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Date: April 16, 2013
To: Thom Harpole, Director, Employee Relations and Compliance
Re: Search for faculty position VPAA 2013-14-8, Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering
Thank you for your response dated April 12 to our memo dated April 8 regarding the concerns raised by [members of] the search committee for the above referenced faculty position. Your first statement reiterates the requirement to treat all candidates equally. You also state the requirement for equal employment opportunity, fair and objective personnel decisions, and that applications should be sought from the widest possible spectrum of qualified persons. Yet you fail to address the specific concerns stated in our memo of April 8. In order for the committee to proceed, it respectfully requests that you [or the pertinent official at a level higher than the college level] answer the following questions clearly, so that there is no room for misundertanding.
The search was initiated by the explicit desire and request by Dr. Edward Beighley to return to a faculty position from which he had resigned two years earlier. Acting on this request, the Dean of the College of Engineering informed the faculty at the Fall 2012 retreat that Dr. Beighley was coming back -- even before a search committee was formed. Furthermore, Dean Hayhurst repeated the same statement in [at least] two other venues. To a reasonable third person, it appears that the decision had been made to rehire Dr. Beighley, regardless of established procedures. Is this action consistent with SDSU practice?
As members of the search committee, we were informed at one point that the advertised position would not be completely funded by the university and that a successful candidate would have to supplement his/her salary from external funding for some time. The amount of time that the successful candidate needed to support himself is not stated in the ad [see VPAA 13-14-26 for an example of how this can been done.] Hearsay statements for the amount of time, including those of the department chair and Darrell Irwin, the College Resource Manager, vary from 1/4 time for the first year to zero time for two years. We reiterate that the requirement for a faculty time buy-out does not appear explicitly in the ad. Yet it may or will be used to support a decision as to who to hire. This procedure is unfair, as it places all other candidates at a clear disadvantage, not knowing what is expected of them. We ask: Is this procedure objective and consistent with SDSU hiring practice? Is the procedure rational? Can it be explained to a reasonable third person?
The search committee was constituted after the choice, by the college Dean, of a narrow specialty, without appropriate consultation or feedback from the departmental faculty. The narrow specialty was designed to exclude most candidates, but only those that could match Dr. Beighley's qualifications. Based on this "requirement," the committee was forced to narrow its initial screening to a very few number of "suitable" applicants. All others were disqualified by virtue of the narrowness of the search. Is this the way to reach the widest possible spectrum of qualified applicants? Does this search, as narrowly defined, obey academic or programmatic needs? This last question was never presented to the faculty.
We reiterate that the procedural errors described above have led to a search that is fundamentally flawed. The requirements of objectivity, consistency, and rationality, stated in the SDSU Faculty Recruitment and Hiring Procedures, have been violated. Accordingly, we ask for your clear response to these concerns. Barring this, we reserve the right to carry the concerns to the next higher level.
Respectfully,
Dr. Victor M. Ponce, Professor of Civil Engineering
Dr. Janusz Supernak, Professor of Civil Engineering
Dr. Ken Walsh, Professor of Civil Engineering
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