Sawislak files tenure
appeal with provost
BY DIANE MANUEL
Karen Sawislak, assistant
professor of history, has filed an appeal regarding her
tenure case with Provost Condoleezza Rice.
The appeal, filed Jan. 7,
seeks to overturn the decision made on Oct. 28 by John
Shoven, dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, to
deny the grievance Sawislak filed with his office on Oct.
7. Shoven declined to appoint a grievance officer to
review Sawislak's case.
Related
Information:
- Sawislak files
tenure grievance: 10/15/97
Shoven, who will complete
a five-year term as dean this spring, decided not to
promote Sawislak in April. The advisory Committee on
Appointments and Promotions had voted to approve her for
tenure, and the history department had unanimously
approved her for promotion to the rank of associate
professor with tenure, with one abstaining vote.
"I am disappointed
with the dean's decision, and since he declined to
investigate many aspects of my grievance I very much hope
that it will receive a full review at the level of the
provost," Sawislak said in November.
Tenure cases are
confidential, and Rice declined to comment on the appeal
from Sawislak, which reached her desk last week.
"The provost usually,
but not always, asks a faculty member to serve as a
grievance officer and to look into the issues that the
person has raised in his or her appeal," Kathryn
Gillam, senior associate provost for faculty affairs,
said about the procedural steps.
"The grievance
officer makes a report to the provost, who then
deliberates and responds directly to the person,"
Gillam added. "Normally the grievance will be taken
care of within 60 days."
Sawislak's appeal to the
provost will be handled according to changes to the
Statement on Faculty Grievance Procedures and the
standing rules of procedure that were recommended by the
provost and approved by the Faculty Senate in December.
Noting that she had dealt
with 16 grievances in the five years she has served as
provost, Rice proposed new time lines that she said would
"reassure grievants quite a bit."
In the past, she noted at
the Senate meeting, "the absence of explicit time
frames for handling of grievances has been very unhelpful
to the grievant."
The amended procedures now
stipulate that "normally no more than 60 days should
elapse between the filing of an appeal and the
disposition by the administrative officer."
The Faculty Senate also
supported Rice's proposal to change the level at which a
grievance is filed. Instead of filing with the
administrative officer who made the original negative
decision, a grievance should be filed at the next highest
administrative level, the provost said.
"I can tell you from
a lot of experience that I think it is really one of the
great annoyances for people who are going through what is
already a difficult, long and obviously quite stressful
process," Rice said about the procedure that was
then in place.
"If you try to think
about it from the point of view of the grievant, it is
generally the case that if you have been told 'no' by
somebody, you don't believe that if you ask them again,
they're going to say 'yes,'" she said. "That's
really what it comes down to." SR
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