Tag: Leadership & Governance

Transitions: Harvard Names New President; Kenyon College President Steps Down

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Stephanie Mitchell, Harvard U.
Claudine Gay will lead Harvard starting on July 1.

CHIEF EXECUTIVES
Appointments
Marshall Criser, a former chancellor of Florida’s university system, has been named the next president of Piedmont University, in Georgia. He replaces James Mellichamp, who announced his retirement in June.

Ron Darbeau, vice president for faculty affairs and academic operations at Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania, has been named chancellor of Pennsylvania State University at Altoona.

Claudine Gay, dean of the faculty of arts and sciences at Harvard University, has been named president. She succeeds Lawrence Bacow and will be the university’s first Black president.

Naydeen González-De Jesús, executive vice president for student success at Milwaukee Area Technical College, has been named president of San Antonio College.

Jean Hernandez, who retired from Washington’s Edmonds College as president emeritus in 2017, has been named interim president of South Seattle College for the remainder of the academic year.

James N. Johnston, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Midwestern State University, in Texas, has been named chancellor of the Eastern New Mexico University system.

John B. King Jr., president of the Education Trust and a former U.S. Department of Education secretary, has been named chancellor of the State University of New York system.

Elva LeBlanc, who has served as interim chancellor of Tarrant County College, in Texas, since Gene Giovannini’s resignation in June, has been named chancellor.

Charles Lepper, vice president for student affairs and enrollment management at Salt Lake City Community College since 2015, has been named president of Grand Rapids Community College. He succeeds Juan R. Olivarez, who has served as interim president since July.

Anne E. McCall, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Xavier University of Louisiana, has been named president of the College of Wooster, in Ohio.

Pamela Monaco, vice president for academic and student affairs at Wilbur Wright College, has been named president of Ocean County College. She succeeds Jon H. Larson, who plans to retire next year.

Cathy Monteroso, interim provost and vice president for academic affairs at West Liberty University, has been named the university’s interim president. She will be the first woman to lead the West Virginia college and will assume the role on January 1.

Harriet Nembhard, dean of the University of Iowa’s College of Engineering, has been named the next president of Harvey Mudd College, in California. She will assume the role on July 1.

Amy Parsons, founding CEO of the e-commerce company Mozzafiato, LLC, has been named president of Colorado State University at Fort Collins. She succeeds Rick Miranda, who became interim president after Joyce McConnell’s departure in June.

Brian Pellinen, academic dean at Montserrat College of Art, in Massachusetts, has been named interim president. He will succeed Kurt T. Steinberg, who will leave in January to become chief operating officer of the Peabody Essex Museum, in Salem, Mass.

Melanie Perreault, provost and executive vice president for academic and student affairs at Towson University, in Maryland, has been named interim president of the university. She will take office on February 1.

Kim Schatzel, president of Towson University since 2016, has been named president of the University of Louisville. She succeeds Lori Stewart Gonzalez, who has served as interim president since December 2021.

Linda Schott

Linda Schott, a former president of Southern Oregon University, has been named interim president of Texas A&M University at San Antonio. She succeeds Cynthia Teniente-Matson, who has been named president of San Jose State University.

Charles Seifert, a longtime professor and business-school dean at Siena College, has been named its president. Seifert replaces Chris Gibson, who plans to retire in May.

Jayda Spillers, vice chancellor for academics and student affairs at Northwest Louisiana Technical Community College, has been named chancellor.

T. Ramon Stuart, president of Clayton State University, in Georgia, has been named president of the West Virginia University Institute of Technology. He will assume the role on January 1.

Strom C. Thacker, dean of the faculty and vice president for academic affairs at Union College, in New York, has been named president of Pitzer College, in California.

Resignations
Melanie Dixon, president of American River College, in California, will step down at the end of the semester.

Kay Ellis, vice president for administration and finance at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York, will step down at the end of the month.

Jennifer Raab, president of Hunter College of the City University of New York, will step down at the end of June.

Retirements
Sean M. Decatur, president of Kenyon College since 2013, has been named president of the American Museum of Natural History. He will step down at the end of the month. Provost Jeff Bowman, who has served as acting president since July, will continue in that role.

Louise Pagotto, chancellor of Kapiʻolani Community College, in Hawaii, will retire on December 31.

