After a dean at Merced College was transferred to a new school within the campus and later announced a second move into a faculty position, college faculty and employees who lodged complaints against him question whether the move resolves their concerns.
This story was published as part of a series called Paper Trails and Transfers in collaboration with KVPR.
A Merced College dean recently announced plans to enter into a faculty role more than a year after nearly a dozen campus employees filed complaints against him – sparking fresh scrutiny by faculty and staff over how college administrators handled the situation.
In February, John Albano, dean of the Schools of Business, Economics and Adult Education/Noncredit, announced in a campus-wide email that he plans to step into a faculty role later in 2026.
This marks the second time Albano has changed positions at Merced College since at least 10 employees filed complaints against him in fall 2024 alleging gender and racial discrimination – allegations a human resources investigation found were not sustained. In January 2025, Albano moved laterally to the business school, where he worked for a year after serving as the dean of Merced College’s School of Arts and Social Sciences for 13 years.
“My decision to return to teaching is a personal and professional choice about where I want to focus my time and energy going forward,” Albano wrote in an email to KVPR and the Merced FOCUS on Feb. 9.
“Music and Education have always been my first loves, and I’m genuinely excited to focus more directly on working with students in the classroom,” Albano continued. “I’m also looking forward to spending more time with family, and reconnecting with music and the Merced Community in a deeper way.”
But before this announcement, faculty and staff at the college were still questioning Albano’s previous transfer to another leadership position.
Several faculty members in Albano’s former school told KVPR and The Merced FOCUS they don’t know if Albano’s initial transfer to the business school – or his latest decision to enter into a faculty role – fully resolve what they saw as workplace problems that they insist exist at the college.
“We had already gotten past the difficult part of making adjustments, grieving and forgiving,” said economics professor Caitlin Serpa – one of the ten to file complaints against Albano – in a text message after news of Albano’s new upcoming role. “It’s a little too late to be meaningful and will create more problems than it will solve.”
Renée Dekker, who reported to Albano as the administrative coordinator for the School of Arts and Social Sciences, and who filed one of the handful of complaints against Albano, said she has doubts about Albano’s new role.
“Based on the conduct that I experienced and witnessed while he was in a leadership role, I continue to have concerns about what this means for students in contact with him moving forward,” she said.
A previous transfer was already drawing questions and scrutiny
Long before deciding to go back to teaching, discussions between Albano and administrators about a previous deanship transfer began in December 2024. That’s about a month after at least 10 faculty members and employees filed complaints against him. The complaints alleged that he made disparaging remarks toward women and employees of color. Complainants also alleged feeling intimidated by him.
The college dismissed all complaints against the dean by spring 2025. Many were dismissed on procedural grounds, and an outside firm hired by the college to investigate the remaining complaints determined that Albano did not engage in any wrongdoing. Three of the complainants appealed the investigation findings to the Merced College Board of Trustees, which denied the appeals in May 2025.
Still, Albano sought to transfer to a different department while the investigations into the complaints were underway. Among the administrators who helped with the transfer was Dee Sigismond, the vice president of instruction at Merced College. She announced the transfer in an email to staff Jan. 6, 2025, a week before the spring semester began. The email stated Albano requested the change.
“While administrator transfers do not happen very often, this lateral move aligns with established practices for classified professional and faculty positions,” Sigismond said in the email.
But based on Albano’s own career, the transfer was anomalous. Trained as a jazz guitarist, he taught music as a faculty member for a decade before serving as dean for over another decade. His passion for music extends back over 20 years. According to documents obtained by KVPR and The Merced FOCUS, Albano worked in the entertainment industry prior to teaching. Social media posts show he is still a member of a local band.
A letter by Vice President of Human Resources Kelly Avila to complainants, however, mentioned Albano’s transfer.
“Dean Albano chose to remove himself from his role as the immediate supervisor over the area of Arts and Social Sciences, which resulted in mitigated interactions during and after the investigative process,” reads the letter sent by Avila in response to some of the complaints.
