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Senate
Plans Elections, Hears Criticism of Tenure Dispute
Interim secretary Joseph Larson announced upcoming elections for secretary, presiding officer and Rules Committee officers, and several people commented on a disputed tenure case at the April 27 Faculty Senate meeting. Lisa Saunders, chair of the nominating committee, nominated presiding officer Ernest May to be the next secretary. Larson told the senate that any faculty member can be nominated for secretary but that the nominees for presiding officer must be senators. Further nominations and a vote for the two positions will take place at the May 11 meeting. Larson also announced that two officers on the Rules Committee will need to be replaced in the fall. He asked senators to begin thinking of nominees for those positions. Michael Tjivitua, president of the Graduate Student Senate, and Seth Avakian, student trustee, both made statements questioning the administration's handling of a tenure case, naming assistant professor of Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies Deirdre Almeida as the party they believe has been inappropriately denied tenure. University officials do not release the names of faculty members engaged in tenure cases because of the confidentiality of personnel issues. Massachusetts Society of Professors president Jane Giacobbe read an MSP resolution also naming Almeida and condemning Provost Cora Marrett's review of her case as not "thorough, objective and consistent" and not following "Red Book" and contract requirements. The resolution also demanded that Chancellor David Scott overturn Marrett's ruling. Senators asked about the nature of the records on which the resolution was based and whether a grievance had been filed. Giacobbe said the grievance is at the President's Office. "It is based on a review of the entire tenure file," she said. "You'll be getting a synopsis of this case in an upcoming MSP bulletin." History professor Jack Tager said the senate has never taken a position on a tenure case and speculated that Marrett would probably not feel free to comment on a personnel matter. Marrett nodded as he was speaking. "It certainly is out of order for this body to make a motion on this," May said. "This was for information purposes." In other business, the senate approved three 3-credit graduate courses: Linguistics 501, "Linguistic Theory and the Grammar of English"; Mechanical and Industrial Engineering 642, "Advanced Design of Feedback Systems"; and Physics 568, "Cosmology and General Relativity." The senate also approved an agreement of cooperation with the Universita Degli Studi Di Siena in Italy, a proposal for the Center for Educational Policy, and two special reports of the Academic Matters Council, one concerning the Strategic Information Technology Center and the other the Center for Research in Art and Technology. |
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