Thursday, May 15, 2008
By Tim Woods
Tribune-Herald staff writer
As questions swirl about the security of his job, Baylor University President John Lilley announced Wednesday that he and Provost Randall O’Brien have granted tenure on appeal to seven of the 12 faculty candidates denied tenure earlier this spring.
The announcement came a day after Lilley and O’Brien met with the faculty tenure committee and the same day the Tribune-Herald published a story in which multiple regent sources say the Baylor board of regents will vote Friday on whether to fire Lilley.
Slide show: Lilley retrospective
Interactive: Baylor presidential timeline
Interactive: Timeline of Lilley's presidency
- 08-21-08 Baylor family enthusiastic about newly appointed interim president
- 08-20-08 News report: Truett dean to be Baylor's interim president
- 07-27-08 Inclusiveness paramount as divided Baylor University seeks 14th president
- 07-27-08 Q&A with Baylor regents head: Unity, vision crucial in months, years ahead
- 07-25-08 Lilley legacy at Baylor one of focus, strong will but occasional rancor
- 07-25-08 John Lilley's tenure at Baylor: Mission Impossible?
- 07-25-08 In his own words: Dr. John Lilley at Baylor
- 07-24-08 Baylor board of regents debating Lilley's future
- 05-17-08 BU officials mum on campus president's future
- 05-15-08 Seven BU faculty see controversial tenure denials overturned
- 05-14-08 Lilley's future hinges on BU regents' vote, sources say
- 05-10-08 Beleaguered BU president labels faculty senate's criticism 'false'
- 05-07-08 BU faculty senate passes resolution critical of administration's governance
- 05-01-08 Baylor officials back off decision to change logo on football helmets
- 04-16-08 Some BU alums feel snubbed by leaders not at dinner
- 04-03-08 Faculty 'massacre' blamed on Baylor's confusing tenure criteria
- 03-24-08 Tenure denials spark steep questions about Baylor's academic aims
The reversals up the number of faculty granted tenure this spring to 25 of 30. Tenure, which is intended to ensure academic freedom, means increased job security in which professors can be fired only under extreme circumstances.
Lilley said in an internal e-mail that he and O’Brien considered new evidence and that “there were significant differences between the documents Randall and I reviewed initially and the documents we saw for reconsideration.”
Two of the cases were reversed after candidates bolstered their publication records, Lilley said, and external letters about the quality of some of the candidates’ research was influential.
Names of candidates awarded tenure were not revealed in Lilley’s e-mail, but the Tribune-Herald was able to confirm that three of the seven were engineering faculty Russ Duren, Randall Jean and Carolyn Skurla.
Jean, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, said Wednesday night that his initial tenure denial not only surprised him and his colleagues but cast a pall over the much-honored engineering department.
“It was down in our department, engineering,” he said shortly before a celebration at his home with colleagues. “It came as such a shock to all of us. It was just like a kick to the gut. After we had time to recover and rethink our case, we had good days and bad days.”
Jean said he was too happy Wednesday night to reflect on the months of doubt and how the tenure process might be improved at Baylor, but he said he found the current process confounding. He was denied tenure but given no specific reason why, he said.
“We all got the same letter,” he said of the dozen faculty originally denied tenure.
After he was denied tenure, Jean said he redoubled efforts to make his case on appeal and felt some confidence he would prevail, “but with the atmosphere on campus lately, I just wasn’t sure.”
On May 6, Baylor’s faculty senate passed a “failure of shared governance” resolution alleging, among other things, that Lilley and O’Brien conducted independent tenure reviews instead of giving due deference to faculty recommendations.
“I’m happy for those who should have been granted tenure in the first place,” said faculty senate chairman Matt Cordon, a law school professor. “I’m sorry for what they’ve had to endure the last two months. I think this whole event was unfortunate on many different levels.”
Although Cordon expressed pleasure with the tenure reversals, he said the fundamental issue of shared governance and deference to faculty recommendations regarding tenure decisions, with rare exception, remains to be addressed.
“We still need to look at the decision-making because we have a tenure class that has to file their (tenure) notebooks by next November,” Cordon said. “We still have policies, and substantive policies, that need to be reviewed in depth, so I don’t think the senate’s position on shared governance is going to change at all.”
‘Difficult year’
Cordon said after last week’s faculty senate meeting that only 10 of the 12 faculty denied tenure appealed the decisions, so only three who appealed did not have tenure granted.
The faculty senate chairman said that while he feels sympathetic for those three, if they were not recommended by the tenure committee, then he feels that should receive the same deference as the recommendations favoring tenure.
“If they were not recommended for tenure by the tenure committee, using the same logic, we could hardly say that they were entitled to tenure,” Cordon said.
Information regarding how many of the 12 denied candidates were recommended by the tenure committee has still not been furnished by the administration, Cordon said. The information was requested by the faculty senate at its April meeting.
In his e-mail Wednesday, Lilley sought to more fully explain the administration on this spring’s tenure decisions, though he again highlighted Baylor 2012, the school’s 10-year vision to become a premier national research university.
“This was a difficult year of transition as we dealt with the first class of (Baylor) 2012 faculty with reduced teaching responsibilities,” Lilley wrote. “Randall and I had a burden this year that we hope we never must bear again.”
In the e-mail, Lilley also addressed Wednesday’s Tribune-Herald story, in which sources said regents were concerned about meeting fundraising goals, in addition to what Cordon has described as low faculty morale of late. Lilley said the administration is working hard to prepare for “our upcoming comprehensive fundraising campaign.”
