Faculty, admin differ on cut-program input

By Jake Tiger

Two Rider programs were cut over the summer following what the provost called “a conversation and an agreement” between the faculty and administrators.

However, two professors affected by the cuts said they were never involved in any discussions; instead, they found out in an email from their dean.

“I had no idea,” said Md Ali, a cybersecurity and computer science professor. “I just received an email saying it was archived. When the discussion was, I have no idea… I don’t think that any of [the full-time faculty] were involved in this process.”

Ongoing cuts

In a Sept. 9 interview with The Rider News, Provost DonnaJean Fredeen said that both the Master of Science in cybersecurity and a branch of the nursing program were archived, adding to a growing list of axed programs amid the university’s financial struggles.

In June 2022, 25 programs were archived or eliminated as a result of “academic prioritization,” a universitywide email announced. The university has previously stated that programs designated as “archived” were removed from academic offerings, and students would cease being recruited into these disciplines, but the programs could be reinstated in the future.

With the cybersecurity program in particular, Kelly Bidle, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said there were discussions over the summer between her, Fredeen and John Bochanski, chair of the department of computer science and physics.

Bidle said Bochanski was the faculty representation in the discussions. However, Bochanski is classified as an administrator and is not allowed to attend faculty union meetings, unlike regular, full-time faculty members.

Bochanski declined to speak to The Rider News.

Bidle said, “The ideal is … the administration and the faculty coming to the same conclusions together. … In this case, before Dr. [Elizabeth] Hawthorne left and this summer with Dr. Bochanski, we had those discussions and basically figured it’s best to put [the cybersecurity program] on pause.”

The department received the email from Bidle on Aug. 22 after a failed search during the summer for a new director of the master’s program.

The Rider News received Bidle’s email, which reads, “Without having a faculty champion, combined with the low enrollments and greater external competition, we have to come to this difficult conclusion… I am hopeful that with the growth of the undergraduate cybersecurity program we can revisit this graduate program and consider its restoration in the future.”

A few hours after Bidle’s email, there was a separate message from Bochanski to the four full-time faculty in the department. The email, provided to The Rider News, reads, “FYI. The decision was made completely by the Dean’s office.”

Bidle said she was unaware of the email, adding that she had discussions with Bochanski about the program throughout the summer: “I’m disappointed to hear that that was the communication from the chair to the faculty, and I’m disappointed the faculty didn’t come and talk to me if they had a concern.”

‘Everyone is overloaded’

Bidle said they decided to archive the program with hopes of one day reviving it, but for the time being, she noted the enrollment was too low to justify keeping it. The program usually hovered around or below 10 students, and they wanted to continue to build up the undergraduate program before reconsidering the four-plus-one master’s degree.

“The master’s degree was launched simultaneously with the undergrad, and that is not a recipe for success,” Bidle said. “You have to build the base … before that graduate program can really thrive.”

According to Rider’s course roster, eight graduate-level cybersecurity classes were offered for the Fall 2024 semester. Each class can have up to 16 students enrolled, but the roster showed that 93 of 128 total spots were still open on Sept. 16.

For the handful of enrolled students, a teach-out plan will be implemented so they can complete the remaining requirements for their degrees, Bidle said.

While the program’s enrollment was low, the cybersecurity faculty believed this was partially due to being understaffed and not having the resources to attract a qualified director for the program after the resignation of the previous one last spring.

According to Ali, after the program’s director, Hawthorne, resigned from her position at Rider, the department struggled to pick up her duties afterward.

Northeastern University’s website showed that Hawthorne is working as a professor and cybersecurity graduate program director for the institution.

Will Pitera, a graduate student in Rider’s cybersecurity program, said he was “somewhat surprised, somewhat not” when he found out the degree was dropped.

 “It was very frustrating because I only have one semester left,” Pitera said, who summed up his experience this semester with the phrase “disappointing and frustrating.” “I was hoping to get that last semester in with [Hawthorne] and get recommendation letters, but unfortunately there wasn’t enough time to get any of those.”

While Hawthorne was at Rider, Pitera said she had lectures one or twice a week that lasted up to two hours, and she was overall very accessible to her students. Now with the teach-out plan, the classes are being outsourced and are all completely asynchronous, with Pitera saying it felt like the new, unfamiliar instructors had no knowledge of the program.

“[Her classes were] always interesting and you always learned something, but now with these classes, things are very different,” Pitera said. “You have to do everything on your own, you’re not being taught anything. It’s a lot more frustrating and I kind of enjoyed those lectures.”

The graduate cybersecurity students are paying the same tuition rate despite the classes being outsourced, Pitera said.

Pitera said students were alerted of Hawthorne’s resignation on June 24 and felt “left in the dark” due to the lack of context.

With worsening staffing issues, Jay Luo, another cybersecurity and computer science professor, said the faculty members were put in a difficult situation: they needed time to develop the program’s curriculum, as cybersecurity is a fairly new industry. But due to the lack of staffing, people like Luo had to pick up extra classes to keep the program running, leaving them little-to-no time for research.

The cybersecurity and computer science department has four full-time faculty, all of whom teach four classes per semester, according to Luo, who said he had prepped and taught seven new courses in his three years at Rider, and he will be running two more in the coming spring.

Luo felt that this predicament may have led to the sputtering of the cybersecurity master’s program.

“This kind of problem is also happening for our undergraduate program at this moment,” said Luo. “Everyone is overloaded. We don’t have time for research, but cybersecurity is a new major. We don’t really have a textbook to go off of, and we basically have to design everything from scratch.”

Luo and Ali said they and Bochanski were involved in searching for and interviewing candidates for the job, but once the hiring process stalled and archival talks began, they were no longer included.

Luo said finding a candidate for the job, which included overseeing the program and lecturing, was difficult because the requirements and commitment were high while compensation was low. He said there were plenty of underqualified applicants, but few who actually met the requirements of the role as most other jobs that require a Ph.D. in cybersecurity offer more pay, research opportunities and the chance to become tenured.

Ali said, “We selected three [candidates] for the interview, and we actually liked one of the prospective candidates. The problem is he’s doing another job, and he wants this one as a second job. Rider doesn’t allow that.”

The final interview with the candidate only included Bochanski and it did not result in a hire, according to Ali.