August 19, 2008

2 Professors Explain Why They Resigned From U. of Missouri at Kansas City

Two tenured professors accused of sexual harassment say they resigned from the University of Missouri at Kansas City because its protracted investigations have taken a toll on them and their families, but they insist that their decision to quit is not an admission of wrongdoing, The Kansas City Star reported today.

The two psychology professors, C. Keith Haddock and Walker S. Carlos Poston II, agreed to resign last week rather than face tenure-revocation and dismissal proceedings, but denied claims that they created a hostile atmosphere in the lab they managed by making sexually explicit jokes and groping female colleagues.

“I did not resign because I was guilty of anything,” Mr. Poston told the newspaper. “I resigned because I was told that was the only way to get a letter that says I didn’t do it.”

Complaints filed in 2005 by a university faculty member and a former graduate student resulted in two internal investigations. Last year the university paid $1.1-million to settle a sexual-harassment lawsuit stemming from those complaints.

According to the Star, Mr. Poston and Mr. Haddock’s lawyer has unsuccessfully sought copies of the full findings of the second investigation, which the university’s director of affirmative action described as “inconclusive” because of “significantly conflicting testimony among the witnesses.” —Paula Wasley

August 18, 2008

Law-Schools Meeting Finds a Way to Deal With Boycott Threat

The Association of American Law Schools may have found a way out of a sticky situation. The association had contracted with the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel, in San Diego, several years ago to hold its annual meeting there next January. But The San Diego Union-Tribune reported in March that the hotel’s owner was a prominent contributor to an effort to amend the California Constitution to ban same-sex marriages, and several groups had threatened to boycott the meeting unless the association moved it to another hotel.

According to a statement adopted by its executive committee late last week, the association had also booked rooms at the San Diego Marriott, and the contracts left the choice of where to locate specific events — such as registration, an exhibit hall, and representatives’ meetings — up to the association. “We will honor our contracts with both hotels, and we have exercised our option to hold all AALS events at the Marriott to ensure the maximum participation by our members,” the statement reads.

The association plans to contact law schools and other groups that are scheduling events at the meeting about locations for those events. People attending the meeting, the statement says, “will soon receive housing information and you will be able to choose your individual hotel room on a first-come, first-served basis.” —Charles Huckabee

Dean at Carnegie Mellon U. Resigns Over Irregularities in Awarded Degree

Mark G. Wessel, dean of the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, has abruptly resigned after an investigation into a degree awarded there in 2004, the year he became permanent dean.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported today that Mr. Wessel stepped down last week as a result of what the school described as “an error in judgment” involving “the approval of excessive transfer credits and excessive units for independent study in lieu of course work” in the awarding of a master’s degree in 2004.

Citing privacy laws, university officials did not release the name of the degree recipient. They are investigating whether other degrees were improperly awarded as well.

Mr. Wessel was an economist and financial analyst for the U.S. Department of Energy before joining the Heinz school, in 1993. He served in multiple administrative positions at the school, including as chief operating officer, before becoming dean, in 2004. —Richard Byrne

Interrogation Debate Heats Up at Psychologists' Conclave

Roughly 100 anti-torture activists demonstrated outside the American Psychological Association’s convention this weekend, The Boston Globe reports.

As The Chronicle described last week, the association’s members are voting on a resolution that would toughen the group’s restrictions on psychologists’ participation in interrogations at the Guantánamo Bay detention center and similar sites. The vote is being conducted by mail; ballots are due September 15.

The resolution’s proponents argue that in “settings that fail to meet basic standards of international law, it is unrealistic to rely on psychologists to challenge their superiors, report on violations, and protect abused detainees.” Opponents say that the resolution is too ambiguous about which types of facilities would fall under the ban, and that the association’s existing anti-torture rules are sufficient.

Last week, a military psychologist who served at Guantánamo Bay invoked her right to remain silent and declined to testify at a military tribunal related to Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan citizen who has been held at the facility since 2003. That development, and the broader interrogation debate, were explored this weekend by The New York Times and The New York Sun. —David Glenn

August 13, 2008

All U. of Iowa Professors Told to Undergo Training to Avoid Sexual Harassment

The University of Iowa ordered all professors and staff members today to undergo training in how to avoid sexual harassment after a political-science professor at the university was charged with asking four female students for sexual favors in return for better grades.

According to The Des Moines Register, the professor, Arthur H. Miller, faces criminal charges for accepting bribes based on allegations that he told the female students he would give them A’s if they would expose their breasts and allow him to fondle them. As part of the criminal investigation, the university police seized e-mail messages from Mr. Miller’s computer in which he offered the quid pro quo. At least some of the students, the article said, granted the sexual favors.

The professor, who is 66 and has been at Iowa since 1985, also faces an investigation by the university’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity. Both investigations are continuing, but according to another article in the Register, Sally Mason, the university’s president, sent an e-mail message to all faculty and staff members saying Iowa would make sexual-harassment training universal and mandatory. Until now, only supervisors have been required to undergo such training.

“While every person is entitled to the presumption of innocence,” Ms. Mason said in the message, “I want to state strongly and unequivocally that such conduct will not be tolerated.”

Mr. Miller referred the Des Moines newspaper to his lawyer, who did not return the paper’s call. The professor is on leave pending the investigation by the equal-opportunity office. —Robin Wilson

UC-Santa Cruz to Close Widely Praised Science-Illustration Program

Five years after state budget cuts moved the University of California at Santa Cruz’s prestigious program in science illustration to the extension school, the program will close next spring, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported today.