Jennie Vaughan, chancellor of Ivy Tech Community College at Bloomington, plans to retire in May.

CHIEF ACADEMIC OFFICERS
Appointments
Peter Blitstein, interim provost and dean of faculty at Lawrence University since July, has been named to the post permanently.

Sean Burke, associate provost of Luther College, in Iowa, has been named provost and vice president for academic affairs at Alma College, in Michigan.

Anne D’Alleva, interim provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the University of Connecticut, has been named to the post permanently.

Francis J. Doyle III, dean of Harvard University’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has been named provost at Brown University.

Resignations
Alan Utter, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs and research at Arkansas State University, plans to step down at the end of the fall semester and return to the faculty. Todd Shields, the chancellor, will serve as acting provost.

OTHER TOP ADMINISTRATORS
Appointments
Michael Andreasen, senior vice president for university advancement at the University of Oregon, has been named vice chancellor for development at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He succeeds David Routh, who plans to step down at the end of the year.

David Go, a professor and chair of the department of aerospace and mechanical engineering at the University of Notre Dame, has been named vice president and associate provost for strategic planning.

Mark J. Heil, interim vice president for finance and administration at Ohio University, has been named to the post permanently.

Jeremy P. Martin, chief of staff at the College of William & Mary, has been named the university’s vice president for strategy and innovation.

Joseph Morales, associate director of strategic initiatives and partnerships in the Office of Inclusive Excellence at the University of California at Irvine, has been named chief diversity officer at California State University at Chico.

Jared Mosley, interim vice president and director of athletics at the University of North Texas, has been named to the post permanently.

Grant Myers, dean of enrollment management at Tabor College, has been named vice president for enrollment management at Hesston College.

Cynthia Pickett, associate provost for diversity, equity, and inclusion at DePaul University, has been named presidential associate for inclusion and chief diversity officer at California Polytechnic State University at Pomona.

Scott Rabenold, vice president for development at the University of Texas at Austin, has been named senior vice president for university advancement and alumni relations at the University of Southern California.

Marshall Stewart

Marshall Stewart, chief engagement officer for the University of Missouri system and vice chancellor for extension and engagement at the University of Missouri at Columbia, has been named senior vice president for executive affairs, university engagement, and partnerships and chief of staff at Kansas State University.

Retirements
Melody Bianchetto, vice president for finance at the University of Virginia, plans to retire in February.

Mark Lanier, assistant to the chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, plans to retire in December 2023.

DEANS
Appointments
Rachel Clapp-Smith, interim dean of the College of Business at Purdue University Northwest, has been named to the post permanently.

Kelechi (K.C.) Ogbonna, interim dean of Virginia Commonwealth University School of Pharmacy since June, has been named to the post permanently.

Joseph M. Valenzano III, chair of the communications department at the University of Dayton, has been named dean of the communications school at Butler University, in Indiana. He replaces Brooke Barnett, who was promoted to provost and vice president for academic affairs.

Resignations
Robert Shibley, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at the University at Buffalo, plans to step down.

OTHER ADMINISTRATORS
Appointments
Nicki Webber Moore, vice president and director of athletics at Colgate University, has been named director of athletics and physical education at Cornell University.

Amy Overman, assistant dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Elon University, has been named assistant provost for scholarship and creative activity.

Jay Pearson, an associate professor of public policy at Duke University, has been named the inaugural associate dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion at its Sanford School of Public Policy.

Jonathan Tran, an associate professor and chair of religion in the College of Arts and Sciences at Baylor University, has been named an associate dean of the Honors College.

China L. Wilson, equity and civil-rights compliance specialist at the Maryland State Department of Education, has been named assistant dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion at the Peabody Institute at the Johns Hopkins University.

ORGANIZATIONS
Appointments
Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, a Republican, has been named president of the NCAA.

Marni Baker Stein, provost and chief academic officer at Western Governors University, has been named chief content officer at Coursera.

DEATHS
Willard (Sandy) Boyd, president emeritus of the University of Iowa, died on December 13. He was 95. Boyd led the university from 1969 to 1981.

Charles Somerville Harris, who recently retired as executive vice president at Averett University, in Virginia, died on December 7. He was 71.

