Michael McEwen | News Director
Nearly nine months after resigning as FIU president amid a misconduct investigation, Mark Rosenberg will return to working at the university next spring as a faculty member.
The decision approving the return was passed over by the Board of Trustees and left to the university’s Faculty Advisory Board, comprising a number of administrators and a member of the university’s general counsel, some of whom received promotions while Rosenberg was president.
Director of Employee and Labor Relations Heidi Louisy was promoted to her position in August of this year.
Heather Russell, the vice-provost of Faculty Leadership and Success, was promoted to her position in August of last year, while Rosenberg was still president.
The former president resigned suddenly and surrounded by confusion in late January due to what he claimed at the time was his wife’s rapidly deteriorating health.
However, the publication of an independent probe months later determined Rosenberg “…displayed extremely poor judgment,” over the course of several months in interactions with a female employee of his presidential office who was nearly five decades his junior.
The report concluded the relationship, which Rosenberg claimed as “emotional, not physical,” was defined by obvious power dynamics.
Rosenberg’s contract permits him to return to teaching courses in the Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs, an intent included in his initial statement communicated through a university-wide email at the time of his resignation.
It also provided him a one-year paid sabbatical, allowing him to continue to collect his full presidential salary – $502,578.
His return to the classroom will consist of teaching two courses in international relations: co-teaching Politics of Latin America.
According to reporting by the Miami Herald, Rosenberg will do this while earning a salary more than double that of the average tenured SIPA professor, who would typically teach several classes in addition to conducting research.
“Other professors in SIPA are grossly underpaid, and students are grossly undersupported,” said politics professor Thomas Breslin, a nearly 50-year veteran of the university. “But distributing his [Rosenberg’s] salary between all of the professors wouldn’t solve that.”
Breslin, also a member of the Faculty Senate, added that while the senate was not consulted in the matter of Rosenberg’s return, he wouldn’t expect them to be anyways.
SGA President Cristhofer Lugo and the United Faculty of Florida – FIU chapter did not respond to PantherNOW’s request for comment.
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