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Saturday, August 6, 2011

My Tenure Biennium a memoir

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The book is about an extremely unusual tenure case.
It can be obtained at the MSU Book Store in the Curris Center in Murray KY or ordered from donna.witherspoon@murraystate.edu or 1-800-749-8580. The price is $12 (plus postage if applicable).

Murray, KY, 1981 In the midst of a campus-wide political crisis in which a board of regents is unable to oust a transformational president, a failed department chairman makes his third application for tenure, withholds evidence from another applicant’s tenure file, and begins a whispering campaign. A politically secure dean, who had sided with the board, cooperates with the chairman’s misconduct and presents the upper administration with an interesting opportunity. What will they do?

Readers’ Comments about My Tenure Biennium

From readers who were there:

Your recollections, most capably presented in your Tenure Biennium, were, for the most part, similar to my own.
Constantine W. Curris, Murray State University President, 1973-83

“I got it in the mail yesterday and I read it last night.
Couldn’t put it down. Very interesting reading.”
Vaughn Vandegrift - Chair of MSU Dept of Chemistry, (1982-88)
Chancellor, SIU – Edwardsville - present

“ remarkably detailed … exceptional documentation … certainly intrigue and politics appear to have played a role.”
James L. Booth - VPAP– Acting President – Provost, MSU (1982-1998)

"Wayne's story is told with more evidence, greater honesty, a higher level of thoughtful, self-reflective analysis, and, a keener sense of humor than I would have ever thought possible from any Ph.D., especially one who survived such an academic nightmare!”
Ken Wolf – MSU Associate Professor of History during the biennium

“I took my guidance from the chapters' epigraphs that provide an eclectic soundtrack -- from Bob Dylan to the Psalms to Willie Nelson -- …”
Terry Foreman - Chair of Philosophy and Religious Studies 1978 – 96, Senate VP in the biennium

“… amazing detail …” Dr. Frank Julian –VP for Student Development, 1974-1989

"This is a fascinating, intriguing story with a remarkable depth of specifics, accuracy, analysis, humor, and quality. I had difficulty putting MY TENURE BIENNIUM down."
Jules Harcourt Chairman, Office Systems and Business Education, 1976-1991

"… some of my experiences within the College of Environmental Sciences … were similar to yours."
Oliver Muscio MSU Chemistry Professor 1976-2008

From readers who were not there.
"A powerful narrative that offers valuable lessons for administrators at every level."
Ted Brown Dean, MSU College of Humanities and Fine Arts 2006 - present

"Dr. Bell’s tenure case is fascinating. How could a university promote a faculty member early and then turn around and deny that faculty member tenure the very next year? Red flags should have been going off everywhere. The system clearly wasn't working."
John Mateja – Dean, College of Science, Engineering and Technology, MSU (1998 – 2001)

(from the foreword) “The episode of Wayne's tenure biennium was, I think many of you will soon agree, a watershed moment in the history of the math department and a sanguinary contest for its heart and soul.”Rob Donnelly - Prof of Mathematics, Murray State Univ., (1997 – present)

added 9/22/11 The introduction to the book is listed below.
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3 comments:

  1. Introduction to the revised version
    April 2011
    I appreciate the responses to the preliminary version of this work, especially the expressions which are now on the covers.
    Since beginning this work in 2009 I have communicated with a number of people about those events and have learned a great deal. This revision includes new material from President Curris, three of the vice presidents, and others from that era. (In the case of Dr. Butwell, I found certain papers, mingled with others, that I did not realize were in my possession.) I wanted to integrate these things into this document without changing the flavor of its being a presentation of how things looked to me at the time. [[The device that I have used to attempt to do that is to place the more recently obtained material and perspectives (2009 and after) in double bracketed italics like this.]] While the comments were theirs the choice of placement was mine.
    I have also moved the tedious example of the “CAUSE proposal” into appendix 12, included the Faculty Senate resolution of February 19, 1981 in appendix 3, and added an index.
    Although it is a bit stilted, I have retained the excessive use of full title and name to help the reader who is not familiar with the characters to keep track of them.