George C. Herring, author of America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975 and a professor emeritus of history at the University of Kentucky, died on November 30. He was 86.

Henry Rosovsky, a former dean of the faculty of arts and sciences who also served as acting president of Harvard University, died on November 11. He was 95. Rosovsky was the first Jewish dean of the faculty and founder of the Center for Jewish Studies. He was also a key figure in the development of the Black studies program at the university.

Gaddis Smith, a professor emeritus of history at Yale University, died on December 2. He was 89.

Submit items for Gazette to people@chronicle.com.

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Julia Piper

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January 3, 2023
How the Fate of a “Racial-Justice Center” Ensnarled Penn State’s New President in Controversy

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During her first few months as president of Pennsylvania State University, Neeli Bendapudi began to have doubts about a planned multimillion-dollar Center for Racial Justice that had been envisioned by her predecessor, Eric J. Barron, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020. Bendapudi’s skepticism, honed over a two-month listening tour, essentially boiled down to a belief that a $3.5-million center that would centralize antiracism research and advise the administration on equity-related policies would not address the university’s most urgent needs.

How Bendapudi arrived at and conveyed her decision to scrap the center, through a series of ill-timed, tense, in-person and virtual meetings with a rolling cast of administrators, faculty, and students, has resulted in widespread confusion, roiling protests, and a ubiquitous belief among faculty and students that she is not earnestly committed to racial justice. Her decision, faculty members said in a petition now signed by 400 people, adds to a “long list of broken promises on issues of racial justice by Penn State.”

“This center represented a very important symbol, and she took that away from us,” said Gary King, a Penn State professor of biobehavioral health and African American studies. “The very name itself stated something that Penn State had never done.”

The Chronicle spent several days at University Park, Penn State’s largest campus, speaking to administrators, faculty, and students, and pouring through emails, campus announcements, and videos of press conferences and town halls to piece together the series of events that’s left this sprawling system sharply divided over how to fight racism and has placed its new president on the defense.

“I messed up on the communication,” Bendapudi said during an interview with The Chronicle last month. “I have been an unapologetic, staunch advocate for diversity and equity for a long time. That’s not new, and that’s not going to change. I 100-percent stand behind my decision as my best judgment of what is right for this institution.”

The falling out illustrates the sort of landmines university leaders have faced in recent years when trying to communicate and build support for racial-justice efforts.

At Penn State, there’s widespread agreement that the university, for a variety of reasons, has struggled to recruit and retain students of color, despite Black and Latino students making up a growing portion of Pennsylvania’s high-school graduates. The university, which is rapidly losing enrollment, now faces a budget deficit of more than $191 million.

Critics of Bendapudi say that the Center for Racial Justice would compile racial-disparity data from across the 24-campus system, employ scholars to evaluate that data, and craft universitywide approaches to close those disparities. “One of the hopes was that the center could … compel the university to be very self-reflective and self-critical in acknowledging the ways that it has contributed to and maintained racism,” said Ashley Patterson, a professor in the College of Education.

The decision not to fund the Center for Racial Justice adds to a “long list of broken promises on issues of racial justice by Penn State.”

Other universities — including William & Mary college and Dillard University, a private, historically Black university in Louisiana — have established similar racial-justice centers in recent years. In January, the state of Pennsylvania awarded Temple University a $1.3-million grant to build the Center for Anti-Racism.

But Bendapudi, along with several other Penn State administrators The Chronicle spoke to, insisted that the university needs to focus on measurable goals, such as closing graduation gaps between students of color and white students, growing and diversifying the faculty, promoting staff of color, and improving the sense of belonging among faculty and students on campus. Bendapudi says institutions of higher education have historically not prioritized these issues.

“My concern is that, frankly, every single university is establishing these centers, and I think that’s a great idea,” Bendapudi said during a town hall in November. “But I also worry that is not necessarily what will move the needle for us.”

When she was hired by Penn State’s board in December 2021, many expected Bendapudi, a former banking executive who was born and raised in India, to champion racial- and social-justice efforts. As the president of the University of Louisville, she cut ties with John Schnatter, founder of the Papa Johns pizza chain who had donated more than $40 million to the university, after he used the N-word on a conference call. She was also behind the university’s decision to rename the Papa Johns football stadium.

