Grievance procedures for SMU students wanting to petition for grade changes, report sexual harassment or notify the administration of discriminatory practices are clearly outlined in the student handbook.
But a student who wants to report unprofessional behavior in the classroom would be hard pressed to find an official grievance procedure.
Eva Parks, senior journalism major, never thought she would need such a procedure. Now she believes the process should be readily available to all students.
“It was such a hassle [reporting a professor],” she said. “It should be easier to have a say in your education, especially when we pay so much money.”
Unprofessional Behavior
Last April, Parks enrolled in a class covering the history of rock ‘n’ roll at the encouragement of the class’ professor. She expected a fall semester spent charting the rise of rock from its jazz roots. What she didn’t expect was a semester spent struggling with a professor, whose behavior was less than professional.
Ray Carroll, a tenured faculty member, began the semester with an unstructured syllabus and a reading list stacked seven books high. But six were never mentioned in class, Parks said.
Class members said Carroll called one student “stupid” during an oral presentation, that he held class repeatedly outside of scheduled class time and that he held class during dead week, which is strictly forbidden by the university.
As the semester wore on, students said, Carroll began showing up late for class – and what started as 10 minutes of tardiness soon stretched to 30 minutes. Eventually, Park said, Carroll stopped showing up for class at all, including the midterm. The class documented at least six unexcused absences for the professor.
“There were never any excuses, never a ‘my car broke down’ story,” Parks said. “There was never an apology.”
Carroll declined to comment.
Frustrated that their professor was not living up to the attendance policies he set for his students, Parks and her classmates approached Jim Goodnight, executive director of the division of journalism, three weeks before the final exam. Goodnight, former adjunct professor of advertising and interim chair of the division of advertising at SMU, joined the journalism department in November 2002, after the unexpected departure of Chris Peck. He listened to their complaints, Parks said, but had little to say except that Carroll was a tenured professor and little could be done. Goodnight declined to comment on Carroll.
But the students said that three weeks later, Carroll failed to show up for the final exam. The class, Parks said, went directly to Carole Brandt, dean of Meadows School of the Arts. Although not able to speak directly with the dean, they were able to voice their complaints to her assistant. This time, they did not go unheard. According to access.smu.edu, Carroll, who is teaching two courses this semester, will go on a research sabbatical next year before retiring.
Ellen Jackofsky, associate provost of faculty and administrative affairs, said Carroll’s impending departure from SMU is “evidence the system works.”
“Basically,” she said, “the grievance procedure is the same as that for appealing a grade.”
According to the grade appeals process, students with concerns should contact the head of the department first and then the dean if necessary, just as Parks and her classmates did.
From there, the dean discusses the complaint with the professor and if a solution is found – as in the case with Carroll – the complaint stops with the dean. If the professor and the school cannot reach a solution, the complaint goes to the provost and then to the Faculty Senate Committee on Ethics and Tenure. Once there, a group of peers reviews the professor’s behavior and decides if any disciplinary action should be taken.
But, Jackofsky said, it rarely gets that far.
What is tenure?
According to the National Education Association, a university cannot fire a tenured professor without presenting evidence that the professor is incompetent or behaves unprofessionally.
Glenn Linden, associate history professor and president of the SMU chapter of the American Association of University Professors, advocates a continuation of the tenure system at SMU. He, like many of his colleagues, argues that tenure is the only way to preserve academic freedom at the university level.
But because of concerns that tenured professors may abuse their job security by not living up to professional standards, the Faculty Ethics and Tenure Committee agreed to implement post-tenure reviews in 1997. Barbara Hill Moore, Meadows faculty senator and chairwoman of the Faculty Ethics and Tenure Committee, said these reviews are held annually with every faculty member, tenured or not, to assess professional development.
Linden said the main purpose of annual evaluations of tenured faculty is to encourage service to the university and determine whether grants are needed to pursue research possibilities. Very rarely, he said, is it used to discuss the revocation of tenure, although a tenured person “is not immune from being ultimately discharged.”
Policy in practice
Goodnight said most student complaints he receives concerning a professor’s behavior never went any farther than him.
He said that as chairman, he evaluates a student complaint and then talks to the professor in question to determine the validity of the claim. If the issue is a legitimate one and cannot be resolved, he said, the student might be called as a witness during a faculty-peer review. But that “just doesn’t happen,” he said.
“It’s not unusual for a student to come in with grievances,” he said, “[but revoking tenure] is a very lengthy legal process.”
This is a process which is not readily available to students with legitimate complaints about the quality of their education.
