Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, December 10, 1994                   TAG: 9412120037
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MICHAEL STOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR SUES VA. TECH IN TENURE DISPUTE

It's the second time in three years that Elizabeth Howze, a member of the university's health and physical education department, has filed a complaint against Tech in U.S. District Court in Roanoke.

In May 1991, she filed a $1.25 million suit accusing Tech and several top administrators of depriving her of her right of free speech and conspiring to interfere with her employment contract.

That suit is pending, and Howze's attorney has asked that the suits be consolidated for a jury trial.

In the suit filed this week, Howze alleges that a tenure committee was biased against her because several of its members were defendants in the first lawsuit.

In December 1991, the committee recommended that Howze not be granted tenure, the suit says. Ronald R. Bos, director of the health and physical education division, followed that suggestion. He also was a defendant in Howze's first lawsuit.

Howze said in her lawsuit that a request to have Bos and the other defendants excluded from her tenure-review process was denied.

Tech, "acting through its agents and employees, encourages, solicited and permitted the promotion and tenure-review process to be used as a retaliatory mechanism," the suit said.

Howze later was granted tenure after appealing the decision to the university tenure-review committee.

Dave Nutter, a Tech spokesman, said Friday that the university couldn't comment because it had not been served with the suit.

Nutter said Howze is on a requested, unpaid leave of absence from Tech. She has been working at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta since January and is scheduled to return to Tech next semester.

Defendants listed in the suit are Tech President Paul Torgersen, Provost Fred Carlisle, Professor Janine Hiller and Judith Jones, associate director of the Virginia Cooperative Extension service.

Torgersen, Hiller and Jones served on a special committee, appointed by Carlisle, to investigate Howze's claims of sexual discrimination.

The 1991 suit stemmed from incidents that, Howze said, began in 1989 when she complained of sex discrimination in connection with her performance evaluation. She said she was judged more strictly than her male colleagues.