In the summer of 2020 Bendapudi coined Louisville’s “Cardinal Anti-Racism Agenda,” a list of recommendations that were slated to be finished by September 2020. She said she wanted to make Louisville a “premiere antiracist metropolitan university.” Breonna Taylor, who had been shot and killed by police in the same city, was an emergency-room technician at the university’s medical center.

As part of the new agenda, administrators would dedicate resources toward improving the retention and graduation rates of Black male students, encourage social-justice-related research, and revamp the Bias Incident Response Team, among other things. But student activists said that Louisville’s failure to cut ties with the local police department rendered its other commitments “performative.”

When Bendapudi arrived at Penn State, administrators and faculty were in the throes of attempting to devise a new strategy for addressing racial disparities on campus. Black students make up just 5 percent of the university’s overall enrollment, and Latino students make up about 7 percent. The university’s faculty is 3 percent Black. In a recent study, eight out of 10 Black professors said they experienced racism at the university. At least 70 percent said they didn’t believe that the academic culture at Penn State is one that encourages the pursuit of learning, teaching, and scholarship for Black Americans.

In the summer of 2020, amid nationwide protests after the killing of George Floyd, Penn State’s then-President Eric J. Barron promised to commit to changing the university’s diversity and inclusivity efforts. He convened a task force to review the Student Code of Conduct, initiated mandatory bias training for all employees and students, and worked with the faculty senate to find ways to increase the hiring and retention of diverse faculty members, among other things, according to a university press release. He assigned a separate commission the task of creating a list of recommendations for how the university should tackle bias and racism.

That fall, the commission released a list of four recommendations. They wanted the university to establish a Truth and Reconciliation Process to address its past and present policies that excluded faculty and students of color, fund antiracist research, create a fellowship dedicated to antiracist work, and establish a new antiracist scholarly center or consortium, which was later referred to as the Center for Racial Justice.

This center represented a very important symbol, and she took that away from us.

“The university’s current approaches to DEI do not engage fully or honestly with the aspirations and commitments expressed in [the university’s strategic plan] … and [they] further enable the racism and bias that disproportionately impact the most vulnerable among us,” the proposal said.

Barron saw hope with the fourth proposal to build the Center for Racial Justice. In March, he set aside $3.5 million and created a search committee to find the center’s director.

When Bendapudi began as Penn State’s president in May, she said she met with the deans and chancellors at every campus and asked them for their opinions on the most urgent needs around diversity. “For a two-month period there was not a conversation where we didn’t talk about diversity,” Bendapudi said. “I was truly trying to figure out, in every conversation, ‘tell me about diversity, what is happening? What is the biggest challenge?’”

Campus leaders were most concerned about the support and retention of students of color, she said. They didn’t talk explicitly about the Center for Racial Justice, so she came to the conclusion that a new center may not be the most economical or effective approach.

Around the same time, Bendapudi told the campus that administrators would have to institute a hiring freeze, effective August 1, due to stagnant state funding and enrollment losses coming out of the pandemic.

On September 7, Bendapudi met with the committee searching for a director of the center and told them that the university was having a budget crisis and had not yet set aside $3.5 million for the center.

A week later, King wrote a letter to the editor in The Daily Collegian quoting Langston Hughes’ poem, “A Dream Deferred,” citing a long list of disparities between Black and white faculty members and referencing a “rumor” that the center may not be created.

“I suspect that Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi has had less time to enjoy a ‘summer honeymoon’ as the incoming president of our great university,” he wrote. “Perhaps some of us were under the illusion that having a person of color as the head of the university and a Black chief of staff would automatically ‘fix the problem …’ We cannot and should not simply trust the administration or the Board of Trustees to do the right thing. I truly hope it is not the case that they have run out of will, rather than having run out of money. Because where there is a will, there is surely a way.”

On October 6, the search committee sent Bendapudi an email urging her to be transparent with the university about the “setback” and suggesting that establishing a new timeline for the center or an alternative plan would be better actions to take.

“Penn State does not have a solid reputation for adequately addressing social injustices, inclusion, and racism,” they said. “Without such a reputation, this cancellation is likely to affect the ability of the university to recruit and retain top faculty, who may strengthen existing or create new revenue streams, lead by example in this space, and produce critical new scholarship and public activity around race and the study of it.”

