More questions about Cornerstone University’s decision to fire humanities professors

Not familiar with this story? Get up to speed here and here and here.

Cornerstone University is trying to refute our claims that it has eliminated all arts and humanities programs. In an interview with MinistryWatch blogger Warren Cole Smith, Cornerstone spokesperson Heide Cece (she is Chair of Cornerstone’s Executive Council and VP of Enrollment Management and Marketing) responded to our previous coverage.

Here is a taste of Smith’s post at MinistryWatch:

[Cece] also took issue with Fea’s assertion that the school had terminated “all humanities and arts programs.” She said flatly, “This is inaccurate.”

We’re happy to admit that there does still seem to be one English major and two music majors at Cornerstone, but it is still not clear whether these are permanent or just temporary majors. In other words, will there still be majors in these areas when all the current students in enrolled in these majors have graduated? (We addressed this in an earlier post)

But I am still wondering about something. If Cornerstone still believes in the humanities, why did the school fire so many professors in these fields? For example, if Cornerstone still has an English major – as Cece claims in her interview with Warren Cole Smith – why did the school fire all its tenured English faculty on the basis that the English major had been discontinued?

In Smith’s interview with Cece, she says that the Social Studies program at Cornerstone is proof that the Humanities are still alive and well, and that students majoring in History & Civic Studies (a single major at Cornerstone before the cuts) have been merged into the Social Studies major.

The Social Studies major is the content major for social studies teacher education students at Cornerstone. Cece is correct that it is still being offered. But Social Studies is not part of the Humanities. It is a hybrid major that draws on pedagogy courses (usually taught in education departments), social science courses, and some humanities (history and perhaps political philosophy) courses. In other words, Social Studies is a professional degree that borrows from the social sciences and the humanities because most states require social studies teachers to have some coursework in subjects such as history, politics (usually government or civics), economics, sociology, and psychology. This is why at larger universities, such as the University of Michigan for example, Social Studies programs are taught in the School of Education, not in the School of Arts and Sciences (liberal arts). A Social Studies degree is a hodge-podge of courses in the aforementioned fields.

At Cornerstone, many of the non-education courses in the Social Studies major, including classes in history, political science, global affairs and social studies research, were taught by fired history Professor, Martin Spence.  It appears that Cornerstone will now be producing secondary school teachers who took all of their content courses with adjunct professors.

Moreover, one of the classes in the Social Studies major is a history survey class in Cornerstone’s “Christian liberal arts core,” the same set of courses that, as Cece mentions, is a required course for every student at Cornerstone. We’ve learned that Spence, before he was fired, taught every section of this class (both on ground and online) – often enrolling around 100 students per semester.

So, if Cornerstone is proud to be continuing to offer a major that contains many classes taught by Spence, plus a general education liberal arts core that includes eight sections a year of a history class taught by Spence, why did it fire Spence? 

This same question could be asked for fired Literature professor Jason Stevens who we are told was also heavily involved in teaching classes in the English for Secondary Education Major, as well as required English and writing classes in the liberal arts core curriculum. Apparently Stevens was even planning to teach the core philosophy classes this Fall. These courses lacked an instructor because Dr. Matt Bonzo had been terminated late last year on the basis that there were no more philosophy classes for him to teach. Clearly this was not true since Stevens was going to teach some of the core philosophy classes. But now Stevens has himself been fired! (Not to mention the fact that a liberal arts college was assigning philosophy courses to a literary scholar).

In the Smith interview, Cece also asserts that “students must take a Christian liberal arts core set of courses in which the fundamental questions of the humanities are deeply integrated.” Again, if there remain a set of humanities general education required classes for every student in the university, why have all the tenured humanities professors in history, literature, writing, arts, and philosophy been fired?

‘Cornerstone enrolls around 300+ students each year and, according to Cece’s statement in the Smith interview, student enrollments are running above average for next year. She even claimed there was an 88% increase in enrollment this year! That’s a lot of students who need those “Christian liberal arts core classes.” Even if humanities professors are not aligned with the external market, it seems they would be very well-aligned with the internal market of the Cornerstone University Christian liberal arts core where their teaching expertise would be in high demand.

We are told that Cornerstone is now scrambling for adjuncts to teach these Social Studies, English, and core Christian liberal arts courses (multiple sections). Finding qualified adjuncts is difficult. The university must find someone who lives close enough, is qualified (ideally with a PhD), is willing to accept the relatively low pay that small Christian colleges offer, and can sign on to faith statements or behavioral codes. And it’s getting late in the day. Some adjuncts will already have their schedules set for the Fall. Indeed, we are told that some of the classes trying to be filled now were already being covered by the terminated professors as overloads because adjuncts had not been able to be secured. 

If you are a Cornerstone parent, would you want all of your child’s humanities courses taught by adjuncts? How can a college or university claim to value the humanities when there are no full-time professors in these fields? What kind of intellectual culture does this produce, especially at a small Christian college? Some of you may recall that I wrote about this very thing when my eldest daughter was looking at colleges–both secular and Christian.

So why is Cornerstone imposing on students a last-minute, fudged-together, piecemeal set of classes taught by whoever can at this late stage commit to the extensive work of preparing syllabi and classes for the Fall, when there are in fact five highly qualified professors with the class already prepped, living just down the road, who just so happen to have an open Fall schedule? These professors were not terminated for professional incompetence or ethical issues. What a waste of their decades of experience. These professors are sitting at home applying for any job that will get them healthcare benefits for the coming months, while the very classes that they designed and have taught for years do not have instructors.

Warren Cole Smith claims that colleges can be saved by nursing, engineering, and cybersecurity programs. Fair enough. Many colleges and universities have kept the doors open this way. If you want to be a Christian tech and vocational school that requires students to attend chapel and farms out humanities and arts to adjuncts, that’s fine. But please stop calling yourself a liberal arts college. It’s false advertising.

Christian colleges are training students for a capitalist economy, but few Christian colleges are investing in programs and faculty to help students live in a democratic society.