ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, November 26, 1996 TAG: 9611260065
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: Reporter's Notebook
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE
It was mid-September when the first correspondence from the University of Minnesota campus reached me by e-mail in Blacksburg.
One of Virginia Tech's music professors forwarded it. He, in turn, had received a copy along with a batch of professors from here to Washington state.
News from that campus has flowed fast and furiously for weeks among the nation's professors (and the reporters who cover them), because a tectonic shift is in progress there. Earlier this fall, Minnesota's Board of Regents proposed changes in the university's tenure code that would make it easier for administrators to lay off or cut salaries for tenured faculty.
Tenure, attained by professors after years of rigorous academic review, is designed to assure academic freedom, and, in turn, a job.
The controversial situation in Minnesota appears to be at a momentary stalemate under labor law as the faculty unionizes. However, a modified version of the policy remains on the horizon.
At Virginia Tech, the Faculty Senate was asked in a recent straw poll about its major concerns for the school year. And what popped up high in the list? You guessed it. The tenure situation in Minnesota. Members are watching very closely.
Eric Hallerman, a member of the Senate, did his post-doctoral work in Minnesota and remains in touch with his colleagues there.
"I think mostly it's a clash of cultures," he said, noting that boards of regents tend to be filled with people who share a corporate worldview.
And those folks know downsizing.
Like all of Virginia's state colleges and universities, Tech recently completed work on a post-tenure review policy that tightens reviews for tenured professors.
It was with this policy in hand that Hallerman and Faculty Senate President Paul Metz wrote to the chairman of the Minnesota regents earlier this month.
"We understand the need for a post-tenure review policy which mandates regular, rigorous review of faculty and which has as a potential outcome the dismissal of incompetent faculty," wrote the pair, who helped craft Tech's post-tenure review.
But they objected to several provisions, including one that The Washington Post reports is now gone from the policy. Perhaps the most extreme, it required "a proper attitude of industry and cooperation with others."
Professors, said the Post, dubbed it "the Chairman Mao provision."
Hallerman talked some last week about why tenure is important.
Consider what he calls risky research - the kind that costs money, and might not produce tangible results.
"The best example I can think of is AIDS," he said. "Most research undertaken by faculty somewhere is not going to pan out. Somewhere in America, one or two of them will. That will be a breakthrough that leads to treatment."
And what about coaxing the best and brightest into a career path not known for huge paychecks? It costs a lot (think negative earnings living on a shoestring when you could have taken that MBA to Wall Street) and takes years to get a doctorate.
In their letter, Metz and Hallerman write, "a number of our own faculty have commented that they would hesitate to accept employment at Minnesota or to advise their best graduate students to do so."
On Nov. 15, the head of Minnesota's Board of Regents responded. He said his board is committed to academic freedom. He thanked them for their input. A step toward compromise has been taken, he said.
What happens next is difficult to tell.
But you can bet local professors are logging on the Internet any given day of the week to check out the latest electronic update in Minnesota's long tenure saga.
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