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TESC Exit Survey Additional Comments November 6, 2017 Michael Radelich

Quality of supervision

My boss, Sandy Yannone, is infrequently in the Writing Center to supervise any of her employees. Her
job is largely done by her numerous assistants, who have been performing the duties of the Director,
including overseeing tutors, and the daily tasks that are the Director's responsibility.

Sandy has paid temporary workers for hours they did not work. One example: for one quarter, she
attempted to pay one of her assistants who was on medical recovery in Ohio and was working off-
site, unsupervised, for 16-18 hours per week. Sandy paid this person for weeks until she was notified
by the Dean's office that this was an unauthorized practice, i.e., she could not pay someone whom she
was not supervising, and that this practice had to stop immediately. There are other more egregious
examples as well.

When she became the President of the Faculty for a several-year commitment, she was further removed
from the Center. She hired more temporary-worker assistants in those years, even though she was told
by the college's financial policy makers that she cannot keep hiring temporary workers, and that
instead, she should create a line-position request. Rather than creating this line-position request, Sandy
hired up to five assistants over the past 16 years, without the college's approval, starting with two
temporary staff in 2001, to five in 2017. I cannot any longer be a part of an office that blatantly
disregards the financial policies of the college.

Sense of purpose and meaning in my work

The best parts of my job were working one-on-one with MES students for an entire year, weekly,
helping them write their master's theses; and working with faculty, teaching workshops with several
faculty members for many years. I loved teaching with and training-in-writing faculty such as Glenn
Landram, Stephanie Coontz, Allen Mauney, Rebecca Chamberlain, Cynthia Kennedy, Rebecca
Sunderman, and Richard Weiss.

Non-Recognition of my achievements

Inkwell:

In 2013 I took on the job of Designing Editor of Inkwell magazine because no tutor had stepped up to
do so. I worked for five and a half months, learning and mastering InDesign, often working from eight
to ten hours daily; my Designing Editor duties took up approximately 90% of my work week, and cost
the college around $10,000.

I asked Sandy every week, verbally and by email, to review my design work; she responded only four
or five times in five and a half months. Instead I had to depend on tutors, students, colleagues outside
of The Writing Center, and people outside of the college to review my work. These people can attest to
this.

Sandy employed two tutors as the General Editors. She was responsible for their supervision from
January to June, which did she failed to do. They failed to do their job and were fired from the project.
Their work, which came to nothing, cost the college approximately $5,000.

On June 10th or so I was completely done with my portion of the magazine's work, the graphic design
and layout; I had completed my designing job completely, diligently, and well. Of the fourteen essays
the General Editors were responsible for shepherding and editing, only one was completed by June 10th,
due to Sandy's non-supervision. She then removed the two General Editors, resulting in no content for
the magazine.

Sandy did not take the responsibility for not supervising the General Editors. She scrapped my
completed design, and asked if I would work further over the summer and develop a new design with
the new General Editor, a tutor whom she hired to re-design and edit the magazine completely (and due
to the short summer schedule, the design was composed very rudimentarily). Over the past five and a
half months, with no help or input from her, I had completed my job of design and layout, and told her
that I refused to do the job again at an additional cost to the college.

The work of the two General Editors was mismanaged for five and a half months. The new General
Editor, at the additional cost of $2,000, had to edit the articles that the two failed General Editors did
not bring to fruition. College funds wasted included the $10,000 of my salary, combined with the
$5,000 of the initial General Editors' salaries. In effect, Inkwell cost the college that year
approximately $10,000 + $5,000 + $2,000 (the new editor) + $5,000 (printing) + $2,000 (tutors not
tutoring but on the Inkwell board) = $24,000, which was 25% of the Center's roughly $96,000 budget.
I can no longer be a part of an office where there is such an egregious imbalance in allocating state
funds, most of which, or all, according to the current Budget Dean, David McAvity, should be spent
directly on student salaries.

