Category Archives: Faculty

Columbia Tribune: Law requires posting of professor reviews

Penciling in standardized instructor reviews is an end-of-semester ritual for college students. But a new state law will give students easier access to these ratings as they register for classes.

The law requires that Missouri public colleges put at least some instructor review information directly onto their Web sites. Proponents of the idea say it will help students make informed decisions as they pick their professors.

“It’s treating the student as a consumer,” said Zora AuBuchon, general counsel and legislative liaison for the Missouri Department of Higher Education, “so that the consumer can make a good decision about what classes to take.”

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Zogby Poll: Most Think Political Bias Among College Professors a Serious Problem

Four in 10 said the problem is “very serious;” Tenure seen as harmful to teaching quality

As legislation is introduced in more than a dozen states across the country to counter political pressure and proselytizing on students in college classrooms, a majority of Americans believe the political bias of college professors is a serious problem, a new Zogby Interactive poll shows.

Nearly six in 10 – 58% – said they see it as a serious problem, with 39% saying it was a “very serious” problem.

The online survey of 9,464 adult respondents nationwide was conducted July 5-9, 2007, and carries a margin of error of +/- 1.0 percentage points.

Predictably, whether political bias is a problem depends greatly on the philosophy of the respondents. While 91% of very conservative adults said the bias is a “serious problem,” just 3% of liberals agreed. Conservatives have long held that college campuses are a haven for liberal professors. The activist group Students for Academic Freedom, founded by conservative activist David Horowitz, has promoted state legislation invoking a “Students Bill of Rights” on campuses to protect conservative students from academic reprisals by professors who hold contradictory beliefs.

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The Chronicle News Blog: U. of Florida Freezes Hiring

Citing a projected deficit of as much as $30-million, the University of Florida announced today an immediate freeze on hiring. The freeze applies to faculty and staff positions at all university units statewide, although exceptions will be considered for positions paid for through nonstate sources, such as clinical revenue, contracts, and grants. No layoffs are planned.

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Chicago Tribune: Former professor sues Benedictine

A former Benedictine University psychology professor is suing the school, saying he was coerced into resigning after administrators learned he was having an affair with a much younger female student.

DeKalb resident James Iaccino, who once chaired the clinical psychology department, left the Catholic university in October after 25 years. He does not deny having a relationship with a female student “under the age of 21” but says in papers filed in DuPage County Circuit Court that he was “emotionally distraught” when he agreed to quit.

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McLean’s: Forcing professors to retire is unconstitutional: prof

A former deputy minister who was involved in the negotiations on the 1982 Constitution will now be using it to fight his forced retirement.

Howard Leeson is one of two professors at the University of Regina being forced to retire this month because they are turning 65. Both have launched legal action against their retirements, using the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to argue they are being discriminated against on the basis of age.

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The Chronicle: Nevada Board Considers Plan to Train and Arm Some Faculty Members

The Nevada Board of Regents has endorsed a plan that would allow some faculty and staff members to carry concealed guns on public-college campuses, but the proposal is getting mixed reviews from professors.

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Inside Higher Ed: Antioch Professors my sue

Professors at Antioch College are considering a lawsuit against the board of Antioch University over its decision to shut down the college. A statement issued on behalf of the faculty, by Dimi Reber, an emerita professor who noted that she can speak freely without fear for her job, blasts the university’s board. While board leaders have said that they tried to save the college, and couldn’t continue it with enrollment of around 300, the faculty statement says that the board forced changes that prompted an enrollment decline. “The board risked the college’s well-being with the imposition of an ill-considered plan, failed to provide promised support, and then closed the college,” according to the faculty. The statement goes on to note that the university would gain the college’s endowment and land if the college is destroyed. “Can the board and university administration which conducted their review of the college’s recent situation in secrecy, in violation of our governance policies, without consulting faculty and staff who stand to lose their livelihoods and professions, be trusted with the college’s current assets, its legacy and its future?” the statement asks.

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Inside Higher Ed: 2 Professors Resign Amid Rape Charges
Amid allegations of rape from a former student, two professors at Arkansas State University resigned this month, just as the institution was reportedly planning to fire them.

