The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on USM mess

Move to Fire 2 Professors Roils Campus in Mississippi

"Give Back Our Profs!" read one yellow sign. There were others bearing similar messages, carried by the dozens of students and professors who crammed into the lobby of the administration building at the University of Southern Mississippi one morning last week.

They had gathered to listen to the university's president, Shelby F. Thames, explain why he had moved to dismiss two tenured professors the previous week, a decision that has prompted both calls for his resignation and a unanimous vote of no confidence by the Faculty Senate.

Mr. Thames's explanation, along with his insistence that morale on the campus is not low, was met with rolled eyes and bitter laughter. At one point, cries of "impeach Thames!" drowned out the president's statement, forcing him to stand quietly in front of the television cameras until the chanting ceased.

The embarrassing spectacle was only the most recent blow for Mr. Thames, 67, who has come under heavy criticism during his two years as president of the 15,000-student university, located in this usually quiet city. He has taken heat for several controversial decisions, including reducing the number of colleges from nine to five, and for what critics consider an autocratic leadership style.

But his dismissal of two tenured professors in the middle of a semester-- a move that must be approved by the college's board before it becomes final-- has inspired new levels of anger and has turned some past supporters into vigorous opponents.

Students meanwhile have been papering the campus with fliers that say "Damn the Tyrant!" and "This is not Shelby Thames University." One depicts the president in a Nazi uniform.

The dismissals, opponents of the president say, were in retaliation for an investigation led by the two professors, Frank Glamser and Gary Stringer, into the academic credentials of a vice president hired by Mr. Thames. The president, who says he cannot legally discuss the specific reasons for the dismissals, has hinted that the investigation was carried out dishonestly and that the privacy of Vice President Angeline Dvorak was violated, charges that the two professors deny.

The contretemps has other faculty members concerned that they could suffer the same fate as their two dismissed colleagues. "I'm worried when I stick my key in my office door in the morning," says Andrew Wiest, a professor of history. "That's how palpable the fear has become."

Ethics and an Envelope

It began with a manila envelope slipped under a closed door.

On December 11, Mr. Glamser, a professor of sociology, returned to his office after having lunch at McDonald's. He says he pushed open the door and saw the envelope on the floor, his name scrawled across the front. What Mr. Glamser, who is president of the local chapter of the American Association of University Professors, found inside the envelope genuinely frightened him. "It was like somebody put a bomb in my office," he says.

The envelope contained several documents purporting to show that Angeline Dvorak, vice president for research and economic development, had lied about her academic background. Specifically, an anonymous letter attached to the documents said that Ms. Dvorak had never been an associate professor of English at the University of Kentucky, as was claimed in news releases and a biography on Southern Mississippi's Web site. (The identity of the person who left the documents is unknown.)

Mr. Glamser, a 61-year-old motorcycle enthusiast known for his affable classroom manner, says he immediately called his friend George H. Carter, a professor of economics who teaches courses in ethics. Mr. Carter advised him that in cases in which a person's credentials are questioned, the correct course of action is to forward the evidence to that person's immediate supervisor. In this case, Ms. Dvorak's immediate supervisor was the president of the university, Shelby Thames.

The next morning Mr. Glamser gave the packet of information to the president's secretary, along with a letter explaining how he had received it. Mr. Thames later claimed that in the letter Mr. Glamser had stated that he would do nothing further with the information. But as a copy of the letter provided by the university shows, Mr. Glamser wrote only that the local chapter of the AAUP "would prefer not to be involved" in investigating the matter. "I assume you will handle it appropriately," Mr. Glamser wrote.

The president did not respond, even to acknowledge receipt of the materials, according to Mr. Glamser. Mr. Thames says that he passed the information to John Hanbury, the university's director of resources and risk management. Asked why he didn't respond to Mr. Glamser, the president says that he was ill during much of December and in January was busy with other, more pressing work. Even so, he says he took the issue "very seriously."

After becoming convinced that the administration was not going to investigate the claims, Mr. Glamser, as head of the local AAUP chapter, asked Mr. Stringer, a professor of English at the university since 1972, to lead a committee of AAUP members that would formally investigate the matter. Mr. Stringer, 63, has been praised by the administration for his scholarship on the English poet John Donne and is considered to be careful and deliberate by his colleagues-- which was the reason, Mr. Glamser says, that he selected him for the task.

