A petition was recently sponsored by the United Academics of Oregon State University — OSU’s faculty union — to reinstate three tenured professors from a College of Health program.
The professors, Roberta Riportella, Deborah John and Siew Sun Wong, were told of their impending termination from the Family and Community Health Program in August with their contracts scheduled to be terminated August 2026.
The petition — addressed to Oregon State University President Jayathi Murthy, OSU Provost Roy Haggerty and the OSU Board of Trustees — calls for the reversal of the three professors’ termination and for the university to reaffirm its “commitment to shared governance, academic freedom, and tenure protections.”
According to the petition, the tenured professors are being let go due to a sudden reorganization of the FCH program with the justification that OSU lost a federally-funded Oregon SNAP-Ed program. However, according to Riportella, neither she nor the other professors were funded by SNAP-Ed.
“You have an extension program saying, ‘We can’t fund you anymore, even though you’re not on this funding stream,’” Riportella said. “Saying that, ‘we no longer need tenured faculty.’ And rather than waiting for attrition, waiting for us to retire, or waiting for us to leave for whatever reason, or discussing with us what our options might be, they just terminated us.”
In an email from Vice President for University Relations and Marketing Rob Odom, he stated that the loss of the SNAP-Ed fund caused a massive reorganization of the Family and Community Health unit.
“The Family and Community Health unit’s recurring braided budget that funded these positions went from $13 million to $3.5 million with this termination,” Odom said.
Odom said the university highly values “the contributions, dedication and expertise of these talented individuals” and are supporting them in their transition.
According to Riportella, the UAOSU was not notified prior to the terminations, which violated the collective bargaining agreement. She also noted that, as a tenured employee, the rank order of terminations was not adhered to, which she says also violates the agreement.
Riportella said the union is filing a grievance with the university over the matter in conjunction with the petition.
“(The situation over her termination) is very unusual,” Riportella said. “It’s potentially without precedent. We don’t know how far to go back to see when the university has terminated tenured faculty.”
Coinciding with the “sunsetting” of the Search Advocate program and the Social Justice Education Initiative, the petition said the termination of three tenured professors is a “troubling sign of the OSU Administration’s disregard of honoring policies and regulations.”
However, unlike Search and SJEI, both of which did not have tenured faculty, Riportella thinks the decision may have a chance to be overturned by the Faculty Senate.
Riportella said the Faculty Consulting Group is currently meeting and investigating the terminations to see if all policies were adhered to.
Riportella says she was very close to retirement before this happened.
“As of Sept. 30, less than two months after I get my notice, I was told I’m no longer in extension, and now I’m fully in the college. So my plan of work fully changed. I was being asked to teach more classes and do things that I wasn’t intending to do for this year.”
She said she would follow the advice of her kids to go ahead and retire, except for the fact she believes in the protections of academic freedoms and the indefinite contract she had with OSU.
“I’m not gonna let them get away with it that easily,” Riportella said. “I’m not going to leave because I can. I mean, because I could, but that’s not what I’m about. I’m about protecting other people on this campus. If this university can haphazardly fire tenured faculty, nobody’s safe. So I’m here for the fight, not just for myself.”
According to Riportella, because of the way she is leaving OSU, she probably won’t be able to get emeritus status or tenure relinquishment, which would allow her to work half-time for three years.
“Some of the rights that I had as a tenured faculty member are being taken away from me,” she said. “So, I’m just gonna do the things I love. I love teaching, I love mentoring.”
Riportella said that she is “troubled” by how few faculty members have signed the petition.
“To me, (this) is evidence of a level of fear,” she said. “People are afraid to sign their name on a petition when they know that there are other programs that might be at risk. (There is) a climate of fear on this campus.”