New England College is about to lose its status as the one school in the country with a poetry-only master's degree program. And administrators blame the program's former director, who they say stole NEC's faculty and students and re-created its program at Drew University in New Jersey.

So far, six faculty from NEC's small master's program have left Henniker for Drew University, according to a lawsuit NEC has brought against its former director, poet Anne Marie Macari, and Drew University. In addition, the lawsuit alleges, program enrollment is down by half, from 10 to five students this year.

New England College wants compensation for the lost tuition, which it estimates at "six figures" for the current fiscal year alone, and the $33,000 salary it paid Macari her last year in Henniker. The college also wants the federal court in Concord, where the suit is pending, to bar Macari from keeping her new job at Drew University for two years.

"We believe that (our master's) program has a national distinction," said Kathleen Williams, spokeswoman for NEC. "To start a similar program at a similar institution . . . would seriously jeopardize our program. That is why we took legal action."

The case is about more than sour grapes and will likely come down to this question: Did Macari partner with Drew University and duplicate NEC's program on NEC's time or on her time? If it was while she was working for NEC, NEC is more likely to win its case.

Peter Callaghan, a Concord employment lawyer who regularly litigates cases in federal court, said courts hold that employees in leadership roles, like directorships, have a duty to work solely for their employer and never to its detriment.

"The employer is paying for something," Callaghan said, "and if the employee is not honoring her commitments and is working to bring assets and resources to a competitor, the employer is not getting what it paid for. And the courts will enforce a remedy there."

New England College started its "low-residency" master's in poetry program in 2001. Other colleges and universities had offered low-residency programs, where students do much of their coursework at home and come to campus for short periods each year. But it was the only program in the country that offered a master's degree exclusively for poetry, Williams said. Programs elsewhere usually bundle poetry with non-fiction and fiction writing.

Macari, who lives in New Jersey, joined New England College as an adjunct faculty member in 2002. In March 2007, after the program's director left, Macari was named interim director and was encouraged to apply for the job on a permanent basis.

About three months later, Macari began neglecting her duties to recruit and enroll students, according to the lawsuit. It was then, the lawsuit alleges, that Macari and Drew University began "secretly developing" a competing and virtually identical master's program for Drew University. She also "secretly solicited" NEC's poetry program staff to leave their jobs and work for Drew University, the lawsuit said. She did the same with students, the lawsuit claims, telling prospective students to apply at Drew University instead and urging current students to leave NEC for New Jersey.

On Feb. 14, 2008, Macari told New England College she was quitting to take another job, according to the lawsuit. Five days later, Macari gave the school more information. She announced that she and Gerald Stern, another poetry faculty member who is also Macari's partner, were starting a similar, low-residency program at Drew University, the lawsuit alleges.

As a reassurance, Macari said Drew wouldn't start its program until January 2009 and that the programs have "significant differences," the lawsuit alleges. New England College wasn't calmed by the 2009 start date and says Drew's program is nearly identical, not different from its own.

All eight of Drew University's faculty were current or former staff with New England College's program, the lawsuit said. There were also consequences for NEC's enrollment, the lawsuit alleged.

NEC's spring 2008 program had only five students enroll, and two were deferrals from the previous term, the lawsuit said. The fall 2008 program started with seven, but three left. Typically, the program would get 12 to 15 students a year, Williams said. The school estimates that it lost significant tuition but has not yet released a specific dollar amount.

In a letter to the Drew University president, NEC President Michelle Perkins expressed concern that Macari had also made off with NEC's proprietary information like inquiry lists for recruiting future students.

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