Lea Millis, Reuters via Redux
Protests became violent ahead of an event at Penn State featuring Gavin McInnes, founder of the Proud Boys. The event was canceled by administrators.

In early October, Gavin McInnes, founder of the white supremacy organization the Proud Boys, was invited to the campus by a student group. At first, administrators resisted calls from students and faculty to cancel his appearance, citing the importance of free speech.

But on October 24, hundreds of students, faculty, and alumni gathered to protest. One held up a sign that read “racists off our campus.” The protest grew violent, and state troopers rode in on horseback. At least one physical altercation started, and both police and protesters unleashed chemical spray. In response to the “escalating violence,” administrators abruptly canceled the Proud Boys event, chiding protesters in the process.

“We have encouraged peaceful protest, and, while protest is an acceptable means of expression, it becomes unacceptable when it obstructs the basic exchange of ideas,” the university’s administrators said in a statement. “Such obstruction is a form of censorship, no matter who initiates it or for what reasons. The University expects that people engaging in expressive activity will demonstrate civility, concern for the safety of persons and property, respect for University activities and for those who may disagree with their message, and will comply with University rules.”

On October 26, Penn State issued a universitywide statement that it would not fund the Center for Racial Justice.

“I have determined that enhancing support for current efforts by people who know Penn State best will be more impactful than investing in a new venture, and so we will not pursue efforts to launch a Center for Racial Justice,” Bendapudi said in the statement.

Lea Millis, Reuters via Redux
The crowd of protesters included students, faculty, and alumni.

The backlash was swift.

In a November email to administrators, “concerned faculty” from the department of curriculum and instruction at Penn State’s College of Education said the announcement to defund the Center for Racial Justice had been done insensitively and was poorly timed. “We are troubled to see that recent statements and actions of the University at large are complacent at best, perpetuating practices that are long overdue for renewal,” the email said. “Our interpretation of the goals recently announced to the Board are a regression from bold, antiracist commitments to infusing equity at all levels of University operations toward the type of outdated, uninspired undertaking of diversity and multiculturalism goals akin to those touted in the 1990s — both in spirit and in rhetoric.”

Rumor and speculation began to fly. The shuttering of the center was seen by some as retaliation for the counterprotest of the Proud Boys event. Others pointed a finger at the Board of Trustees, claiming that its members forced Bendapudi to get rid of the center. The board denied those claims.

“Dr. Bendapudi impressed the Board of Trustees and the Presidential Recruitment and Selection Committee with her considerable experience, effective outcomes, and her career-long history of antiracism work,” Penn State’s board said in an email to The Chronicle. “As indicated previously, the Board supports the work and actions President Bendapudi is taking to update our University operations and align our efforts with our key strategic priorities — one of which is ensuring DEIB throughout our entire University ecosystem.”

The week before Thanksgiving break, Bendapudi appointed Jennifer Hamer, a professor of African American studies and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, to lead a universitywide effort to evaluate the diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging recommendations, programs, and research across the university’s 24 campuses.

During a recent virtual town hall, Bendapudi stressed the importance of supporting employees who were already doing equity-related work. She answered questions fielded by two faculty members.

“How would the university attract students of color now that the center has been canceled?” “How does the administration plan to establish shared governance and include faculty in its decision making?” “What do you tell faculty and staff who put scholarly research into a recommendation for a center for racial justice?”

Faculty members felt that the format of the town hall, which did not allow them to directly question Bendapudi, left them with little trust in the administration.

“The town hall with a highly mediated question-submission process is an underwhelming approach to building trust,” faculty members from the department of curriculum and instruction wrote in their November letter to Bendapudi. “While we believe communication is key and appreciate University leadership’s stated commitments to building trust, we see the town hall in its current format as giving the impression that only those questions that University administration wants to answer will be considered and addressed.”

When asked during the town hall what she wanted to say to faculty members who are disappointed in her decision to not follow through with the center, Bendapudi asked for patience.

“The timing of the whole thing was terrible, and I know how much pain it caused,” she said. “But my heart is in this work. My commitment is in this work.”

Throughout the town hall, Bendapudi stressed the importance of working together to meet the newly established goals of the administration.

