By Michela Arlia
The Puerto Rican and Latino Studies department was granted permission by the college to place an ad for a tenure track hire.
This comes off the heels of the department’s pleas, petitioning from students and professors, and a rally held on campus last month against PRLS’s tenure understaffing issues.
“The department is very pleased the administration recognized our needs and they granted us the tenure track hire or line, we can call it,” Professor Alan Aja, who chairs the PRLS department, told the Vanguard. “I was ecstatic and both honored that the community rallied around us to, if I’m going to be frank here, get us the bare minimum of five.”
The PRLS department currently has one tenured and three tenured track professors. CUNY departments require a minimum of five tenured or tenure track professors to make departmental decisions. Without the five professors needed, PRLS depends on professors from other departments to have functioning committees.
Aja explained the process for approval of creating and placing the ad for professors, noting that it had to be cleared by many administrators before it reached PRLS.
“It goes through channels, right,” said Aja. “At the college it goes through dean’s office, then it goes through the office of diversity and equity, then it goes through human resources, then the provost, so it goes through all the layers at the college, but the department writes it and declares our needs.”
Aja noted that applications will be sent out to conferences, job hire sites, and other means where applicants will most likely apply until January, when the department will select three candidates for interviewing.
“We will advertise a position for a senior or rather a tenure track faculty, specifically with someone who already has tenure at another college or university, what is called a senior hire,” Aja said.
In early September, students of the Puerto Rican Alliance called out the administration for ignoring the needs of the department, demanding the college to hire proper and qualified staff on the tenure track.
The department has a history of being understaffed, with having less than the five tenured or tenure track professors being an issue for the past decade. The last time PRLS obtained its record high of six to seven professors was in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
“At one point in our history we were at seven with a couple of substitute faculty, so we averaged six or higher, six to seven,” said Aja. “Historically it was just the last ten years that we were allowed to be under five.”
With the hiring ad, the department seeks to employ a professor experienced in Afro and Latinx cultures. Aja noted the decision will benefit the department and the college as a whole, allowing Latinx students to see themselves represented and learn their own histories.
“Now students can see themselves through an expert in the Afro-Latinx studies field and it was missing in our department, and we’re glad to have a chance to get it,” said Aja.
As he works on the ad, Professor Aja credits the students, alumni, and faculty across departments for their efforts in demanding an additional tenure track hire for PRLS. He hopes the administration considers PRLS worthy of investment, instead of receiving the bare minimum.
“I am really glad the administration did the right thing in the end and glad to be moving forward with the search and getting the department whole,” he said.