University Senate held its first meeting during the fall 2024 semester, with senators from across the university speaking openly about their individual concerns and issues. Two departments that stood out in the crowd were the Career Center and Campbell Library, represented by Ruben Britt, Jr. and Samantha Kennedy.

Both emphasized that they are passionate about Rowan and would not still be here if not, but they shared concerns about the current state of their respective departments.

“We’re the nation’s third fastest-growing public research institution, and we have doubled enrollment in the past 10 years, but our department in particular, which is now called the teaching and learning department, continues to shrink,” said Kennedy.

For Britt, who is the Assistant Director of the Office of Career Advancement/Experiential Education and has been at the university for 28 years, the growing number of students compared to the dissection of the Career Center department worries him.

“As the school continued to grow, the staff never did grow. And then last year, we were told that we were moving, and they broke us up into three different areas,” said Britt.

As Rowan University trends towards achieving a Research 1 (R1) status, the highest classification for research universities as defined by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, Kennedy expressed her concerns over the diminishing library staff. She is the information literacy librarian and has worked at Rowan for nine and a half years.

With over 3,500 employees and over 22,000 students, Rowan University’s campus is continually expanding. As the university grows, many departments call for more employees to keep up with the tremendous growth of the student body. There are lack of staffing problems and communication issues problems for multiple departments, including the Library and Office of Career Advancement.

Britt explained that the Career Center is unable to properly staff their events. 

“It’s supposed to be with all the things that we try to provide, the services, the workshops, the resume critique, and that’s all well and good to have a career fair, but if you don’t have the staff members to help prepare the students for a career fair, to help them prepare for interviews, [and] you don’t want to overwork the staff members,” said Britt. 

The lack of communication is so severe, according to Britt, that he turned down doing workshops during orientation to avoid being asked questions he does not have the answers to. 

“I used to do workshops during orientation for parents and I would show them the website and tell them this is what you need to tell your students. This is what they need to do during their four years here. I turned it down last year and this year because I didn’t want to be asked questions that I couldn’t answer,” said Britt. 

Britt reminisced about what the Career Center used to be, a safe space for students to get help with their resume or borrow a suit to wear to a job interview. 

“I’m truly concerned because I’ve never seen any model like this…I’ve been a consultant. There’s no model like this, and when you have this current situation, it’s not healthy, and it’s not fair to the students. I’ve read the different mission goals of the institution. There’s a piece in there that talks about finding employment, for finding meaningful jobs…This doesn’t align with that,” said Britt. 

Anthony Lowman, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs credits the ongoing construction and renovation projects for the issues facing these departments. 

“Our focus has been developing that corridor, starting at the library and including Savitz [Hall], the Student Center, and the Wellness Center into our central student success district. That includes everything from wellness and just the physical steps to get there is taking a little bit of time,” said Lowman.

Lowman explained that moving Enrollment Management to Rowan Boulevard has opened up space that will allow the reallocation of Career Services to one physical space but that most likely will not begin until this upcoming summer. 

“So we have plans for expansion of the wellness service, expanding advising services into some of the libraries. And I think that’ll allow us, within Savitz, to start to move those people around back to where they need to be…we’re going to kind of go back into that building this summer and start making some retrofits to bring those pieces back together,” said Lowman. 

As for the library, Lowman says they are currently looking to hire people to fill vacant roles.

“The library is challenging. We’ve lost some people, and we’re reevaluating how we’re going to redeploy those people. So we’re meeting actively with…the librarians themselves, making sure that we’re hiring the right people for the library of today, not libraries of yesterday,” said Lowman.

According to Kennedy, the Glassboro campus has lost nine librarians since 2017 and as of last October, the library currently only has seven librarians. In 2019, Rowan had 14 librarians. Kennedy also pointed out that people have been hired and left during that time and there have been some retention issues over the last few years. 

There is also a distinction between library staff and librarians like Kennedy, who are referred to as subject or liaison librarians. Liaison librarians are assigned to certain departments or colleges to aid faculty in curriculum development, research, and instruction. For approximately 22,000 students, Rowan only has three liaison librarians. This translates to about 7,300 librarians per student. 

The University of Delaware, which is an RI university with about 1,500 more students than Rowan, has 16 liaison librarians compared to Rowan’s three. The New Jersey Institute of Technology, also an R1 university, has over 13,000 students and seven liaison librarians. 

“When we think of the numbers and what is expected and the goals that President [Ali] Houshmand have, and Provost Lowman, we see that in less than 10 years, they want to have almost 40,000 students. And that’s concerning because I don’t think the library is prepared to deal with an influx like that,” said Kennedy. 

For Kennedy, she is eager to see the renovations to the library and embraces the changes that come with each project. Her concern still remains when looking at the numbers. 

“This is my passion. I love doing this. I’m excited to do this. I think working at Rowan is an amazing opportunity because it’s always growing and changing. And I genuinely do love what I do, and I love working with students, and that’s why I’m so concerned because I think the students are not getting what they need out of this, that when you have these kinds of ratios, the students can’t be helped,” said Kennedy.

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