Faculty at closing Penn State campuses frustrated over 'extremely stressful' reassignment process

Julio Palma only had three business days to decide whether to uproot his life in order to remain employed by Penn State.

Palma, a chemistry professor at the shuttering branch campus in North Union, Fayette County, ultimately took the offer to work at the Harrisburg campus. He'll begin teaching classes there this fall.

His family is now getting ready to move across the state, while his wife is figuring out whether she can switch to remote work as executive director of an animal shelter in Uniontown. The rushed timeline and uncertainty have been "extremely stressful," Palma said.

"If you get a parking ticket, you have 14 days to pay your parking ticket, but for me, I had three business days to decide if I wanted to change my life," Palma said. "And if I decline that possibility, I have no idea what's coming next."

Palma is one of 87 tenure-line faculty members who are guaranteed employment in the university system after campuses in Fayette, New Kensington, Shenango, DuBois, Mont Alto, Wilkes-Barre and York close next spring.

As of Friday, all of those faculty members - which include pre-tenure and tenured employees - have received their reassignment offers, university spokesman Andrew Krebs said in an email. Most reassignments occurred prior to June, with the 15 remaining offers being sent on Friday.

"Penn State will continue to honor all faculty contracts and remains focused on supporting students and faculty through the transition across its commonwealth campuses," Krebs wrote.

As the university winds down the reassignment process, these faculty members are beginning to prepare for moves to their new campuses - and in many cases, new homes and new communities.

Most faculty members will begin their new positions after the campuses shut down in spring 2027. Some, like Palma, are starting earlier because they're filling already-open positions.

Weighing their options

Hal Smith, a professor of information sciences and technology at the New Kensington campus, was among those still waiting as of last week to see where he'd end up. Smith had previously received three reassignment offers, all of which he rejected for one simple reason: location.

He requested to be reassigned to the Greater Allegheny campus in McKeesport or to the Beaver campus. Although less than ideal, Smith could maybe make the commute to Behrend in Erie or to University Park work from his home in Murrysville, he told the Post-Gazette on Wednesday.

But each of the first three offers that Smith received was on the eastern side of the state. A move right now wouldn't work for Smith and his family: His wife is a school counselor in the region, and his youngest daughter, who just graduated from high school, has a career plan in the area.

His final reassignment offer came in Friday: University Park. Smith and his family are considering it.

"There's a lot to think about," he wrote in an email shortly after receiving his final offer. "Under certain conditions, it might work."

Even if Smith decided to relocate, he said the $5,000 relocation package that Penn State is providing wouldn't fully cover moving costs.

"It's absurd," he said. "I'm not willing to pay money to stay employed at Penn State."

Other costs associated with the reassignments have been top of mind for other faculty members. Palma and Andrea Adolph, an English professor at New Kensington, were both reassigned to campuses in areas with higher costs of living.

But their pay is staying the same "to the cent," as Palma put it. He estimates his cost of living will increase 15-20% after his move from Fayette County to Dauphin County.

Adolph, who lives in Harrison and has been reassigned to the University Park campus, is concerned about housing costs. Zillow listings of State College homes are circulating in faculty group chats. "What faculty member could afford this?" her colleagues have wondered.

University Park was Adolph's top choice because of its "scholarly community" and the faculty connections she already had at the main campus. All of her top options were larger campuses throughout the state.

She did not put the Beaver or Greater Allegheny campuses as options, reasoning that she'd have to move even if she was reassigned to a southwestern Pennsylvania campus because of Harrison's distance.

"If I'm going to move, it's going to be once," she said. "I really didn't feel like I needed to be place-bound, but I did feel like the move needed to be worth it."

The university declined to share data on how many faculty members have received their first preference for reassignment and whether any faculty members opted out of the process.

Preferences and process

Penn State has said it developed a "fair and thoughtful" reassignment process. Prior to receiving their reassignment offer, faculty members could share their preferred campus locations, teaching and research interests, and other personal or professional considerations through a survey. Final decisions were based on both faculty preferences and university needs.

But to Adolph, the process felt "inhumane." Though she is looking forward to aspects of Happy Valley, she envisions the transition will still be hard. Only having three business days to accept or reject her reassignment was frustrating.

She and Palma also expressed concern that the reassignment process could have been conducted inconsistently or unfairly for some professors.

"I was grateful to have the offer. … I knew a better offer wasn't coming. I know that they are closing. But the fact that we were only given three business days to make decisions was really inhumane," she said. "I felt like I had to take the offer, but not in a bad way. … I felt like I didn't really have any choices in the big picture."

Krebs said the decision timeline aimed to balance professors' "desire for timely clarity" with "adequate time to consider their options." The process was developed with input from some impacted faculty members, he said.

"The university's approach ... was responsive to faculty requests to know where they were being reassigned as soon as possible and well in advance of those reassignments taking effect," Krebs said.

He added that Penn State sought to apply the process "consistently across all phases and as equitably as possible across faculty and circumstances."

Uncertainty doesn't just swirl around faculty reassignments. Penn State has signaled it could cut 12% of its academic programs this fall, adding to faculty members' anxiety.

The commonwealth campuses would bear the brunt of the cuts, with 39 programs at those campuses at risk. Ten are on the chopping block at University Park.

In response to many of the sweeping changes occurring university-wide, faculty members voted overwhelmingly in May to unionize. Palma said he believes the campus closure process would not have been carried out the way it was if faculty had union representation.

Though Harrisburg wasn't one of his top preferences for reassignment, Palma said he is still committed to being a "good colleague" - while also continuing to hold administrators accountable.

Since rumors of campus closures began circulating, faculty members have voiced concern over university decisions being made without adequate input from professors and students.

"I'm coming here to be part of the community and contribute positively to Penn State Harrisburg," Palma said. "I'm fully committed to providing the best education to my students in the classroom. I am committed to providing research opportunities to undergraduate students in Penn State Harrisburg.

"Even though I am critical of the processes, the lack of transparency, the secrecy [and] the administration."

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This story was originally published June 5, 2026 at 3:44 PM.