The graduate program’s students, many of whom majored in science, must learn to tell stories through art, while maintaining accuracy. The program is highly regarded among illustrators.

But after two and a half decades of producing graduates who make drawings and paintings for museums, magazines, and field guides, the program fell victim to further budget cuts and will close its doors, along with the extension school’s English-language international program. —Lila Guterman

Boxing Archive a Knockout at Brooklyn College

A cavernous collection of boxing memorabilia has completed the journey from a Florida garage to the brick-and-ivy campus of the City University of New York’s Brooklyn College, according to a New York Times article published today. The college acquired the collection, appraised at $2.94-million, from Hank Kaplan, a former boxing journalist who kept thousands of newspaper clippings, photographs, boxing gloves, and champion belts in his house and two-car garage until his death last year at 88.

The archive, which features the heavy bag Cassius Clay punched before renaming himself Muhammad Ali and a gold cigarette case that the heavyweight Max Baer gave his trainer, will now share space with Robert Frost first editions and the correspondence of local civic leaders at the Brooklyn College Library.

The collection, currently housed in a 10-foot-high chamber in the Brooklyn College archives with a small, public display in the library itself, is not yet available to researchers. But Anthony M. Cucchiara, a professor of archival management at Brooklyn College who is also an amateur boxer and who met with Mr. Kaplan before his death, is trying to raise $200,000 to house it in acid-free storage, to study and catalog it. He said that the history of boxing, with its fierce ethnic rivalries and close-knit neighborhood gyms, illuminates the history of America in general and New York specifically.

“I suppose some people would turn their noses up at a boxing collection,” said Mr. Cucchiara. “But the story of America is in this archive.” —Ingrid Norton

August 7, 2008

Alabama College Is Told to Reinstate Instructor Who Took His Own Courses

An instructor who was fired for enrolling in his own classes at Bishop State Community College, in Mobile, Ala., should be reinstated and given back pay, an arbitrator has ruled, according to a report in the Press Register, a local newspaper.

Henry Douglas, an instructor in Bishop State’s culinary department, was terminated by the college when a state audit revealed that he had enrolled in 10 courses that he himself was teaching, and was listed as taking six other courses at times when he was scheduled to teach. The Press Register reported in 2007 that he received six A grades and one B in seven courses.

Mr. Douglas argued that he had taken the courses at the behest of administrators at the college, who thought that his associate degree needed augmentation. The instructor and his lawyer contended that the courses were taken as independent-study courses, and that Mr. Douglas was not in fact teaching himself.

Herman Packer, the Bishop State employee who had supervised and advised Mr. Douglas, was also fired after the situation came to the attention of state officials. Mr. Packer was also reinstated earlier this summer in a separate arbitration procedure. He will serve a seven-day suspension.

James Odom Jr., the arbitrator in the case, decided that a reprimand issued to Mr. Douglas by the college was sufficient, and that taking any other action against the instructor was unfair. —Richard Byrne

New Mexico State U. Threatens to Revoke Fired Professors' Degrees

New Mexico State University has a new beef with the two former professors who have been fighting their dismissal from the university since March, the Las Cruces Sun-News reported. The professors, John Moraros and Yelena Bird, received letters last month in which a university official said the two had never submitted proof that they had earned medical degrees from the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez.

The letters, from Valerie Pickett, director of New Mexico State’s Office of Enrollment Management, gave the professors until August 14 to provide final transcripts from the Mexican institution, or face “appropriate action, up to and including the possible revocation of your above-referenced graduate degree from NMSU.”

Four letters from the Juárez university were presented to New Mexico State officials this week, the newspaper said. Those letters verified the couple’s degrees and asserted that the Mexican institution had, in fact, sent final transcripts for Mr. Moraros and Ms. Bird to New Mexico State in 2002.

Bernadette Montoya, assistant vice president for enrollment management at New Mexico State, told the Las Cruces newspaper that graduate-school processors would probably go through the documents and verify them with the Juárez institution, and that the professors would be notified in writing of the decision from the graduate school.

Mr. Moraros and Ms. Bird, who are a married couple, have been at the center of a roiling controversy at New Mexico State since their contracts as professors in its College of Health and Social Services were not renewed. The saga has included allegations of plagiarism against the couple that were pressed by the university’s president, who has since departed, and confrontations with the chairman of its Board of Regents. —Charles Huckabee

Withhold 'Judgement' on Students When a Word is 'Misspelt'

Ken Smith is fed up with correcting his students’ atrocious spelling and makes this modest proposal in an essay in the Times Higher Education Supplement: “University teachers should simply accept as variant spelling those words our students most commonly misspell.”

A senior lecturer in criminology at Bucks New University, in England, Mr. Smith lists 10 common misspellings that he would accept. Among them: “arguement” for “argument”; “Febuary” for “February”; “occured” for “occurred”; “opertunity” for “opportunity”; and “thier” for “their.”

“Either we go on beating ourselves and our students up over this problem or we simply give everyone a break and accept these variant spellings as such,” writes Mr. Smith.

The widespread attention his essay got after the Times supplement came out this morning took the lecturer by surprise. He later told a local newspaper, the Bucks Free Press, that he thought many readers had misunderstood his point. “I am not proposing spelling reform, I am not saying that people who can spell should unlearn what they learn at school or learn to spell these words differently,” he explained. “I am just saying we should allow a few more variants.”

So, just for the sake of arguement, are you willing to ignor it when a misspelling has occured? —Don Troop