Bowie State University’s provost will leave her post Friday after just four months amid backlash from faculty and a vote of no confidence.
Professors say Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Stacey Franklin Jones did not include faculty in important decisions and that her exit is a direct result of their vocal dissatisfaction.
University spokesman Tammi Thomas declined to comment on why Jones left, but called the departure “a personnel decision the president made in the best interest of the university.”
“She made significant contributions in a number of areas including our Middle States reaccreditation preparation efforts, finalizing our student retention plan, and moving forward our course re-design efforts,” Thomas wrote in an e-mail.
But her actions annoyed the Faculty Association, which told University President Mickey Burnim in an Oct. 25 letter that Thomas overhauled the freshman and sophomore curricula without faculty input, then named a senior director without consulting faculty.
The Faculty Association also accused Jones of placing contract workers who did not submit credentials to senior positions, concluding, “The faculty does not desire any further collaboration with Dr. Jones.”
The next week, they gave both Jones and Burnim a vote of no confidence.
The university responded that it was aware of the situation and would hold meetings with campus leaders. “The chancellor remains supportive of Dr. Burnim and is proud of the many successes of the institution during his tenure,” the statement said, making no such endorsement of Jones.
Olusola Akinyele, then-leader of the Faculty Association, said the group opposed the president only for his deference to Jones and would now support him: “Absolutely. … The president took action.”
Akinyele said he was confident Jones resigned because the faculty would no longer work with her, and that she and Burnim wanted to mitigate negative publicity for the university.
Jones graduated from Howard University with a degree in mathematics, earned two master’s degrees in numerical science and systems engineering/technical management from Johns Hopkins University, and received a doctoral degree in computer science from George Washington University. She left her position as senior vice president at Benedict College in South Carolina to become provost of Bowie State, Maryland’s oldest historically black university, on July 1.
“We need someone who knows what it means to be in the classroom, who knows what it is to have students, who knows what it is to do research,” Akinyele said. “[Jones] has not tried to understand the culture of Bowie State.”
