A Resolution for Bringing Credentials Statements for Certain University Administrators into Conformity with the Conventions and Usages Usual and Customary in Four Year Research Oriented Universities

Passed June 18, 2004

Be it resolved that in light of the findings of the Special Faculty Senate Ad Hoc Inquiry Committee's investigation into the accuracy of various published credentials statements of the USM Vice President for Research and Economic Development, it is the sense of the USM Faculty Senate that all official university publications and the presentations of the Vice President's credentials statements in print and on the USM website should be brought into conformity with usual and customary academic usages that more accurately reflect the Vice President's community college tenure status during her service at Ashland Community College.

The Vice President for Research and Economic Development and the Ad Hoc Committee agree that the University of Kentucky system in the 1990s consisted of three different divisions with very different tenure and promotion standards. Taking note of the Vice President's assertion that her curriculum vitae statements were prepared for potential economic development employers rather than academic ones, and without judging motives, we find that the headline statement “Tenured Associate Professor of English (University of Kentucky)” in the Vice President's credentials and similar wording on the university website and in USM publications are not in conformity with normal conventions in academic resume writing and are therefore capable of being misconstrued by reasonable people in a research university setting.

In order that persons be accurately informed, we urge that all statements of the Vice President's credentials in USM publications be edited to reflect that she was in fact tenured as an Associate Professor of English in the Community College Division of the University of Kentucky, a division which in fact had a very different mission with much different tenure and promotion expectations than the research intensive expectations in the English Department on the main Lexington campus of the University of Kentucky.

Statements in university publications that are reasonably susceptible to inaccurate interpretation appear to be derived from page 2 of the curriculum vitae presented at the time the Vice President applied for employment. We suggest that the statements in question can be corrected to usual academic usage standards through editing that line to read “Tenured Associate Professor of English, (Community College Division, University of Kentucky System ). We urge upon our administration the wisdom of making this correction in university publications with all due haste.

Last Modified: July 27, 2005 2:17 PM
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