Kean’s Art History program remains resilient despite retrenchment

By Christian Grullon | Published by October 23, 2020

Kean’s Art History program has faced some trials and tribulations with the retrenchment of staff members along with classes being cut obviously affecting the students of the program.

Even through the retrenchment, which means reduction in the extent or quantity of something, reduction of costs or spending in response to economic difficulty, of the campus’s Art History faculty back in December, students and professors from the Art History Program remain active and positive, continuing to show support for the program.

The retrenchments began in December of last year when staff members were being let go. Students volunteered to create a petition back in January of this year as a means of protesting to preserve the program.

Courses from the Art History program were getting cut was another reason for students creating the petition. There were protests on campus during the summer as well.

Professors received an email notification of their retrenchment, without citing a reason, five days before the Christmas holiday last year. The cuts, made under former Kean President Dawood Farahi who stepped down June 30, means that Kean will have no tenured faculty in Art History.

Immediately, students and faculty protested the decision to Kean’s Board of Trustees several times, started petitions and with the Kean Federation of Teachers, the faculty’s union, raised the issue to Gov. Phil Murphy at a Town Hall meeting in Maplewood.

Murphy said publicly that he would look into the problem. The faculty –who includes Dr. Jacquelyn Tuerk-Stonberg, Dr. Marguerite Mayhall and Dr. Lewis Kachur are slated to lose their jobs at the end of this school year.

“We were scheduled to be retrenched as of Sept. 2 and we were getting to the last week of August not knowing whether we would be teaching or not,” Dr. Lewis Kachur, an associate professor in the Art History Program, said, “and we were supposed to be doing coursebooks and preparing for online teaching for fall courses that we were projected not to be teaching so we’re trying to get back on our feet from that.”

The art history faculty are looking to meet with President Lamont Repollet at some point.

Over the summer, faculty spent some time drawing up a proposal of possible reforms and suggestions related to Art History.

Kachur said one idea is to create a museum studies program connected to art history because none of the state colleges offer that.

“What I would like to see is the Art History program to continue at Kean, and that sounds self-serving”, Kachur said, “but also if the program were to be taken away, Kean would be the only state four-year school to not have Art History, and it would deprive our students of exposure to the fields of a larger number of students and possible career options for a smaller number of students.”

Kachur also gave clarification on the word retrench when he explained that the legal word is re-entrench, the popular phrase word is fired and what implies is that you have done something wrong and you’re being let go because you’re insufficient and retrenchment doesn’t mean that, it’s just an administrative procedure to cut back regardless of the qualities of individuals and their performance.

Despite this ordeal, students have been providing immense support for art history.

Kachur said that students were very supportive when the first retrenchment notice came down, and that there were a number of protests and posters put around campus.

An online petition had over 4,000 signatures from students to improve the Fine Arts facilities and preserve the Art History program. Students have also been writing letters and speaking to the Board of Trustees to address this issue.

Kachur has said it’s been a challenge with online courses since the retrenchments.

“We actually have kept our enrollments at the same level, we’ve had the challenge of the course going online,” Kachur said, “none of our classes are in person and of course it’s been a challenge working with the Blackboard, we’ve had training over the summer and still it’s a whole new thing.”

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