This was among more than 100 pages of documents obtained by KVPR and The Merced FOCUS to examine how this investigative process with Albano at the center unfolded at the college.
Multiple college administrators and representatives, including Albano, were asked to comment for this story. Albano forwarded the request for comment by the news outlets to Jill Cunningham, Merced College’s vice president of external relations. Cunningham declined a meeting and interview request and asked for a list of questions.
In late 2025, KVPR and The Merced FOCUS sent a list of 10 written questions and gave her four business days to answer them. Cunningham never responded, though she provided a statement in response to a previous inquiry about Albano that was published in full in another story. The statement includes the following:
“Merced College is committed to fostering a positive, supportive, and engaged workplace culture as reflected in our consistently strong employee-engagement results and our ongoing emphasis on employee wellbeing,” the statement reads. “When workplace concerns are raised, the District follows well-established procedures to ensure that all matters are reviewed thoroughly, impartially, and in accordance with all legal and policy obligations.”
Albano later replied by email to the questions to say: “There were two independent investigations initiated by the district and all allegations were either exonerated or not sustained by the independent reviewers.”
Neither Cunningham nor Albano responded to follow-up questions asking to clarify which two independent investigations Albano referred to.
KVPR and the Merced FOCUS asked Cunningham and Albano about how his latest transition into a faculty role related to the complaints and the ensuing investigation.
“While ongoing, unsubstantiated allegations and related inquiries have caused undue stress, they were not the basis for his decision,” Cunningham replied via email.
She alluded to pressures associated with administrative roles as another reason for the latest transfer.
“This was a thoughtful, voluntary choice and was not influenced by media inquiries or allegations,” she said.
Cunningham added that previous investigations into Albano “did not substantiate the allegations raised, and no findings were sustained.”
Cunningham disputed “inaccurate premises” to questions by KVPR and The Merced FOCUS and said the college would not respond to further “speculative or leading questions on this matter.”
Cunningham did respond to a follow up question about Albano’s salary in his new position, which will be $135,099. That’s a pay cut from his salary as dean, which is $208,678. Neither Merced College President Chris Vitelli nor any members of the Merced College Board of Trustees responded to previous inquiries and requests for interviews.
However, in an email sent to Merced College staff in January to kick off the semester, Vitelli appeared to acknowledge conflict within the college without going into specifics.
“While there will probably always be a small few who would prefer division, chaos, or an ‘us versus them’ mentality, that is not who we are as a college,” Vitelli wrote.
“Accountability is essential to trust, good governance, and a healthy institution,” Vitelli continued in the email. “Leadership at every level requires making difficult decisions, holding ourselves and others accountable, and doing what is right for the institution as a whole…My door, and the doors of our leadership team, remain open.”
Top college leaders grapple with complaints, tension
While faculty members and employees were moving through their complaint processes, some resubmitting their complaints to comply with college policies and undergoing interviews with investigators, public records and interviews show college administrators were talking with Albano and each other about the ordeal.
Megan Igo, the president of the Merced College Faculty Association, recalled a meeting she attended with several administrators in December 2024 following the complaints.
The meeting was called a “president’s meeting,” and Igo said they occurred monthly at the time. Several other union representatives attended, Igo said, along with college administrators, including Vitelli, Avila, and Sigismond, the vice president of instruction.
Usually, the meeting was a time to update administration on union and employee business, so Igo said she was surprised when Vitelli brought up the complaints against Albano. Igo didn’t submit a complaint, but she did attend several meetings via Zoom with employees who did.
“It was absolutely not something I anticipated talking about at all because that’s a whole process,” Igo said. “That’s HR. That’s not anything that we need to talk about, or that the president’s communicating about is going to modify or change or fix.”
Igo also said she felt like Vitelli was “personally offended” by the complaints, and that he defended Albano.
“This dean, you know, he’s a real person. He has a real life, and he has a real family and real feelings,” Igo remembered Vitelli saying about Albano.
