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Date: April 17, 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 statement regarding the requirement to treat all candidates equally is recognized and appreciated. Your statement regarding 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 is also recognized. We have carefully considered your response; at this juncture, our recommendation is that the search be cancelled. Please communicate this to the next higher level. Our decision is based on the following facts:
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. To a reasonable third person, it appears that the decision had been made to rehire Dr. Beighley, regardless of established procedures.
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 was not communicated clearly to us and was not stated in the ad. Yet this information may be used to support a decision as to who to hire. This procedure is not objective and fundamentally unfair, as it places all other candidates, except Dr. Beighley, at a clear disadvantage, not knowing what is expected of them.
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. In our opinion, this procedure effectively prevented the search from reaching the widest possible spectrum of qualified persons.
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. We urge you to follow time-tested university procedures and act accordingly.
Respectfully,
Dr. Victor M. Ponce, Professor of Civil Engineering
Dr. Janusz Supernak, Professor of Civil Engineering
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