The University of Texas at San Antonio has suspended two tenured civil-engineering professors without pay, and is considering their termination, after the faculty members bought a piece of land that was the subject of recent surveys by their students.

An ethics investigation found that the professors, Chia Shun (Rocky) Shih and Alberto Arroyo, had violated the university’s ethics policy, according to the San Antonio Express-News, a local newspaper. The university has begun a process, which will involve a faculty committee, to determine whether to fire the professors on ethical grounds.

Mr. Shih and Mr. Arroyo were members of a group of investors who purchased a piece of property off a scenic road near the city of Helotes, Tex., in September. Earlier last summer, students in Mr. Shih’s class had presented the findings of a semester-long project that included studies of the same parcel of land.

A university spokesman told the local newspaper that the real-estate deal and the suspensions were related.

The two professors have denied that their students conducted site studies of the land, but those denials contradicted accounts from e-mail records and from students who spoke with the local paper. Other students have signed a petition in support of the two professors. —John Gravois