Sandy has yet refused to acknowledge her responsibility for the blatant non-management of this
project, including the $24,000, and the incorrect reporting of working staff. For example, if we
officially had 20 tutors actually tutoring for the year, three of those tutors who were involved with
Inkwell did very little to no tutoring. This happens every year.

Other:

Finally, I received little or no comment or gratitude from my supervisor for any of the numerous
workshop series I have conducted with faculty and staff over the past 14 years that I worked in The
Writing Center.

I know many faculty who have said to me that they do not send students any longer to the writing
center tutors because the tutors are not trained to tutor basic academic rhetoric and writing, for
example, proper English grammar, punctuation, and essay forms. The lack of attention paid to teaching
students the proper writing techniques and competence that they will need to succeed is embarrassing
to me, someone with a Ph.D. hired to teach writing and literature at an institution of higher education.

Organizational support

Hardly any.

Overall level of communication


Sandy was often an hour late for her own scheduled appointments with students or members of the
community, and hardly possible to reach. I was required on many occasions, over many, many years,
to field these inquiries.

Evaluations

I cannot recall receiving or signing any yearly employee evaluations.

Work-related stress

Sandy's blatant inattention to the proper spending of funds, her careless mishandling of funds, and her
ignoring of directives from the college's financial managers led to years and years of stressful
conversations between us. She was repeatedly told about her improper spending of state funds around
the issue of hiring so many temporary workers. As the Center's bookkeeper, I continually worried
about her complete disregard for managing the Center's budget. I spoke repeatedly with Sandy about
this financial disregard, to no availnothing has changed.

I finally had to repeatedly say, in every email to the Budget Deans, that I had nothing to do with
deciding how funds were spent, that I only reported what she approved. For years she was told that the
college could not continue to fund her two assistants, which were temporary staff positions costing the
college about $8,000 to $10,000 each per year. In later years, she added three more part time assistants,
all performing what largely should be her job duties, so that in the 2016-2017 year, the temporary
assistants' salaries amounted to approximately $61,000, which was roughly 55% of the state budget
funds allotted to the Center for student workers. That year Inkwell cost the college $28,000, roughly
25% of the budget. Those two total 73% of the budget being spent on non-student workers, when
Sandy was told every year by the college's financial policy makers that 90-100% of the budget needed
to be spent on student salaries (some of the Inkwell funds were spent on students being on the editorial
board but not tutoring, which accounts for the 73%, and is not the expected 25% + 55% = 80%
number). She was told repeatedly that she cannot have this many assistants and cannot be spending
that large of a percentage of the funds on non-students, yet she was not stopped. To me, this speaks of
a severe lack of oversight at the college. Due to the stress from the financial responsibility for the
center that I should not have had to shoulder in my position, I cannot continue to work any longer in
this financially mismanaged Writing Center.

For the last 4 years, Inkwell magazine has cost the college between $21,000 and $28,000 per year, a
huge portion of The Writing Center's budget expressly meant for student salaries. I expressed my view,
every June, to Sandy that this mis- and over-spending had to stop, but it continued. I know that the
funds spent on Inkwell were supposed to be funds largely spent on student workers, and these funds
were not.

In conversations that Sandy and I had about Center funds, she convinced that the college would never
follow up on its rules for spending. She stated, Don't worry about it, they won't check. The Center's
annual report, which should be written by the Director, is actually written by her two assistants (part of
their job duties), and edited by Sandy in a way that the Dean, her boss, only knows what she wants
them to know, rather than the financial reality of the Center. In the past 14 years, there has been no
indication that any of the five or so Deans who were/are Sandy's direct supervisors were aware of the
financial mismanagement that goes on in the Center. This lack of financial oversight is, in my opinion,
appalling. I am willing to bet that even if Inkwell is stopped and not allowed to continue its drain on
the budget, Sandy will find a way to cleverly funnel money into it, or will continue to disguise tutors'
Inkwell hours as tutoring hours in order to keep what she obsessively calls my legacy project.

