PEER REVIEW Critics Say New College President in West Virginia Was Appointed for Wrong Reasons; Response to Gender-Bias Report Lands MIT Dean a New Job By JULIANNE BASINGER and ROBIN WILSON Joanne Tomblin has started work as the president of Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College amid accusations that she owes her new job to a couple of glaring facts. Her husband, Earl Ray Tomblin, is the State Senate President. And the other leading finalist for the college's presidency was black. Ms. Tomblin, who is white, is popular in the hill towns her husband represents. She has spent the past 18 years working at the area's college, whose headquarters are in Mount Gay, just a mile or so up the road from the (real) town of Dog Patch. Before she began as president last month, at a salary of $95,000 a year, she handled the college's public relations, as vice-president of economic development and community relations, earning $70,000 annually. The state-college system's Board of Directors this fall voted 7 to 2 to hire Ms. Tomblin, who has a master's degree in journalism, over 39 other candidates, 37 of whom held doctorates. The board's chairman, Joseph C. Peters, voted against giving her the job, as did board member Harry C. Young, Jr. They had supported another finalist, Ervin V. Griffin, vice-president of student affairs at West Virginia State College. Mr. Griffin holds a doctorate in community-college education and has 15 years' experience as an administrator and professor in the state's community colleges. Mr. Peters, the only African-American member of the board, says, "I believe there was racism in the board's action." Mr. Griffin agrees. "I would be naive to say race was not a factor," he says. But he thinks that Ms. Tomblin's political connection perhaps played a greater role. Either way, he says, he might sue "to ensure that no other West Virginian will have to endure a situation like this in my lifetime." The board's vote also dismayed other West Virginians, and the two Charleston newspapers wrote scathing editorials immediately afterward, accusing the board of indulging nepotism and focusing on political expediency. The state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People issued a statement charging that the board had "signaled African-American candidates, within and outside West Virginia, that they need not apply for any presidential vacancies in the state college system and they will be passed over for less qualified Caucasian candidates." Board members who supported Ms. Tomblin, including Philip A. Reale, deny the accusations. Mr. Reale says he voted for her because she had the most-current experience in community-college education and because she "understood the people and the culture at Southern." Ms. Tomblin prefers not to comment on whether nepotism and racism were factors. But she agrees with Mr. Reale that her familiarity with southern West Virginia gave her the edge. "The local community here absolutely supported me," she says, including the local branch of the N.A.A.C.P., which wrote the board early in the search to endorse her candidacy. The state chapter's president attributes that to "local loyalty." "It takes people who come in from the outside a long time to understand the way people think and live here," Ms. Tomblin says. Mr. Griffin, meanwhile, notes that he was born and raised in southern West Virginia, in a county bordering those the community college serves. Ms. Tomblin is a native of New York. *** An effort to stop discrimination against female scientists gave the dean at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology international recognition. Now, it has helped land him a new job. Robert J. Birgeneau, dean of the School of Science at M.I.T., announced last week that he would take over as president of the University of Toronto next July. The head of the search committee at Toronto said a report M.I.T. issued earlier this year acknowledging discrimination against female professors, and Mr. Birgeneau's efforts to address the problems, attracted attention at Toronto. "This was a very important factor," said Wendy M. Cecil-Cockwell, chairman of Toronto's Governing Council. The M.I.T. report was based on a study by female scientists and said that senior women among the faculty felt "marginalized" and shut out of departmental decision-making. Since women first complained to him about gender bias, in 1994, Mr. Birgeneau has raised women's salaries, helped them gain larger laboratories, and encouraged department chairmen to name women to important positions (The Chronicle, December 3). "This wasn't just all theory and nice talk," said Ms. Cecil-Cockwell. "Here was actually somebody who said, 'Now that we really know what the problems are, let's make a difference, let's change things.' That's what really impressed the committee." The move to Toronto will be a homecoming for Mr. Birgeneau, who is Canadian and earned his bachelor's degree from St. Michael's College of the University of Toronto in 1963. He has been a professor of physics at M.I.T. since 1975 and became dean there in 1991. http://chronicle.com Section: The Faculty Page: A14 Easy-to-print version E-mail this article