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Provost faces faculty ire
Evaluation of Rocha may expose frustration with academic
By Geof Wollerman
gwollerm@mscd.edu

Photo courtesy of the University of Texas Pan-American Metro Provost Rodolfo Rocha.

Mounting faculty frustrations with Metro Provost Rodolfo Rocha will be voiced in the upcoming results of an evaluation, according to professors familiar with Metro faculty sentiment.

The evaluation began on April 23 and is being conducted by six members of the faculty senate.

“It shall be the obligation of these faculty to gain a knowledgeable basis for assessment through direct association with the (Provost), or from input derived from faculty who have a direct association with the (Provost),” according to an e-mail sent to full-time faculty by Hal Nees, president of the faculty senate.

John Schmidt, an engineering professor who has taught at Metro for 30 years and is the faculty trustee on Metro’s Board of Trustees, said the evaluation does not allow for an accurate assessment of Rocha’s performance because so few faculty members have had direct association with the provost.

Schmidt said he recently told Nees and Metro President Stephen Jordan that he hopes the evaluation will be an honest one.

“If it’s any kind of a whitewash, that’s not going to settle well with the faculty,” Schmidt said.

The evaluation will not be completed until late May or early June and, as outlined in Metro’s Handbook for Professional Personnel, will only be made available to President Jordan, who will then share the results with Rocha.

“If (the evaluation is) presented to the president and there’s consistencies on it, then I think the president will have to go back and look at that and then make a decision,” said Metro spokeswoman Cathy Lucas, who added that she couldn’t comment on whether President Jordan was satisfied with Rocha’s performance.

“I think he’s happy with the direction that the college is going,” she said.

If Jordan does not remove Rocha by the fall semester, there is plenty of support among the faculty to call for a vote of confidence and ask for Rocha’s resignation, Schmidt said.

“The faculty (is) hoping that we have a president that doesn’t have paradigm paralysis or who doesn’t have his horse blinders on and he’s going to take action and get rid of the guy,” Schmidt said, adding that it will severely hurt Jordan’s standing if he is forced into action by the faculty.

“(Jordan) will lose his effectiveness in managing the faculty if it has to go to that point,” Schmidt said. “I absolutely know that.”

However, a faculty vote of confidence is symbolic and does not necessarily mean that any official action will be taken. The last time faculty members held a vote of confidence was in 1997, when 161 out of 336 tenured faculty members declared that they had no confidence in then-Metro President Sheila Kaplan. Kaplan went on to serve another six years as president.

New rules and nepotism
At the heart of faculty frustrations are academic policies implemented since Rocha began.

These new policies make it extremely difficult for faculty members to receive compensation for department fundraising work – such as applying for federal grants – done outside the classroom, which is a practice common at colleges across the country, Schmidt said. Because of this many departments have stopped pursuing grants and other external forms of revenue, he said. He brought up the example of the Aviation and Aerospace Science Department, which turned down a $100,000 consulting contract because its faculty could not get compensated for the work it had put into procuring the contract.

The chair of the aerospace department, professor Jeffery Forrest, was unwilling to discuss the subject.

“I am no longer stating anything about this topic, and especially the Provost,” Forrest said in an e-mail.

Lucas confirmed that Rocha is now requiring departments to justify their reasons for compensation and reimbursement, which has resulted in more denials than in years previous. But she made clear that the college still supports any faculty member who pursues outside funding.

There is also the matter of Rocha’s wife, Dalinda Solis, who teaches in the Chicano Studies Department.

Before coming to Metro both Solis and Rocha worked at the University of Texas Pan-American, where Rocha was a dean and Solis was an associate professor. When Rocha came to Metro, Solis was made a tenured full professor – a move that some faculty members have described as extraordinary and nepotistic.

“That was the deal-maker deal-breaker for (Rocha) coming here,” Schmidt said regarding the prehire promotion of Solis. “That was the inside story that we all got.”

Schmidt explained that if Solis were to have not come in as a tenured full professor, then at some point the provost would have had to approve the position change, which might have been seen as a conflict of interest. If Solis’ move to Metro was made with her current status already in hand, then no one could ever accuse Rocha of bias in handing it to her, he said.

“No one that I am aware of in academia today spends less than a total of between 12 and 14 years as a faculty (member) before they’re even eligible to be promoted to full professor,” Schmidt said.

Typically an associate professor waits approximately seven years after applying in order to become a full professor, he said, adding that the circumstances were definitely unusual.

“There’s nothing dishonest about it,” Schmidt said. “But like I said, it was part of the incentive to get (Rocha) to move up here and work.”

The deal was similar to other deals worked out all the time at other colleges, Lucas said, pointing out that Solis’ department voted on and approved her tenure.

“If you look at (Solis’) résumé, she’s run some stellar programs at Pan-American,” Lucas said. “A lot of times when there is a hiring of a chancellor or a provost, there are packages like that made.”

Though her department voted to give Solis full tenure, Lucas confirmed that Rocha’s hiring package did include a position for Solis.

An uncertain future
“I think (Rocha’s) out of his league, outclassed, overwhelmed,” Schmidt said. “I just don’t believe he can handle the situation. He has attempted to handle everything by shoveling it off on other people and shoveling it off on committees, and the net result is there’s no progress.”

One of the reasons Rocha was hired was because Metro was considering becoming a Hispanic Serving Institute and wanted to hire a Hispanic administrator, Schmidt said, adding that he was privy to this information prior to Rocha being hired. He made clear that he believes the administration should be evaluating its employees based on their competence and not on their skin color.

“We’re acting like he’s the only Hispanic administrator in the entire United States that’s available to work,” Schmidt said.

Rocha has been either out of town or unavailable for comment regarding this story and deferred all queries to Lucas. But before he was hired last year, Rocha offered a few comments to @Metro regarding how he saw himself fitting in at the college.

“I bring stability and a commitment to this institution. I’m not here because I’m looking for a reason to leave my current post,” Rocha said. “I’m here because I’m passionate about the possibilities here and because this is an environment that is committed to bringing those possibilities into fruition. As provost, I’d be here for the long run.”

Editor’s note: Several faculty members and administrators were contacted during the reporting of this story but were unwilling to go on the record until the situation has been resolved. The Metropolitan will continue to follow the story as it develops.