YELLOW SPRINGS — Some former tenured faculty of Antioch College say they are being left out of the reopening of the school and its new curriculum.

“The faculty were intimately involved in the revival of the college,” said Chris Hill, a former tenured communications professor. “It is not like we walked away when the college closed.”

The college is in the midst of a national search to fill six tenured faculty spots and a handful of others. Hill is part of a group of 14 teachers who believe they should be considered first if they meet the qualifications. Some former professors already are working as “Morgan fellows” to develop the school’s new curriculum.

The American Association of University Professors, which has chapters representing unionized teachers on campuses across the nation, but not at Antioch, agreed with the former faculty. Nearly 400 alumni signed a petition of support and Hill said they are trying to convince Mark Roosevelt, the new college president, that not considering former tenured faculty first sets a dangerous precedent.

“I do not share that (belief),” Roosevelt said in an recent interview with the Dayton Daily News. Former faculty can apply like anyone else, he said, and could get a “leg up” if they demonstrate they can fit the new college curriculum.

Roosevelt sees the reopening of Antioch as a chance to remake the college experience, building on the historic foundation of cooperative education the college made famous. Not in recent history has a more than 150 year old college closed for three years and then reopened its doors.

“There is no one crying out for another liberal arts college in America,” he said. “If we are going to do this, it has to be distinctive and fill a niche to attract students who want to come and teachers who want to teach.”

He suggests the poor retention and graduation rates of the nation’s colleges reflect a system that is in need of an overhaul. To start, Roosevelt wants a closer connection to teachers, better counseling and more complete assessment of skills — all wrapped in the college’s commitment of work study.

Lee Morgan, chairman of the college trustees, echoed Roosevelt’s reform mantra. “This is a wonderful opportunity to reinvent the liberal arts education at a time when it is really needed,” Morgan said. “We are fortunate to have (Roosevelt) a risk-taker to seize the opportunity.”

Some of those ideas are so different from the typical college experience that Hill and other former faculty believe their experience could be even more essential to the new college’s survival. “That is not something you can bottle and deliver in a one hour orientation to new faculty,” she said. “They’re building on something we helped create.”

Regardless of who teaches the first class of 25 “pioneer” tuition-free students, Roosevelt said it was clear the college must do business differently than it did throughout its history. Fiscal problems forced the school to close three times since its founding in the 1850s.

“To end the chronic history of poverty, we are going to need to have a compelling story,” Roosevelt said. “I’m not sure why the college, over time, was unsuccessful raising funds.”

Roosevelt plans to embark on his first fund-raising trip as president this week, saying tuition alone never will sustain the school.

“There will always need to be philanthropic contributions,” he said. The college’s financial report filed in June 2010 said the school had $1.7 million cash in the bank, $3.8 million of promised pledges and more than $24 million in endowment investments.

The college’s closure was a shock to many alumni, but looking back, Morgan believes it was a long time in the making. More and more attention was being paid to the growing university adult education programs and the college slowly fell by the wayside, he said.

Morgan acknowledged the Antioch alumni have been a powerful fund-raising force that is close to something historic — the reopening of a closed college. But he also wants the school to use the new education model it is developing to reach out to much needed untapped funding sources.

“The fact is, if our ambition is to reinvent American higher education, we realize we can’t rely just on alumni,” he said. “We have to articulate a vision so complete it will ellicit support from non-Antioch alumni.”

Completing that new “ambition” won’t be easy or happen overnight. Antioch’s collegiate credentials expired with the old iteration of the school. The state needs to authorize Antioch before it can apply for regional accreditation, a process that takes years, said C. Todd Jones, president of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Ohio. “They certainly have a hill to climb.I think it is a historic moment,” Jones continued. “Not only because it is an historic institution, but because they are undertaking something rare, the creation, or recreation of the liberal arts institution.”

Morgan and Roosevelt both concede the new college will have to tackle its past reputation, which was often considered liberal and too politically correct. Roosevelt referred to his own beliefs about education policy, which started out liberal, but grew into a mixed balance, as how he hopes the new college will evolve.

Yellow Springs residents will be happy to have those types of debates back in the village, although it is hard to argue they ever left. After the school closed, an ad hoc group of former faculty evolved into the Nonstop Institute of Yellow Springs that provides art and humanities program to the village.

Sean Creighton, a village school board member and director of the education advocate Southwest Ohio Council for Higher Education, said college officials already are closely linked to the community and will continue the school’s history of service.

The village was able to weather the college’s closure without drastic impact on government finances, local businesses and events, but Karen Wintrow, chamber of commerce director and councilwoman, said a reopened Antioch would be a boost to the community’s morale.