Mr. Stringer's report, released in January, concluded that Ms. Dvorak's credentials, as listed in two news releases, a curriculum vitae, and a biography on the university's Web site, were misleading. Ms. Dvorak held a news conference soon after the release of the report in which she denied that the information was misleading and threatened to sue those who questioned her credentials.

The Meaning of Tenure

At issue is Ms. Dvorak's claim that she was a tenured associate professor at the University of Kentucky. Here is an excerpt from the biography on Southern Mississippi's Web site: "Before initiating her work in Mississippi, Dvorak served as president and CEO of Ashland Community College in Ashland, Kentucky. She concurrently held a tenured academic appointment as an associate professor at the University of Kentucky." The two news releases use similar language, and another curriculum vitae, obtained by a local television station, lists her as an associate professor of English at the "University of Kentucky, Lexington, Ky."

Ms. Dvorak acknowledges that she did not teach at the University of Kentucky. Yet she did earn tenure in the University of Kentucky system, of which Ashland Community & Technical College, as it is formally known, is a part. When she earned tenure at Ashland in 1998, the same board governed both the community colleges in the state and the University of Kentucky.

That has since changed, but Ms. Dvorak contends that because she earned tenure under the old system, she is within her rights to claim that she was a professor at the University of Kentucky. Yet administrative regulations from the University of Kentucky system at the time she achieved tenure state that the university and the community colleges were divided into "two systems" and that the standards for tenure were not equivalent.

It is not as if Ms. Dvorak had falsely claimed a degree or committed some other wholesale fabrication. But readers of her biography or the news releases would almost certainly assume that she had achieved tenure and taught classes in the English department at the University of Kentucky at Lexington, which was not the case. Instead, she was teaching English classes two hours away, at the community college where she also served as president.

For professors at Southern Mississippi, that is not a minor detail because Ms. Dvorak, who did not achieve tenure at a four-year institution, now has influence over tenure decisions at the university.

Ms. Dvorak, 44, does not concede that the news releases and the biography still on the university's Web site -- which were not written by her -- are misleading.

When interviewed last week, shortly after the president's news conference, she was visibly angry, her fists clenched and her lips pressed tightly together. Several times she seemed to fight back tears. She says she has been humiliated by the questioning of her credentials. "It's never even remotely crossed my mind to misrepresent myself," she says. "What purpose would it serve?"

Ms. Dvorak also reiterates her intention to sue those who have made such accusations. "I always finish what I start," she says.

Among those she cites as supporting her claim is Anthony L. Newberry, president of Jefferson Community College, in Kentucky. Mr. Newberry, who is a former chancellor of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System, says he believes Ms. Dvorak is an honest person and would not falsify her resume. But when a reporter read the relevant paragraph from her university biography, Mr. Newberry said he could understand how it could be seen as misleading. "If I were writing that paragraph," he said, "I would have added a comma and 'the community college system of the University of Kentucky.'"

Ms. Dvorak showed a reporter a copy of the curriculum vitae she says she gave to the university when she was interviewed for her current position, although she would not allow a copy to be made. That version makes it plain that she taught English classes at Ashland Community & Technical College, not at the University of Kentucky.

In his report, Mr. Stringer wrote, "To us, to me, the press releases, the bio on the Web site, and the entries on the vita did not admit any interpretation other than Dr. Dvorak had been a tenured associate professor of English at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky."

Locked Out

More than a month passed after the release of the report. Local newspapers ran articles, and the controversy was picked up by television stations in the area, but most of that attention had faded away. "We thought it was a dead matter," says Mr. Glamser.

Then, on March 4, Mr. Glamser and Mr. Stringer were each called into the office of Mr. Hanbury, who, along with being the director of resources and risk management, is also a lawyer. According to both professors, Mr. Hanbury asked questions about the investigation and the origin of the information they had presented. Both professors, who had sought the advice of a lawyer after Ms. Dvorak's threats, refused to answer.

That evening, messages were left for Mr. Glamser and Mr. Stringer informing them the president wished to meet with them separately the following morning. "I had a fairly strong hunch that I wasn't going to be selected for faculty of the year," says Mr. Stringer.