“I ask for a little time and a little grace.”

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Oyin Adedoyin

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December 22, 2022
Transitions: Tufts U. Selects New President; Ohio State U. President Plans to Step Down

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Sunil Kumar, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at the Johns Hopkins U., will be the next president of Tufts U.

CHIEF EXECUTIVES
Appointments
Kim Armstrong, vice chancellor for student, equity, and community affairs at Arkansas State University-Three Rivers, has been named president of Clovis Community College, in California.

Hector Balderas, attorney general for the state of New Mexico, has been named president of Northern New Mexico College.

Patrena B. Elliott, vice president for instruction and student-support services at Robeson Community College, has been named president of Halifax Community College. Both colleges are in North Carolina.

Carlos Hernandez, interim president of Sul Ross State University since June, has been named to the post permanently.

Sunil Kumar, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at the Johns Hopkins University, has been named president of Tufts University. He will succeed Anthony P. Monaco, who will step down next year.

Karen Lee, interim chancellor of Honolulu Community College, has been named to the post permanently.

Charles Lepper, vice president for student affairs and enrollment at Salt Lake City Community College, has been named president of Grand Rapids Community College.

Rosana Reyes, vice president for enrollment management and student affairs at Luzerne County Community College, in Pennsylvania, has been named president of Lamar Community College, in Colorado.

Charles F. Robinson, interim chancellor of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, has been named to the post permanently. He is the university’s first Black chancellor.

Cynthia Teniente-Matson, president of Texas A&M University at San Antonio, has been named president of San Jose State University.

Resignations
Noelle E. Cockett, president of Utah State University since 2017, plans to step down in July 2023.

Kristina M. Johnson, president of Ohio State University since August 2020, plans to step down in May 2023.

Ashish Vaidya, president of Northern Kentucky University since 2018, plans to step down in December.

Retirements
Cathleen McColgin, president of Herkimer County Community College, in New York, plans to retire next year.

CHIEF ACADEMIC OFFICERS
Appointments
Alison Del Rossi, a professor of economics at St. Lawrence University, has been named vice president and dean of academic affairs.

Julian Vasquez Heilig, dean of the College of Education at the University of Kentucky, has been named provost and vice president for academic affairs at Western Michigan University.

Meera Komarraju, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, has been named provost and vice president for academic affairs at California State University at Northridge.

Catherine Lucey, vice dean of education and executive vice dean of the School of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, has been named executive vice chancellor and provost.

Ivan Pulinkala, interim provost and vice president for academic affairs at Kennesaw State University since July 2021, has been named to the post permanently.

Jennifer Rexford, chair of the department of computer science at Princeton University, has been named provost of the university.

Catherine Whelan, national dean of the School of Business at the University of Notre Dame Australia, has been named provost and vice president for academic and student affairs at East Georgia State College.

Barbara E. Wolfe

Barbara E. Wolfe, dean of the College of Nursing at the University of Rhode Island, has been named provost and executive vice president for academic affairs.

Resignations
John Karl Scholz, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, plans to step down and return to the faculty at the end of the 2022-23 academic year.

Charles Zukoski, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at the University of Southern California, will step down in January.

OTHER TOP ADMINISTRATORS
Appointments
Robert W. Davis Jr., vice president for student life at the University of Scranton, has been named vice president for university advancement.

Kelly Dowling, assistant vice president for advancement at Stony Brook University, has been named senior vice president for philanthropy and alumni engagement at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Lacretia Johnson Flash, vice president for diversity and inclusion at Berklee College of Music, has been named inaugural senior vice president for DEI, community, campus culture, and climate.

Rebecca Z. German, a professor of anatomy and neurobiology at Northeast Ohio Medical University, has been named vice president for research.

Scott Goings, interim general counsel at Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, has been named to the post permanently.

Eyal Gottlieb, director of the Rappaport Institute for Biomedical Research, in Israel, has been named vice president for research at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Zebadiah Hall, director of student disability services at Cornell University, has been named vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion at the University of Wyoming.

Jeff Harris, associate vice president for marketing and communications at Minnesota State University at Mankato, has been named chief marketing officer at Sam Houston State University.

Joe Manok, senior director of philanthropic partnerships in the Office of Resource Development at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been named vice president for university advancement at Clark University, in Massachusetts.