There were many other incidents that led to an increased level of stress in dealing with my boss. Over
a period of six to seven years, Sandy hired a former tutor with whom she had a detrimental co-
dependent relationship. This tutor's behavior, and the open favoritism that Sandy lavished upon this
tutor, had extreme negative effects on tutors and staff, so much so that I and two assistants sought
resolution mediation, with faculty member Joe Tougas moderating, to resolve the many problems that
the continued hiring and re-hiring of Victoria Larkin caused within the Center.

Another example was the hiring of Sandy's friend, Alison Rosa Clark, a woman whom I suspected, and
was told, always needs financial help. Sandy hired her for the school year, for give or take 18 hours a
week, for about 33 weeks. Sandy said she would supervise Alison, not to worry, and that I should
approve her time-sheets. Alison put on one 4-5 hour workshop in which she harassed at least 2
students and staff, so much so that they were sobbing during the weekly admin. meeting, and
threatened to report Alison to HR and/or to contact their union reps. Sandy talked them out of this, and
smoothed it over, but afterward, one spoke to me privately, still very shaken and upset about the caliber
of person Sandy had hired to work in the Center. It was also noted that Alison has had problems on
campus with harassment claims against before; this did not bother Sandy in the least, even though her
employees were being adversely affected. I was told by Sandy to continue approving Alison's time-
sheets. I did not witness Alison doing enough work to justify paying her state funds for 18 hours a
week for about 33 weeks. I can no longer support or be part of an office where it's fine for someone to
help out a friend by hiring them to the detriment of the student workers.

Because of Sandy's disregard about the rules of hiring temporary workers (i.e. she should not have
hired any), she continued hiring the same temporary workers for several years in a row in jobs she
created, thereby allowing the retirement benefit to kick in for these workers. This amounts to (what I
was told by Tina Pearson) approximately thousand dollars a month that Evergreen is now responsible
for, and these employees will continue to accrue these retirement benefits for as long as they remain a
Washington State employee. I was verbally admonished for her failings and mismanagement, and was
told to tell her about this retirement-funds fiasco, which should have been the job of her boss and Dean
of the Library, Greg Mullins, or any of the colleges financial officers. It was not my place, her
employee, to tell her about the financial messes incurred due to her improper hiring practices and lack
of proper managerial oversight.

Resignation

After turning in my two-plus weeks' notice, I was willing to wrap things up with the current year's
budget, ordering supplies, and meeting with the assistants, but I did not hear anything from Sandy, even
acknowledging receipt of my resignation email. After being an employee of hers for 14 years, I
consider the lack of response for someone in her managerial and administrative position, my direct
supervisor, egregiously negligent and yet another sign of poor business and managerial practice.
The Future

Sandy Yannone has run The Writing Center as what I consider a prime example of fifteen years of
financial misconduct, ignoring the oft-expressed requests of the college's financial policy makers. This
financial misbehavior has only increased year after year, with the college admonishing her for her
practices but never requiring her to stop the mismanagement. In the future, I cannot see these habits
stopping or even lessening. Should she not be allowed to hire further temporary assistants to do
important elements of her job, such as training tutors and writing the Writing Center's annual report, I
truly believe she will find a way to continue her current improper financial finagling and find ways for
others to shoulder her Directorial duties and responsibilities.

I have little faith in things changing in The Writing Center, and I assume that Sandy's financial
misdoings that have been ongoing for fifteen-plus years will continue unabated and unchecked. These
funds are the taxpayer's money; I feel that it is my responsibility as a citizen that the taxpayers know
about the mishandling of funds, that over the past fifteen years, have amounted to hundreds of
thousands of dollars.

I am following up this letter with conversations with Pat McCarthy, the Washington State Auditor, and
several members of the Washington State Senate Higher Education Committee and sharing my
concerns with several legislators, among them Lynda Wilson, Barbara Bailey, and Michael
Baumgartner.

Thank you.

Michael Radelich

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