A Champion of Latina Tenure Is Denied Tenure; Law School Admission Council Selects a President; Harvard Dean Will Step Down

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By ROBIN WILSON, JOHN GRAVOIS, and LAUREN SMITH

IRONIC DENIAL: The founder of a group formed to help Latina faculty members succeed at the University of Central Florida has just been denied tenure.

Maria de Jesus González was hired as an assistant professor of art history in 2001 and two years later founded Mujeres Universitarias Asociadas (Associated University Women). The group of about a dozen female Hispanic faculty members has typically gathered over lunch to share tips on such issues as which campus administrators to approach with a problem and which ones to avoid. They have coached one another on compiling tenure portfolios and offered pointers on applying for the university's teaching award (The Chronicle, September 29, 2006).

When it came time for Ms. González's department to vote on her tenure last fall, professors were split by a vote of six for and three against. Later a faculty committee in the College of Arts and Humanities was evenly divided, and this spring the dean and the provost made the decision to scuttle the promotion. They said she had not produced enough publications. A committee of four outside experts, however, said the professor's work should qualify her for tenure.

Ms. González says the rules on how much a junior scholar must publish are vague, but she believes she had more than enough articles, plus a probable book contract. Even so, she has decided not to file a grievance and has applied for a faculty job at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

"The irony," she says, "is I formed the Mujeres and then, after they denied me tenure, they asked for representatives of the Mujeres to go to a conference on how universities can keep faculty members of color."

Tom Evelyn, a university spokesman, would not talk specifically about Ms. González's case. "Unfortunately there are some faculty members who do not achieve tenure, but that doesn't necessarily mean there's a problem with the process," he said, adding that the university approves 85 percent to 90 percent of all tenure bids.

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LEGAL MOVE: A few days after pulling himself out of the running for the presidency of West Virginia University, Daniel O. Bernstine accepted another job last week.

He's the new presidentof the Law School Admission Council, which owns the Law School Admissions Test, familiar to aspiring and despairing law students everywhere. Mr. Bernstine, 59, will leave Portland State University, where he has served as president for 10 years. Before that he was dean of the University of Wisconsin Law School and a professor of law at Howard University.

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MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: Theda Skocpol, dean of Harvard University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, has announced that she will leave the job because, she says, she has accomplished as much as she can.

"I realize that usually in academia we think of years in office as an indicator of success," says Ms. Skocpol, 59, who has been dean since 2005. "I tend to think in terms of getting done what you can get done." She is proudest, she says, of the record number of people completing dissertations and receiving Ph.D.'s.

The timing of her resignation has been rumored to coincide deliberately with a search for a new dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. But "that's just a fiction," Ms. Skocpol says. Last May Derek C. Bok, the university's interim president, hired Jeremy R. Knowles as interim dean. Mr. Knowles, who had been dean from 1991 to 2002, will serve until Drew Gilpin Faust, the new president, selects a permanent one.

Ms. Skocpol will remain a faculty member in the sociology department.

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COMINGS AND GOINGS: Judith R. Shapiro, president of Barnard College since 1994, has announced that she plans to step down next year. ... Martha Dunagin Saunders, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, will return home to become president of the University of Southern Mississippi. Raised in Hattiesburg, Miss., she will take over in May for Shelby F. Thames, who has been in the job for five years.