He also discussed the need to heal sharp divisions between the school and the Baylor Alumni Association.
“Many of us are working equally hard to resolve any differences between the university and the alumni association,” Lilley wrote. “Both tasks are challenging, but they will pay great rewards for the Baylor family if we are successful.”
The regents’ vote Friday comes less than halfway into a five-year contract for Lilley.
twoods@wacotrib.com
757-5721
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Comments
By Amethyst
Sep 2, 2009 11:50 PM | Link to this
Give please. There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our lungs there'd be no place to put it all.
I am from Bolivia and too bad know English, please tell me right I wrote the following sentence: "After a extremely necessary way, for which she had plucked all trapdoor, she entered the neither she, nor silk of her tiles, punishment or ashes had stripped rotation to improve, handmade red soaps."
Regards 8) Amethyst.
By former_victim
Jun 20, 2008 11:08 AM | Link to this
The fact is that Lilley enjoys this kind of stuff. Yes, he enjoys it. As someone who was axed by him at another college, I can tell you the experience directly. He insists on making the announcement to you directly, in person. He loves being the tough guy, the one who can make the "hard call." I think he gets no greater enjoyment than when he does this kind of thing. If you had researched him at all before you hired him, you would have found this out. This should be as no surprise to anyone
By neutral answer
May 22, 2008 12:07 PM | Link to this
In answer to "neutral" above, it is not just Baylor. Other schools experience these types of dynamics between faculty and administration. I believe it is the lack of touch adminstration has with the work that their faculty do. Some have never been in the classroom or had to publish. Some haven't been there in so long they have forgotten how. As a former member of another faculty of a Baptist school in Texas, I can attest that these dynamics appear to be, at the very least, non-unique. The word systemic comes to mind but that may be a little harsh. As alumni of Baylor, I and my classmates should be so saddened by the destroyed morale among the faculty. Denying tenure, releasing world-class scholars from their contracts, these are just a couple of the ills that are representative of this administration. I hope someone will do something to restore the confidence of the faculty and move Baylor into the future realizing the potential that she has. Regents are you listening?
By neutral answer
May 22, 2008 12:06 PM | Link to this
In answer to "neutral" above, it is not just Baylor. Other schools experience these types of dynamics between faculty and administration. I believe it is the lack of touch adminstration has with the work that their faculty do. Some have never been in the classroom or had to publish. Some haven't been there in so long they have forgotten how. As a former member of another faculty of a Baptist school in Texas, I can attest that these dynamics appear to be, at the very least, non-unique. The word systemic comes to mind but that may be a little harsh. As alumni of Baylor, I and my classmates should be so saddened by the destroyed morale among the faculty. Denying tenure, releasing world-class scholars from their contracts, these are just a couple of the ills that are representative of this administration. I hope someone will do something to restore the confidence of the faculty and move Baylor into the future realizing the potential that she has. Regents are you listening?
By Neutral and confounded
May 22, 2008 11:07 AM | Link to this
I am a neutral observer, other than the fact that I love Baylor University and want only the best for her. (I'm a Baylor alum and my father-in-law was a professor at Baylor for many years.)...
I'm all for treating faculty with dignity and respect, and giving them the tenure they deserve. But, albeit from a distance, it appears to me that Baylor faculty have had a dysfunctional relationship with the President of the university for many years (not just this President). I don't think it matters who the President is now or will be in the future -- Baylor faculty never seem to be happy with how they're treated. Maybe they really are being treated unfairly; but it seems to be such a persistent pattern, that maybe the problem is with the faculty and not the administration. Perhaps if the faculty treated the Baylor administration with respect they would receive it in return. I am not in the world of academia, so perhaps I don't understand all the nuances. Is there a constant tug of war between faculty and administration on every campus or just ours?
By Lilley Fired
May 16, 2008 8:34 PM | Link to this
Goodbye Johny Boy!
By WakeUpWaco
May 16, 2008 12:18 AM | Link to this
Baylor students, faculty, and their Baptist brethren don't drink and dance (until very recently that is) and would never be involved in drugs or alternative lifestyles. Unfortunately, Waco has become little more than a mirror image of Baylor's institutionalized hypocrisy and dishonesty. Waco's best and only hope is for there to be no survivors after Baylor's internal war runs its course. Attention Regents: A vote to keep Lilley is a vote for the future of Waco.
By Danielle
May 15, 2008 11:42 PM | Link to this
I am a Baylor student who is appalled by the politically motivated and unexplained behavior by President Lilley and his micro-managing yes-man Randall O'Brien. Lilley has not answered a single direct question instead pointing to policies and the 2012 vision that in no way provides for a president to overstep his boundaries. I am nervous for my professors who are up for tenure in the next few years because Lilley's behavior has removed every form of precendent in the system. If the primary mission of Baylor University is "equipping students for worldwide service and leadership," Lilley needs to take a serious look at his priorities.
By null
May 15, 2008 11:10 PM | Link to this
What a wild ride
By Dee
May 15, 2008 10:23 PM | Link to this
Woo-hoo! Congrats to my bro and the other professors who were granted tenure. It's been a roller coaster for everyone involved - and it's great to see right prevail at the end. I don't think Lilley and his flunky ever even read the original tenure documents, they just made a political decision. Thanks to everyone who supported the profs!
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