Steven Aird, an associate professor of biology at Norfolk State University, is getting the boot at the end of this semester for flunking most of his students and resisting university pressure to dumb down his classes, The Virginian-Pilot reports.

For more than four years, Aird has carried on a running battle in which NSU administrators repeatedly pressed him to raise his pass rate and he steadfastly refused.

Twice, he was denied tenure and issued a one-year terminal contract, meaning he would have to leave at the end of the year. After the first denial, he filed a grievance. A faculty grievance committee found in his favor, ruling that the tenure decision was flawed by procedural violations and retaliatory actions by administrators.

He reapplied and was turned down again, despite a favorable recommendation by a departmental tenure review committee. Citing seven classes in which 83 to 95 percent of his students got a D or F, Sandra DeLoatch, dean of the School of Science and Technology, wrote that Aird’s “core problem” was “the overwhelming failure of the vast majority of the students he teaches.”

His bosses say it’s the teacher’s responsibility to make sure the lessons are getting through.

Aird, on the other hand, says coddling students who don’t pass muster does them a disservice: “I really care about my students,” he told the reporter, Bill Sizemore. “That’s why I refuse to lower the bar. The objective should be competence, not grades.”

Aird isn’t the only professor who’s felt pressure to lower his academic standards, Sizemore writes. He quotes Joseph Hall, a chemistry professor and president of the Faculty Senate, who said that …

“faculty are – I’ll use a nice word – encouraged to try and pass 70 percent of their students.” If the rate drops below 70 percent, [Hall] said, “faculty are called in and asked to explain what they’re going to do about it.”

Sharon Hoggard, a spokeswoman for Norfolk State, denies the assertion that the university is setting the bar lower, Sizemore writes:

“It goes against our very mission, which is to provide an affordable high-quality education for an ethnically and culturally diverse student population,” Hoggard said in an e-mail response to the Pilot. She pointed out that NSU is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, for which it must meet stringent standards.

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Categories: Faculty-hiring