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

DATE: THURSDAY, June 8, 1995                   TAG: 9506080084
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                                LENGTH: Medium

PROFESSORS COMPARED TO COACHES

``Our board was just adamantly opposed to lifetime employment,'' Robertson testified at the trial of a contract lawsuit brought by three professors at Regent University. ``They just didn't want to do it.''

The religious broadcaster and university chancellor also insisted the school didn't change its faculty contracts in 1994 so it could dismiss professors without cause. The university's faculty handbook still provides due-process job protections, he said.

But one of the plaintiffs, Elaine S. Waller, said the school administration initially told professors they'd be ``grandfathered in'' under the old contract. She said she and the other complainants viewed that as lifetime entitlements.

Instead, the old three-year ``rolling'' contracts that were renewed annually were replaced by two-year contracts that put the professors back under provisional employee terms, the plaintiffs argued.

She and the other two plaintiffs, Jeffrey C. Tuomala and Clifford W. Kelly, refused to sign the contracts they were offered in May 1994. As a result, they have one year remaining under the old three-year agreements they signed in 1993.

Robertson acknowledged that the school does not have to give a reason for not renewing professors' contracts under the new system. But he added, ``I don't believe the university ever intended arbitrary or capricious conduct.''

He said universities offer similar arrangements to football and basketball coaches who are fired or whose contracts are not renewed after a losing season.