Igo said she responded before the topic changed.
“I pointed out that all of these people who submitted complaints are real people with real lives and real families and real jobs,” Igo said. “We didn’t talk on that much anymore after that. But he was very upset, and he was very emotional. It was really surprising to me how emotional he was about this.”
Vitelli also made a statement that implied that he thought the union coordinated the complaints, she said, even though Igo said she was only a witness to what happened.
“It made it clear to me, instead of looking at this as ‘Hey, these people have something to say, and they have a concern that needs to be addressed,’ he was mad at me that they had brought it to this and submitted these formal complaints all together,” Igo said.
Two other faculty members who attended the meeting also confirmed Vitelli’s statement to KVPR and The Merced FOCUS.
Neither Vitelli nor other college officials answered questions related to this incident.
Correspondences between administrators also show Sigismond played a significant role in Albano’s first transfer and in facilitating communication with him and other administrators, and that she met with Albano several times.
“Thank you for your support and great leadership,” Albano wrote to Sigismond in a text message from December 2024. “I appreciate everything you and the others have provided during this very challenging time.”
By late December 2024, emails show Albano decided to make the transfer, and that Sigismond told Avila, the human resources administrator, that she and Vitelli both supported the decision.
“I feel it’s an opportunity for him to grow and to learn new things as he’s been in the same area for over 12 years,” Sigismond wrote in an email. “I’ve talked with [Vitelli], and he feels that we can do this as just a lateral transfer.”
Documents show Albano officially made his transfer on Jan. 15, 2025 with approval from the Board of Trustees. Financial documents show he earns the same salary and benefits in his new dean role as his previous dean position.
Emails also reveal several applicants had already applied for the dean position filled by Albano in the Schools of Business, Economics and Adult Education/Noncredit. According to emails sent by Sigismond, those applications were transferred to the applicant pool for the dean position Albano left vacant in the School of Arts and Social Sciences. Sigismond announced the hiring of an interim dean for Albano’s old job in the same month he changed positions.
Albano announced his latest move, from leadership to a faculty role, in an email to all college staff on Feb. 5. It was made possible because of retreat rights within California’s state educational code that allow academic faculty members to maintain their tenured status if they take on a role in administration and decide to return to teaching.
At least two faculty members held reservations
When the college announced Albano’s deanship transfer last January, Caitlin Serpa, a tenured economics professor, immediately raised concerns. She was part of the group who filed complaints against Albano a few months before his transfer.
Albano was Serpa’s dean for several years until her department was moved out of the School of Arts and Social Sciences and into the School of Business, Economics and Adult Education/Non-Credit in 2023 – one of the schools he would then lead beginning in 2025.
In Serpa’s role as faculty lead, she would be required to meet with Albano regularly in his new position, and she was concerned about potential retaliation for filing a complaint against him.
After his transfer was announced, public records show Serpa immediately reached out to Avila, the human resources administrator, asking if she could schedule a one-on-one meeting to share her concerns. Serpa confirmed that the meeting did occur, and that Avila told her Albano knew who submitted the complaints, but not what was in them.
That meeting with Avila and Sigismond, Serpa said, influenced her decision to not move forward with her complaint against Albano. The college categorized her complaint as “informal” and asked her to resubmit it with changes in order to become a “formal” complaint, which would likely have launched an investigation. She decided not to resubmit in order to “keep everything calm.”
“[Sigismond and Avila] had talked about a new beginning, and I felt like he deserved that, too,” Serpa said. “So, if I continued to push forward, I felt like I wasn’t going to allow that to happen.”
She’s unsure if his knowledge of her complaint affected their working relationship, though she said in an interview that in Albano’s first semester in his new position, he met with her less often than he typically met with other faculty leads. Calendar screenshots obtained by KVPR and the Merced FOCUS show both Serpa and Albano canceled several meetings.
