University Senate addresses effect of staff reductions on students

By Cindy Lazo | Published by October 23, 2020

As this unprecedented fall semester is nearly halfway through, Kean University has undergone many changes, and for student services, it’s not a good ones.

Walter Mack, University Senator who works in Financial Aid, first raised the issue of staff reductions in the first University Senate meeting of the semester on September 29. The Senate creates and recommends Kean University policy to the president in areas such as curriculum, instruction and student affairs.

“Areas like Financial Aid, Registrar and One Stop have been severely impacted by the lack of staff that are in those offices now,” Mack said to the Senate members.

Mack pointed out that in Financial Aid alone two managers were fired, and two other staff members retired after being retrenched during the former administration headed by President Dawood Farahi, who left in July.

“So basically, we’re hurting ourselves from an enrollment point of view and retention point of view.” Mack said. “Because, as it’s been documented, people can’t get answers to their questions in terms of financial information, getting accurate advisement information, graduation information because there’s simply nobody to pick up the phone or get to the emails to help them”

Ana R. Wetzel, a Financial Aid Counselor and NJ Stars II Coordinator, said the situation is even worse than Mack described.

“Piggybacking on what Walter said, actually we lost six people in Financial Aid,” Wetzel said, “Two from staff retired early retirement, four managers were let go, and now we’re losing our director of Financial Aid, so actually we have no one except for just a few people.”

Senate Chair Craig Donovan said while the need exists to look into university staffing, the issue is broader than that.

“We’ve lost professional staff, administrators and other people in areas that are critical to the success of the university and the mission to support our students,” Donovan said, “I think it would behoove us, as the Senate, this year to look at what we had, what we got and what we think we need to have where going forward. If we want to go on being a lead institution, then we got to have the appropriate staff in the appropriate offices to provide that support for our students, support for our staff and support for our faculty.”

Margaret McCorry, the Director of Media Relations, says that Kean University is committed to providing a student-centered approach to all enrollment services.

“A restructuring of Kean’s enrollment services has increased the number of permanent, full-time staff at the One Stop Service Center and strengthened the division’s student-focused approach.” McCorry said, “In addition, One Stop staff received additional training over the summer in order to be able to respond to inquiries from Kean students at all of our campuses and began answering calls to the Financial Aid office.”

McCorry also explained that Financial Aid will hire new staff to fill open positions that were due to early retirements and attrition, that every Kean student has a financial aid counselor and can schedule appointments online at https://www.kean.edu/offices/financial-aid/financial-aid-staff#counselors and that students should be aware that One Stop services are available remotely along with limited in-person service outdoors at the information booth by the Center for Academic Success.

“Signage at the booth and at the One Stop office in CAS provides a QR code so students can easily access remote services virtually as well as via email at regme@kean.edu,” she said, “Students should keep in mind that all inquiries are handled in the order they are received.”

---