He was right. Both professors were told that they were being fired. They were each given a letter spelling out the reasons for their dismissals. They both declined, on the advice of their lawyer, to show the letters to a reporter. But some who have seen the letters say they accuse the professors of dishonesty, insubordination, and misuse of university-owned computer equipment and telephones.

During the meetings, the president also informed them that the locks on their offices had been changed and that they could speak to the campus police chief about the return of their "personal items," according to the professors. "It's as if we were secretaries and all we had in our offices were our purses and umbrellas," says Mr. Glamser.

The offices contain much more. Mr. Stringer's office, for example, has all the materials for his 25-year-long project on John Donne. Mr. Stringer is attempting to collect and organize all of Donne's original manuscripts along with 400 years of critical works on the poet.

The news of the firings spread quickly across the campus. An emergency meeting of the Faculty Senate was scheduled, during which professors accused the administration of "waging war" against faculty members. Myron Henry, a professor of mathematics and president of the senate, said the dismissals had the potential to "send the university back to another chapter in Mississippi history." That remark prompted faculty members in the room to rise from their chairs -- one of seven standing ovations during the meeting as professor after professor condemned Mr. Thames.

Mr. Glamser cautioned his colleagues at the meeting that they could be next. "If you think your tenure is worth today what it was worth three days ago, then you're kidding yourself," he said.

In the end, the 40 members of the senate voted unanimously to pass a resolution of no confidence in the president's leadership.

Caught Off Guard

At last week's news conference in the university's main administration building, Mr. Thames tried to respond to the Faculty Senate's vote. He said the decision to dismiss the two tenured professors was taken "very seriously." He also accused the AAUP of trying to "form a collective-bargaining unit" and said that the controversy was drummed up to attract more members. Then he asserted that complaints about his decisions were coming from a minority of professors. That remark was greeted with laughter loud enough to interrupt him.

"The man is a clown," says Noel Polk, a professor of English who stood in front of Mr. Thames during the speech holding a sign that demanded the professors be reinstated. "If he weren't so powerful, he would be doing a comedy. It was one ridiculous line after another."

The president also seemed to be unsure of his facts at times. For instance, he accused an assistant professor of history, Douglas Chambers, of canceling classes that morning so his students could protest the dismissals of the professors.

"That's a damn lie!" Mr. Chambers yelled from the back of the room.

After the meeting, Mr. Chambers approached the president and again called the remark "a damn lie," explaining that he couldn't attend class that morning because he had jury duty. When Mr. Chambers walked away, the president looked stunned and asked Lisa Mader, director of marketing and public relations at the university, where that information had come from. "From a student," she replied.

Whether the protests will lead to the professors' reinstatement -- or to the resignation of the president, as many here hope -- is difficult to predict. Ricki Garrett, a member of the college's board, said last week that board members were watching events closely and that they took any no-confidence vote from faculty members seriously. Ms. Garrett said the board was likely to discuss the matter at its meeting this week.

Others with ties to the university are taking the situation seriously as well. One major donor announced that his annual donation would be going to a defense fund set up for the professors. Others have said that they too will withhold donations. An alumna announced last week that she would withdraw a $10,000 gift to establish a music scholarship.

The overwhelming reaction seems to have caught Mr. Thames off guard, and, at one point, he reportedly was considering allowing the professors to finish teaching their classes this semester before dismissing them. That turnabout may have been in response to criticism that the dismissals of the two professors leave the hundreds of students they were teaching in the lurch.

But at press time Mr. Thames had decided against doing so, saying that he could not "in good conscience return these two individuals to the classroom." His opponents hope his refusal to back down and the increasing number of calls for his resignation will put pressure on the college's board to take action. In addition, the vast majority of faculty members voted last week (430 to 32) to support the Faculty Senate's earlier no-confidence vote. They also voted in favor of reinstating the two professors by a similarly wide margin.

At this stage, even some of the president's strongest supporters have lost faith in Mr. Thames. Among those is Mr. Wiest, the history professor, whom the president cited in his remarks last week as being on the administration's side. Mr. Wiest says he no longer supports Mr. Thames. In a tearful speech in front of the Faculty Senate in which he talked about his great love for the university, Mr. Wiest said the dismissals hit him "like a sledgehammer." He encouraged his colleagues to vote no confidence in the president.

Reprinted from the Chronicle of Higher Education, cover date March 19, 2004