MIAMI — After two faculty groups condemned his return as a professor to Florida International University, former president Mark Rosenberg — who stepped down last year amid a misconduct allegation — will not teach this spring and instead will work on a research project, a move that will cut his contact with students.
For at least this semester, which started Monday, Rosenberg will work at FIU’s Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy, said Maydel Santana, a university spokeswoman.
Rosenberg’s $376,933 salary will remain unchanged, Santana said.
In October, the Herald reported that Rosenberg, 73, and FIU administrators had agreed to bring him back into the classroom to teach one class and co-teach a second. He had been on a paid leave for a year after stepping down as FIU president last January.
The news of his return to a classroom sparked an outcry: Most notably, the Black Faculty Association and the Hispanic Faculty Association sent letters to the university administration and the FIU Board of Trustees denouncing Rosenberg returning to the classroom.
Rosenberg did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Herald via text, email and phone call this week.
Rosenberg, FIU’s fifth president, abruptly quit last January after managing the largest public university in South Florida since 2009. At first, he cited his and his wife’s deteriorating health as reasons for his departure.
But days after, the Herald reported how a younger female employee who worked in his office alleged he made unwanted advances to her over several months.
Because Rosenberg resigned in good standing, his contract allowed him to take a one-year sabbatical and continue to collect his $502,578 presidential salary. The contract also allowed him to return as a tenured professor for three years at 75% of his full salary.
He started at FIU in 1976 as an assistant professor of political science and wanted to return to the Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs to teach. During his decades-long career, he also served as provost of FIU and chancellor of the state system of public universities.
Why did FIU change Rosenberg’s job duties?
Asked why the university reassigned Rosenberg, Santana wrote in an email it was “because he was approached by the Director of the Gordon Institute to become one of the designated faculty on an externally funded grant.”
Because of the change, the class Rosenberg had intended to co-teach, Politics in Latin America, will be handled alone by Eduardo Gamarra, a political science professor. That class filled up with 45 students.
FIU canceled the class Rosenberg was supposed to teach on his own, Politics in South America, on Jan. 4 because only 6 out of 45 students had registered.
The director of the Gordon Institute, Brian Fonseca, said he secured a $5 million grant across five years from a private foundation in November and finalized the paperwork in December. He declined to disclose the name of the foundation, as the foundation asked him to hold off on making it public until they announce it.
Fonseca said he first reached out to Rosenberg as a mentor in September, trying to determine how to best use other grant funding and manage the institute’s growth. On Nov. 11, they both toyed with him joining the institute to help build a curriculum for a cybersecurity program.
Although Fonseca’s not sure, he said Rosenberg “might have floated the idea” around three days after that call, because interim Provost Elizabeth Bejar reached out Nov. 14 to Fonseca to confirm his conversation with Rosenberg.
On Dec. 22, Bejar told Fonseca the administration approved the transition, Fonseca said.
Not a top-down decision, director says
“No one up above me came down to me and said, ‘You will do this, you will think about this, would you do this’ — none of that. This happened organically in my conversations with Dr. Rosenberg and then we moved it up because I thought it was in the best interest of the program and the Gordon Institute,” Fonseca said.
He learned about the backlash to Rosenberg’s return to teaching after those initial talks, Fonseca said.
“As far of the other stuff going on ... while I had read some pieces that there was tension there, I wasn’t really privy to what was going on,” Fonseca said.
Enrique Villamor, vice president of development of the Hispanic Faculty Association and a math professor at FIU, first heard about the change in Rosenberg’s plan from a Herald reporter Tuesday.
He said the Hispanic Faculty Association and the Black Faculty Association met with the administration in early December, after their correspondence in November, and he’s glad they listened to their recommendations.
“We told them, ‘You can probably find some other arrangement for him to do something for the money that you’re going to give him, but where he’s not going to damage the institution so much,’ ” Villamor said, “and apparently they listened and they did.”
“We’re happy,” he added. “We think this is the right decision.”
FIU administration discussed Rosenberg with faculty
Deanne Butchey, the president of the FIU Faculty Senate and a finance professor, said FIU President Kenneth Jessell called her last week to discuss, asking her whether the move would “appease the detractors.”
“All I was asked was whether they would be appeased by this, and I felt they should be,” Butchey said in an interview Tuesday. She said she thought the main concern was Rosenberg interacting with students, faculty and staff who may feel uncomfortable, and his new assignment would limit that.
She also wrote in an email that “Dr. Rosenberg not been found guilty of any activities that violate the university’s policies and procedure. While he may have exhibited poor judgment, it is not just cause for removal of tenure.”
The chair of the Board of Trustees, Dean Colson, said he was also asked if he had any problem with the change.
“I had almost zero role on this,” he said. “This is not a trustee issue, as I see it.”
He met with the faculty associations’ representatives in December because of their letters, he said, but they discussed more than just Rosenberg — they also talked about sexual harassment and procedures and other issues.
“I just wanted them to know I’m available to talk whenever within reason,” he said.
Santana said in an email that “as part of the decision-making process, President Jessell reached out to university and board leadership to inform and get feedback on the idea of allowing Dr. Rosenberg’s assignment to change.”
