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Faculty Leader Quits Over Involvement in U. of Illinois E-Mail Scandal

January 30, 2012, 3:04 pm

The chairwoman of the campus senate at the University of Illinois at Springfield, Tih-Fen Ting, resigned from that post on Friday in the face of a no-confidence vote over her actions, which included forwarding other faculty members’ e-mails to the university-system president’s chief of staff, reports The News-Gazette of Champaign, Ill.

The chief of staff, Lisa Troyer, resigned this month after she was accused of sending anonymous e-mails intended to sway the deliberations of the University Senates Conference, a committee of faculty leaders from the system’s various campuses. The investigation of Ms. Troyer found that Ms. Ting, a professor of environmental studies, had anonymously forwarded e-mails from other faculty leaders to Ms. Troyer and tipped Ms. Troyer off to the likelihood that investigators had traced Ms. Troyer’s own anonymous e-mails, the newspaper reported.

The no-confidence motion, passed by the Springfield campus senate on Friday, accused Ms. Ting of “unethical and unprofessional conduct” that violated shared-governance principles and hurt the campus senate’s standing. Ms. Ting also has resigned from her seat on the University Senates Conference.

Clarification (2/1, 6:19 p.m.): This article originally was unclear about the nature of Ms. Ting’s resignation. She resigned from her position as chairwoman of the campus senate, not from her faculty post. The article has been updated to reflect this clarification.

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  • david_brown

    Unfortunately, it is fairly common for faculty senate leaders to become co-opted by university administrators. Too many become caught up by the prestige they associate with proximity to power.

  • bag31050

    You are so correct David, if I had a dollar for every time I have seen this happen in my 30 + years I could have retired years ago. What these faculty lusting for power do not understand is that being a sycophant gets you no better treatment from the administration than a tenured contemptible irritant.

  • thomaslawrencelong

    More often than not I have seen faculty senates and their presidents hold administrations accountable rather than colluding with them.

  • happyprof

    This is remakably unclear.  Did she resign from her teaching position, or just from her role as chairperson of the faculty senate? 

  • jlowery

    The article in the local paper indicates that she has only resigned from her position with University Senate.

  • http://www.facebook.com/peter.keylargo Peter Thompson

    I am jealous. I wish I could retire just by accumulating an extra $3.

  • davi2665

    There is a lesson in this issue.  Anyone who sends an email and considers it “confidential” or engages in political intrigue through emails to their nearest and dearest co-conspirators, needs a thorough reality check, as these emails almost always see the light of day, usually in a more uncomfortable and unattractive fashion.  If faculty are going to play the usual university games of intrigue, powerbrokering, attacks on other factions and administrators, and the many other backstabbing specialties of faculty senates and “gangs of faculty leaders”, expect every communication sent by electronic means to show up when you least expect it, or can least afford to have it revealed. 

  • cwinton

    Well, I was with you until you decided to indulge in tarring faculty senates in your last sentence.  You must be an academic administrator (or one of their toadies) who needs someone to blame for your own failings.  Having served in faculty senates (even as president at one time) and also as chair and dean, I found some of the most abusive elements of the university to be in academic administration, including a few who indulged in intemperate emails which if had ever been made generally available would have cost someone their position.  There are in fact faculty who have their own agenda who sometimes get into a position where they can abuse any power that accrues to them, but in my experience this kind of behavior is far more prevalent among those in academic administration. 

  • http://www.scamornotreviews.com/ Lisa Strutton

    Well, the old saying that power corrupts may be true…

  • http://www.scamornotreviews.com/traffic-in-spades/traffic-in-spades-review-traffic-in-spades-bonus Traffic In Spades

    So she’s still a teacher there?

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