The 25-year-old female Arkansas State University student accused Gregory Russell, an associate professor, and his wife, Ellen Lemley, an assistant professor, of raping her at their home on the night of April 19. Both professors were in the department of criminology, sociology and geography.

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The Courier Mail: Academics suspended over thesis criticism

TWO academics have been suspended without pay for six months for criticising a thesis which they said poked fun at disabled people.

John Hookham and Gary MacLennan, both senior lecturers in creative industries at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), criticised the PhD work in an April article in The Australian newspaper.

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The Chronicle: Did a professor at the University of Hawaii file one too many grievances?

The letter handed to Michael J. D’Andrea on the morning of March 2 didn’t use the term banishment. Its wording was less dramatic; its tone, while direct, was almost soothing. “This is to inform you that effective immediately upon your receipt of this letter, you are being reassigned to work at home with pay while the University of Hawaii … addresses several issues concerning your alleged intimidating, hostile and bullying behavior,” wrote Denise E. Konan, interim chancellor of the Manoa campus. She reassured Mr. D’Andrea, a professor of counselor education, that the decision was “not a disciplinary action; however, it is a necessary one.”

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Inside Higher Ed: Prof Accused of Making ‘Terroristic Threat’

A tenured psychology professor at Texas Christian University remained Thursday in a Texas jail, arrested on charges that he made a “terroristic threat,” a class B misdemeanor.

Charles F. Bond Jr., 53, was arrested at his home last week by Fort Worth Police after officers received a warrant by TCU Police detailing charges against the professor. A statement from the university says that Bond “exhibited extremely inappropriate conduct and made threatening remarks to some campus members.”

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Inside Higher Ed: New Front for Antiwar Movement

There’s nothing like a fresh Defense Department contract to inject a little controversy into a flagging antiwar movement.

Not long ago, a Stanford Daily article asked, “Where have all the anti-war protests gone?” The answer may have come in the form of an April announcement that the university had won a five-year, $105 million military computing research contract.

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Sacramento Bee: Younger professors make the grade

Just a few years ago, about half of Sacramento State’s full-time instructors had been teaching longer than most of their students had been alive.

That’s not the case today.

A sea change has taken place in the college’s faculty. Scores of instructors hired during a boom in the late 1960s and early 1970s have retired. They’ve been replaced by teachers half their age.

The trend means the university is losing more teachers like Henry Chambers, a history professor with 40 years on the job. He likes the enthusiasm and fresh knowledge that young instructors bring to the job but thinks it takes a while to learn a great deal about teaching and scholarship.

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The Chronicle: Mommy Careerist: New Book Offers Advice for Academic Mothers on the Fast Track

By ROBIN WILSON

A dean who conducted a widely cited study showing that having children wreaks havoc on the careers of academic women has written a new book on how working mothers can raise children and hold high-pressure jobs.

The book, Mothers on the Fast Track: How a New Generation Can Balance Family and Careers, will be published next month by Oxford University Press. It was written by Mary Ann Mason, who is stepping down as dean of the graduate division at the University of California at Berkeley, and her daughter, Eve Mason Ekman, a medical social worker. Ms. Mason will go back to teaching and doing research in Berkeley’s Graduate School of Social Welfare.

Ms. Mason first published a study in 2002 that she called “Do Babies Matter?”

It provided the first national data on how professors with children fare in academe, and the news wasn’t good. Women who have babies within five years of earning a Ph.D., it found, are nearly 30 percent less likely than women without babies ever to snag a tenure-track position (The Chronicle, December 5, 2003).

In the new book, Ms. Mason and Ms. Ekman say it is common for women who start off in fast-track jobs in law, medicine, academe, and business to slip into the “second tier” once they have children.

Those jobs, they write, have fewer and more flexible hours, but do not pay as well and offer less responsibility. It is often difficult for women who slip into the second tier to make it back into the upper echelons of an organization.

Women who want to remain on the fast track after becoming mothers should stay in the game, taking off as little time as possible, says the new book. Those women also need supportive partners, in-home child care, and an ability to work on what the authors call “mother time.”

That means women must say no to evening meetings and lots of business travel, so they can have dinner with their children or attend the kids’ sporting events. But it also means going back to work after the kids are in bed.

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