From: Cecilia < > To: Steve Kay < @dornsife.usc.edu> Cc: Elizabeth Garrett < @usc.

edu>; Michael Quick < Russett < @usc.edu>; Peter Mancall < @usc.edu> Sent: Thu, Jan 2, 2014 5:39 am Subject: Re: Cecilia Woloch resignation Dear Dean Kay;

@provost.usc.edu>; Margaret Ellen

I appreciate your prompt response, despite its lack of detail, to my letter of resignation. But I'm truly puzzled by your reference to an attempt to "come to terms to retain" me on the faculty at USC. If any such attempt was made by the administration, I was certainly not aware of it. After I was informed, at the beginning of the fall semester, of the cut to my stipend for directing the Maymester program, I met with Dean Mancall and offered to continue teaching at USC if I were granted a course release in lieue of the directing stipend. That offer was rejected by the administration, as was Professor Russett's offer to make up the difference in my compensation from English department funds. I know only of those attempts to appeal to the administration. Could you tell me what attempts were made on the part of the dean's office to retain my services? Thank you for your time. Sincerely, Cecilia Woloch -----Original Message----From: Steve Kay < @dornsife.usc.edu> To: Cecilia < > Sent: Mon, Dec 30, 2013 11:10 pm Subject: Re: Cecilia Woloch resignation Dear Professor Woloch, Many thanks for your note informing me of your decision to resign from your faculty position at USC, effective immediately. It is unfortunate that we were not able to come to terms to retain you here. I would like to thank you for your past contributions, and wish you the very best for your future. Regards, Steve Kay Steve A. Kay, Ph.D. Dean and Anna H. Bing Dean's Chair Professor of Biological Sciences Professor of Neurology; Physiology and Biophysics Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences University of Southern California http://dornsife.usc.edu/

designing The Writer in the Community program, I wrote and submitted the grant application myself. I had envisioned the program as one that would strengthen the bridge between the department of English, and especially the creative writing track, and the Joint Education Project, which offers our students service learning experiences but not a solid pedagogical framework for leading workshops in local schools. The Writer in the Community quickly became what is referred to as a marquee program, and has been the subject of laudatory articles in university as well as public media. The poetry section of the course culminated, each semester it was offered, with the publication of an anthology of poems and a poetry reading by workshop participants that drew standing-room-only audiences. My students learned, not only how to teach poetry, but how to develop these kinds of programs in their own communities. Ive lost track of how many USC students have told me that taking the course changed their lives. And yet the university failed to support the program in any substantive way. After the first two years of the program, JEP staffing cuts left me single-handedly planning and scheduling workshops; acting as liaison with classroom teachers and school administrators; editing the anthology and facilitating its printing; planning and organizing the culminating event doing everything from securing a space for the reading to soliciting donations of refreshments to creating and distributing publicity all while continuing to instruct and supervise my students and build an on-line archive of lesson plans. My requests for a teaching assistant, or for a directing stipend or a course release, were denied. Thus, instead of being able to continue to develop a program that had proven its value to our students and to our community, I was forced to scale back my efforts in order to have sufficient time and energy to devote to my other courses. You may know that The Poet in Paris was one of the first Maymester courses USC offered, launched in 2011. I designed the course based on my years of experience creating independent writing workshops around the world, and on my professional and personal networks in Paris. Those networks allowed me to create a free-standing program and negated the need for a partner institution. The Poet in Paris was, from the outset, a resounding success, providing a dozen undergraduates each year with the opportunity to live in Paris, as poets; to study intensively with me and with a half-dozen other writers of international stature; to participate fully in the literary life of the city; and to present their creative work to enthusiastic international audiences. I had believed the course was fulfilling the universitys highest objectives for our students. Dean Lamy sent me an effusive personal message praising the program. Admissions began to use the program as a recruiting tool; a number of students enrolled at USC because they wanted to participate in the Maymester program in Paris. The success of the programs I created at USC was concurrent with further successes in my career as a writer the publication of two additional books and the award of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts among them. I was led to believe that the university wanted to find a way to reward me for these accomplishments and for having created such successful programs. At this point, I was still a lecturer in the English department with a year-to-year employment contract. I am aware that Professor Russett went to the deans office to present my case, and that Dean Gillman remarked that mine was a tenurable C.V. I subsequently attempted, on my own, to arrange a meeting with Dean Gillman, but was contacted instead by Vice Dean Byrd. During our phone conference, Dean Byrd advised me to seek a job offer from another university, and then bring that offer to the USC administration so that they might make a counter-offer. Frankly, I was appalled by her suggestion that I become complicit in a kind of professional behavior that I believe to be less than honest and ripe for abuse. It also seems to me counterproductive. My experience in the corporate world taught me that promoting from within current ranks is not only cost-effective, but builds motivation and loyalty. I was surprised to find that these values are not recognized by USC. I was also dismayed to learn that, in spite of the Annual Activity Reports and Merit Reviews required by the university, USC feels its administration is not capable of assessing the performance and value of its faculty, but must rely on the monetary value other universities place on its faculty members.