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  2. Introduction to the preliminary version – September 2010
    This is the story of my consideration for tenure at Murray State University, which began in August of 1981, and ended in April of 1983. Most faculty members have a tenure year – I had a tenure biennium. The fact that I have kept the notes and other material from the case for almost 30 years means that I have been considering writing it for a long time. However, I might not have done so had it not been for Professor Rob Donnelly, who came to Murray State in 1997. He persuaded me that this story ought to be told and to include a bit of personal history from before I came to Murray. That personal history is described in the prologue which you can skip by beginning with “The Problem of Employment 1975-76” on page 19.
    In 1966, the name of Murray State College was changed to Murray State University. In 1973, Constantine W. (Deno) Curris was hired as the President. The mission that he was given was to move the institution away from its normal school background towards being a regional university. Curris was 32 years old. Many people in the area were distressed with the changes that followed, and, as time went by, the membership of the governing board changed. In early 1981, a bare (6 of 10) and temporary (one of them would be off the board in June) majority of the board moved against him, even though there were 2½ years left on his current contract. Curris successfully resisted and there followed 18 months of conflict, which ended only when Governor John Y. Brown intervened.
    In January, 1981, I was an assistant professor in my 5th year in the Department of Mathematics, making good progress toward establishing an academic career. How well I was doing in that effort can be measured by the fact that during the academic year in which the conflict began, 1980-81, I was in the process of being promoted early. I was engaged in teaching, mathematical research, course development, and work on university governance issues through the Faculty Senate. I had no idea that the larger political struggle that was about to engulf the university would spill over onto my tenure application and threaten to put an end to my lifelong aspirations.
    My case was not representative of how the tenure process worked at Murray State in the early 1980’s (and certainly not how it works today). In fact, the story is not even representative of the aberrations in the tenure process that occasionally occur in academic institutions. Perhaps it can best be understood as part of the larger panorama of change that Murray State was experiencing at the time. The reason that the story became so complicated was that there were problems on four different levels, which became intertwined into a very complex sequence of events.

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  3. On the first level, the departmental tenure committee, there was the normal possibility of mischief in a tenure consideration that comes from the fact that some of the actors may consider it acceptable to treat the process as political or personal, rather than academic and professional.
    Between the first and second level, during the final stages of the department’s part of the process, a whispering campaign was conducted by the department chairman, which incited some members of the department to do things that they might not normally have done.
    On the second level, there was my chairman who was unsuccessful as a chairman, also a candidate for tenure after two unsuccessful attempts; who was allowed, in fact, required, to write a tenure recommendation on me. It is interesting that, until the case came to the president himself, all of the administrators consistently and totally ignored the possibility that the chairman might have a conflict of interest that he could not handle.
    On the third level, my dean (the chairman’s supervisor) had hired my chairman, and one in chemistry, without consultation with the respective departmental faculty. That meant that they were solely his responsibility, and, unfortunately, they hadn’t worked out as chairs. The dean’s position was further complicated by the fact that he was in open opposition to the university president. However, the dean had a considerable power base (outside of the university), which meant that if he could avoid a major public blunder then he could - as he put it to me – “tread water for two years,” until the president’s term ended. Consequently, (I believe that) however badly my chairman acted, the dean felt bound to support him.
    On the fourth level, the university was in the throes of the Board vs. President crisis mentioned above. The faculty regent was one of the 6 on the board who opposed the president and I had been working closely with him on university governance issues in the Faculty Senate. My dean had (more or less openly) supported the Board majority and they had lost. That conflict simmered in the background (some said foreground) throughout the consideration of my tenure.
    It was an incredible confluence of events and circumstances.
    This is not intended to be a history of the conflict between President Constantine Curris and the Murray State Board of Regents (which somebody should write), only the part that involved me.
    The material before 1975 is all from memory. After 1975, there are a few things included from memory, but the great majority is from notes that I took at the time of the events. It is my intent to present these events as they looked to me at the time. When I want to give my current perspective on things I will indicate that by saying so - looking back or 2009 or some such thing. So that the reader will get the full picture, I will include those things that I said and did which now seem inappropriate or worse, as well as those things which I now view as reasonable or even laudable.
    The reader should be aware that within the narrative, changes in verb tense from past to present are often used to indicate a change from a more retrospective point of view to one that is in-the-moment.
    There is a cast of the major characters that begins on page 26. Each is introduced in bold print there and (non-mathematical characters) again when we meet them subsequently in the narrative. I have tried to frequently refer to them by their title and name to help the reader identify them.

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