Professor nears last day; grievance process goes on

Grievances filed over his denial of tenure are headed for arbitration.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Youngstown State University may be done with Dr. Eric See, but he isn't done with Youngstown State University.
Saturday will be his last official day as a YSU employee, but the criminal justice assistant professor has filed several grievances over how the university has handled his denial of tenure case.
The grievances have moved beyond the university level to federal arbitration and will be argued in July.
"This will drag out a long time," he said.
See said he doesn't expect the university to re-hire him, but he does expect to win a judgment against YSU. He also intends to sue the university once the grievances are resolved.
See, one of only two faculty members in the criminal justice department with a doctorate in criminal justice or criminology, has been at YSU for eight years, two as an instructor and the last six as an assistant professor on tenure track, a process that ended this year.
The tenured faculty in his department gave him a unanimous vote of support for tenure, which was backed by the chairman of his department.
The Dean of the Bitonte College of Health and Human Services opposed tenure, however, as did the provost and the university president. See learned last fall that his contract wouldn't be renewed at the end of this school year.
His students came to his support, holding campus rallies urging the provost and president to reverse their positions, and the YSU Academic Senate also passed a resolution asking for the same thing.
"There's just been so much tension on campus and in the department," See said.
This isn't an isolated case, said Dr. Julia M. Gergits, professor of English and president of the YSU faculty union.
"We do see a pattern," she said, noting that the university administration handled a denial of tenure for an engineering assistant professor in similar fashion about a year ago. That case is now in federal court.
In both cases, departments recommended tenure but the deans and those above them, including the president, denied tenure -- despite rulings by appeals boards that tenure should be granted, Gergits said.
"They were both very strong cases," she said, questioning the purpose of having appeals panels established in the contract if those panels hold no sway with the administration.
The See case "has done a lot of damage to the department," Gergits said.
See appealed President David C. Sweet's decision, seeking a hearing before the three-member appeal panel that recommended that tenure be granted.
Sweet declined to reverse his position, saying that See's level of scholarship achievements, covering such things as publishing papers, securing grants and writing books, was lacking.
Criteria for tenure
The university and faculty union have established criteria that faculty must reach certain standards before being granted tenure, and that process was followed in making the decision to deny tenure for See, Sweet said in March.
"I have more scholarship than some they have tenured," See said this week, adding that he completed projects for which he was given no credit. He said he has met the written, established criteria his department has for earning tenure and has the documentation to prove it.
See said his grievances challenge the way the university handled his case from start to finish, alleging that YSU has failed to follow the terms of the faculty contract regarding tenure.
The grievances went unresolved at the campus level and have moved to the federal arbitration stage, as outlined in the faculty contract, he said.
Among the issues to be resolved is whether the criteria used to judge See were also applied to others who sought and secured tenure.
gwin@vindy.com