated indicates a lack of care for individual faculty members. But a broader question is whether you are concerned about how this kind of treatment might affect faculty recruitment, retention, and morale and the way that senior administrators and other faculty at PSU perceive our College culture and leadership. I already received a note from a PSU employee friend who wrote, “I was so disappointed (but not surprised, sadly) to hear that the Dean made this stressful for you.” I can only conclude that my treatment illustrates the College’s shift toward valuing numbers and output (faculty-to-student ratios, class sizes, teaching load, number of students taught annually, grant money generated, etc.) over people and their health and well-being.

I am slowly recovering from the pulmonary embolisms and COVID. However, I will never forget the horrible way you treated me during the darkest hours of my life. I hope that no other employee with a health crisis ever endures the treatment to which I was subjected. I also hope this incident will stimulate critical reflection on whether and how the College is providing and communicating institutional care for employees. We don’t need “thoughts and prayers” emails. We need administrators who step up to solve problems for us when we are in crisis, who prioritize employee well-being above procedures, and who can distinguish between following the spirit and letter of policies. The College can and must do better. Our reputation and the well-being of employees depend on it.

*Footnote: At a fall 2020 PSU panel on institutional care, this term was defined as “Compassion and concern with action to support individualized needs through policies and practices. [It] balance[es] the value for performance as an organization with the value of the people who make up the organization.”