A federal jury found last week that the president of Voorhees College had sexually harassed a professor at the institution, and awarded her $500,000 in damages, according to The Times and Democrat, a newspaper in Orangeburg, S.C.

The jury said that the president, Lee E. Monroe, had “acted with malice or with reckless indifference to the federal protected rights” of the professor, Moreen B. Joseph, who has since left the college. She sued both him and Voorhees in July 2004. In the complaint, Ms. Joseph alleged that she had been subjected to “lewd, gross, and suggestive language of a sexual nature and unwanted touching” by Mr. Monroe over several months in 2002 and 2003. In addition, she said, Mr. Monroe “implied that if she would agree to his sexual advances, she would benefit personally and financially.”

The college, Ms. Joseph said, did nothing about Mr. Monroe’s conduct after she reported it.

Mr. Monroe and the college denied every allegation in Ms. Joseph’s complaint. A member of Voorhees’s Board of Trustees, Don Fowler, said in a written statement that the verdict was “disappointing,” but the college will “continue to have faith and confidence in Dr. Monroe.” —Audrey Williams June