The Board of Trustees recently promoted or granted tenure to ten faculty members. While the granting of promotions and tenure is a routine event, this year the ME department was unfortunate to have four professors denied tenure: professors John Bausch, John Griffin, Douglas Walcerz, and Dave Zenger.
Questions were immediately raised by the campus community as to why these professors were denied tenure. Students and alumni voiced their opinions that these professors were some of the best they had had. Several petitions calling for reconsideration were circulated around the student body.
Tenure-track faculty are granted tenure based on three criteria: High quality teaching, high quality scholarship, and highly valued service (the criteria for tenure may be found on page 6 of today's Newspeak).
At the faculty meeting on March 21, Professor Walcerz made a motion to have the "Committee on Tenure and Academic Freedom determine whether the tenure criterion of scholarship is being interpreted and applied in a substantially uniform way by the at-large committee, the department committees, and the provost, and report their findings" as soon as possible. According to Prof. Walcerz, he and other faculty members agree that the most probably cause for the tenure decision was that their "scholarly achievement did not meet the Provost's standard of quality." The motion was seconded, after which Prof. Walcerz presented a moving speech which addressed the need for the notion of scholarship to go beyond quantity of works published. He also described the scholarly endeavors which he and the other ME professors denied tenure are undertaking. After receiving five years of encouragement for the projects undertaken by these faculty members, they were told that they had not done the right things, and that these faculty must leave WPI. He ended his speech by asking the faculty to pass the motion he presented, for the benefit of WPI. (Prof. Walcerz's speech may be read on page 4 of today's Newspeak).
Prof. Walcerz received a standing ovation at the end of his speech, followed by much support by the faculty with respect to this issue. President Parrish, who was present at the meeting, added his support for an appeals process.
At an ASME task force meeting on the evening of March 21, ASME president John Albert strongly encouraged students to send letters to President Parrish regarding these tenure decisions. In these letters, students should discuss personal experiences with the professors, what ramifications their absence will have on WPI, and any other important points of effects the students can discuss.
Address these letters to President Parrish, but send them to John Albert (box 1392) or Teri Brehio (box 3160). They will make copies of the letters and assemble a collection of letters which will be sent to President Parrish as well as other key officials. These letters should be submitted by April 3.