Warren Wilson College restructures staff positions ahead of Fall semester

At a small liberal arts college like Warren Wilson, it’s difficult not to build up personal relationships with the people you live, work and study with everyday. It also makes moving on from long-time staff and faculty a bit more complicated, as was demonstrated last Friday when college administrators announced several staff positions would be restructured, leading to the dismissal of seven current staff members.

An email sent out from Vice President of Administration and Finance Stephanie Owens on Friday afternoon to staff and faculty at the Swannanoa-based work college  outlined several reconfigurations of staff positions, predominantly related to the college’s work program.

“In the last year, we began a comprehensive evaluation of our internal processes and structures,” wrote Owens in the email. “The results created a basis for ways Warren Wilson College could become more attentive to the complex and competitive higher education landscape.”

The changes consist of the combination of several staff positions into wider-ranging roles, which college officials say has eliminated the need for seven former staff positions, while creating three new ones. Owens writes that the changes will “facilitate more effective and efficient operations.” While Owens acknowledges in the email that “saying goodbye to longtime employees is a decision no administrator wants to make or takes lightly,” she adds that “change is inevitable and unavoidable at times.”

With the changes to staff structure, Warren Wilson decided to release staff members managing the plumbing crew, heating, ventilation and air conditioning crew, locksmith crew, the College Press and the network computing services department. These positions will either be combined into other existing work crews or supervised under one of three new positions created by the college.

Five of the seven staff members let go in this decision had worked with the college for ten years or more, and at least one is an alumni of Warren Wilson’s undergraduate program.

While Warren Wilson College President Steven Solnick, now in his third year leading the college, had hinted at the coming changes in a July 7 letter to the campus, the loss of staff members has come as a shock to the small, tight-knit campus community.

“This has been a hugely upsetting series of events to watch happen,” says one current staff member, who declined to be named for this article. The staffer indicates that the college Facilities Management and Technical Services staff had just finished a two day retreat 24 hours before the restructuring news broke.

“The timing could have been better,” says the staff member, adding that the Fall semester begins in less than two weeks.

The staffer also raises questions about the way the administration determined which positions would be cut, as well as how these decisions were communicated to the community. “We pride ourselves on being such a collaborative community environment, yet these decisions were all made and executed by people who have been on campus for less than a year.”

Several alumni have also raised concerns on social media about the way the restructure was handled, leading to a lively discussion between former and current students and staff members on the idea of collaborative community and how students, alumni and staff are involved in the decision-making process at Warren Wilson.

“Staff in this small community – Crew Leaders, [Service Learning] staff, hell, we were figuratively staff ourselves in the work program – are just as important as professors and can have just as much lasting impact,” wrote alum Christine Resmai in a Facebook post expressing reservations about the recent moves. “It’s not the who, it’s the way it was done.”

Responding to past and current community members’ concerns, Warren Wilson’s Media Relations official Kyle McCurry says that while “there is no good way to eliminate people’s jobs,” the college administrators came to this decision “in an effort to deliver services better and more efficiently.”

“The privacy and dignity of the people involved are of the utmost importance,” McCurry writes in an email to Xpress. He adds that the decisions were made by campus administrators, who “evaluat[ed] each division and determin[ed] how best the goal of ‘effective and efficient’ operations would be achieved. As I am sure you can imagine, this takes time, thoughtful and measured consideration.”

Staff members whose positions have been eliminated will have the opportunity to reapply for one of three new staff positions consolidated under the new structure. For more information on available staff positions and how to apply, visit warren-wilson.edu/about/hr/employment-opportunities.

Warren Wilson College was recently included in the Princeton Review‘s ” The Best 380 Colleges” annual listings and was noted as being the second most LGBT-friendly college in the United States. The four year private liberal arts institution, which began as the Asheville Farm School in 1894, starts its Fall semester on August 23.