Serpa also ended her term as faculty lead early. She said in a text message that she did so in order to take on a new role as president in the academic senate, a governing body made up of faculty that handles academic and professional matters. Serpa likely would have continued her term as faculty lead for another year if Albano hadn’t become her dean, she said.
She now says Albano’s retreat into a faculty role will resurface concerns among faculty who tried to move on from the past experiences with Albano – and who he may continue to work alongside.
“Things had finally normalized,” Serpa said. ”I think this is going to be a difficult transition.”
History professor Michael Lorenz said he thinks Albano’s transition back into a faculty position is positive overall.
“There’s some interpersonal things there, perhaps,” Lorenz told KVPR and The Merced FOCUS after Albano announced his second transfer. “I think the friction was primarily because of his role of supervisor in the past… Now that will no longer be the case.”
Lorenz also previously questioned the college’s decision to remove courses by some faculty initially involved in filing complaints against Albano.
Documents obtained by KVPR and The Merced FOCUS show that several months after the complaints were filed, Lorenz wrote emails to two college administrators about a colleague of his, named Andrea. A part-time professor, Andrea requested to be identified by only her first name because she fears using her full name would limit future employment opportunities.
Andrea was one of the at least 10 complainants against Albano. A few months after submitting her complaint, she received an email that all of her courses for the next two semesters had been canceled for budgetary reasons.
Lorenz warned the administrators that cancelling Andrea’s classes could be viewed as retaliation by the campus community.
“I would suggest that whatever money the District saves taking away [Andrea]’s classes…will
pale in comparison on a cost-benefit basis with the price of the perception among faculty that any future whistleblower better keep quiet or run the risk [of] loss of work,” he wrote in one of his emails.
Administrators responded to his messages by insisting Merced College doesn’t seek retribution against whistleblowers, Lorenz said, and that the decision to remove her classes was not influenced by the complaint investigation.
Faculty question outcome of complaints
Several employees who filed complaints against Albano in November 2024 received “informal resolution letters” months later from Avila, in which she wrote that the transfer “resulted in mitigated interactions during and after the investigative process.”
The letters also outlined steps the employees could take to further resolve the situation.
In light of these letters, and Albano’s latest move into a faculty position, some of the faculty and employees who filed complaints told KVPR and The Merced FOCUS they still have mixed opinions – and doubts – about Albano’s transfers.
“The fact that he was permitted to transfer into another high-level leadership role raises serious questions about whether the district ever considered the complaints to be valid,” Renée Dekker wrote to the news outlets in February.
Following the news of Albano’s retreat to a faculty position, Dekker told KVPR and the Merced FOCUS that she still has reasons to be concerned.
“As faculty and staff, we had union representation and an understanding of how to report inappropriate conduct,” Dekker wrote. “Students may not have the same understanding of their rights or awareness of institutional resources to seek support or recourse if they were to experience similar mistreatment.”
Gary Gargano, a tenured psychology professor who didn’t file a complaint, was also critical of Albano’s initial lateral transfer – specifically because it occurred more than a month after the complaints were submitted.
“The fact that they kept him there until after the semester was over was kind of problematic, and I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t immediately remove him,” Gargano said. “And then, just removing him from one area to another area isn’t really a punishment. He still has the same job, and he hasn’t suffered any consequences for any kind of behavior that could be problematic.”
However, another faculty member close to the matter, who KVPR and The Merced FOCUS agreed not to name because they fear retaliation from their peers, felt Albano’s transfer did serve as fair discipline because he no longer supervises an area where he can exercise his own expertise — music and the humanities.
“I think being in charge of a different aspect of instruction that he’s not that linked to, while seeing somebody else then do the work and guide the programs that he has done for so long, I don’t think it sits well,” the faculty member said. “I think it’s been a good reflection point.”
Gargano and the same faculty member said, meanwhile, they were both shocked to hear of Albano’s decision to become a faculty member once again. Gargano also said he doesn’t think the move will solve the problems employees raised in their initial complaints against Albano.
“I think the problems are much deeper than just getting rid of one dean,” Gargano said.