Nevertheless, I stayed on at USC because I was informed that a path had been opened for NTT faculty promotions. This path would prove, however, not to be a path toward equity with similarly qualified tenured faculty, nor even a path to a reasonable living wage. In fact, the promotions of the NTT faculty in the English department did little to close those gaps. After assembling and submitting a dossier that was, in sheer volume alone, twice the dossier of the tenured faculty member whose date of hire was closest to my own, and whose dossier had been made available to me as a model, I was promoted, along with five other NTT faculty members in the department, in the spring of 2012. All six of us were awarded the same rank, Associate Professor, Teaching, and identical salaries a raise that left my compensation, still, substantially less than that of my lowest-paid tenured colleagues. I felt then that I should make plans to leave USC, having realized that my status there was not going to improve. To my astonishment, however, things got even worse. I took unpaid leave in the fall of 2012 a leave afforded by my having won the NEA fellowship. I was subsequently informed that I would be required to teach three courses in the spring semester, instead of the two courses I had normally taught each spring; that three courses now, suddenly, constituted half of my annual five-course teaching load. Since I would also be planning the Poet in Paris course throughout the spring, adding considerably to my workload, I requested that the Maymester course be counted as my third spring course, an option that had been in place since the creation of Maymester courses. But, with no forewarning, the rules had been changed apparently because most Maymester courses are designed and taught by NTT faculty, who must find ways to supplement their income without violating the rule against teaching at other universities and that option was no longer available. Thus I was required to carry a four-course load in the spring semester of 2013 a full years course load for tenured or tenure-track faculty for half of my NTT pay plus overload pay, a total of $38,000 in compensation. This was mitigated, slightly, by Professor Russetts successful effort to have my leave recognized as fellowship leave, which added a few thousand dollars to my 2012 salary, and by the $6,000 stipend I was paid for directing the 2013 Maymester program an amount I had been paid since the programs inception in light of the fact that I was taking full responsibility for supervising a group of undergraduates abroad without benefit of a local partner institution, and as compensation for the enormous amount of work that goes into planning and directing the program each year. During the spring of 2013, I was also developing and rehearsing a presentation for USCs Visions and Voices initiative a multi-media staging of my book-length poem, Tsigan, that involved a half-dozen performers and incorporated filmed testimonies from the Shoah Foundation archives. In spite of how thinly I was being stretched, that performance was a resounding success, as was the spring 2013 Maymester program. And yet, just after the fall semester began, a letter from Dean Lamy notified me that the terms of my 2013-14 contract with USC had been changed, although I had been given no prior notice, and that the $6,000 stipend I had been receiving for directing the program in Paris was being cut to $1,500, in the interests of equity. Aside from the irony of this letter having come from the same Dean who had praised the Paris program so effusively, the use of the word equity here, considering the disparity between NTT and TT compensation, strikes me as cynical, if not hypocritical. At the very least, it seems that this equity is being applied only to NTT faculty, as if there were no distinctions between members of that faculty, nor any such thing as the kind of individual merit thats recognized and rewarded among the ranks of tenured and tenure-track faculty. In any case, the salary cut is a punitive measure that makes no sense to me, given the programs success, and one that I find completely unacceptable. I have never been given any other explanation for the administration's actions and, as NTT faculty, I have little if any access to the upper administration. Dean Byrds dismissive attitude toward my situation seems to reflect a more general dismissiveness on the part of the deans office regarding my efforts and accomplishments. Repeated attempts by Professor Russett, throughout the fall semester, to negotiate on my behalf with the deans office again, to the best of my knowledge, in the person of Vice Dean Byrd were met with responses that seemed to me disdainful and insulting, and that revealed an unwillingness to negotiate in good faith or with any modicum of respect.

I feel I have no choice but to refuse to accept the revision to my 2013-14 contract, and to resign and resume my independent teaching career. My status at USC is, simply, not commensurate with my professional standing and my accomplishments. The manner in which Ive been treated by the deans office makes it clear that the innovative programs Ive created, while they seem to me to speak directly to the universitys mission statement, don't fit the administrations vision of the university. Of course Im deeply disappointed that the image I had of USC, when I began teaching there, has proven to be false. Nevertheless, Im glad to have had the opportunity to create these programs and to work with the brilliant and talented students Ive taught at USC. My hope is that the impact Ive had on those students will serve them well in their future endeavors. Sincerely, Cecilia Woloch @usc.edu

There are stars whose radiance is visible on Earth though they have long been extinct. There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world though they are no longer among the living. These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark. They light the way for humankind. -Hannah Senesh, poet, playwright, and paratrooper (1921-1944)