James Patti, former director of administration in the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island, has been named vice president for planning at Nichols College.

Jacqueline Taylor, associate vice president for retention and student success at Southwest Tennessee Community College, has been named chief strategy officer and chief of staff.

Scott Vignos, interim vice president and chief diversity officer at Oregon State University, has been named to the post permanently.

Michael Wenz, executive director of university budgets at Northeastern Illinois University, has been named vice president for finance and administration and chief financial officer at Linfield University.

Jeffrey Lewis Williams, chief operating officer and senior vice president for finance and administration at Capitol Technology University, in Maryland, has been named vice president for finance and administration at Lourdes University.

Resignations
Eugene Lowe Jr., assistant to the president of Northwestern University, will step down after more than twenty years.

Retirements
Thomas J. Hollister, chief financial officer and vice president for finance at Harvard University, plans to retire at the end of the academic year.

DEANS
Appointments
Gerard E. Carrino, head of the department of health policy and management at Texas A&M University’s School of Public Health, has been named dean of the Julia Jones Matthews School of Population and Public Health at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center.

James T. Robinson, interim dean of the University of Chicago Divinity School since July 2021, has been named to the post permanently.

Colin P. Roche, a former professor and department chair at Johnson & Wales University, has been named interim dean of Biscayne College at St. Thomas University, in Florida.

Maridee Shogren, interim dean of the College of Nursing and Professional Disciplines at the University of North Dakota, has been named to the post permanently.

Paul B. Tchounwou, principal investigator and executive director of the Research Centers in Minority Institutions Center for Health Disparities Research at Jackson State University, has been named dean of the School of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences at Morgan State University.

Resignations
Kathleen Boozang, dean of the School of Law at Seton Hall University, will step down on January 1.

Vikas P. Sukhatme, dean of Emory University’s School of Medicine and chief academic officer of Emory Healthcare, will step down and return to the faculty in March 2023.

Paul Zionts, dean of the College of Education at DePaul University, will step down at the end of the year.

Retirements
Christine Theodoropoulos, dean of the College of Architecture and Environmental Design at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, plans to retire.

Jay Drowns/UVU Marketing
Matthew S. Brogdon

OTHER ADMINISTRATORS
Appointments
Matthew S. Brogdon, an associate professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, has been named senior director of the Center for Constitutional Studies at Utah Valley University.

Cassandra Crifasi, deputy director of the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at the Johns Hopkins University, has been named co-director of the center with Joshua Horwitz.

Jay Golan, vice president for advancement at the City University of New York Graduate Center and executive director of the Graduate Center Foundation, has been named executive director of the LaGuardia Community College Foundation.

Craig Greene, director of equal employment opportunity in the New York City Department of Design and Construction, has been named chief diversity officer and Title IX coordinator at LaGuardia Community College.

Kristi Hoskinson, former vice president of CareerEdge at the Sarasota Chamber of Commerce, has been named assistant vice president for strategy and campus initiatives at the University of South Florida-Sarasota/Manatee.

Trey Jones, executive director of corporation and foundation relations at West Virginia State University, has been named assistant vice president for university advancement and vice president for the university’s foundation.

Danielle McCourt, associate director of university communications and marketing at the University of South Florida-Sarasota/Manatee, has been named director of university communications and marketing.

Joanna McNulty, senior director of planning and business operations in the research office at the University of Notre Dame, has been named associate vice president for academic finance and administration.

Luis F. Paredes, director of institutional diversity at Bridgewater State University, has been named associate vice president for institutional equity and belonging at Wheaton College, in Massachusetts.

Resignations
Shane Lyons, associate vice president and director of athletics at West Virginia University, resigned in November.

ORGANIZATIONS
Appointments
Patricia Akhimie, director of the RaceB4Race Mentorship Network and an associate professor of English at Rutgers University at Newark, has been named director of the Folger Institute, in Washington, D.C.

Carol L. Folt, president of the University of Southern California, was elected chair of the Board of Directors for the Association of American Universities.

DEATHS
Bobbie Knable, a former dean of students for the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University, died on November 15. She was 86. Knable worked at Tufts for 30 years, starting in the English department in 1970.

Staughton Lynd, who taught at Spelman College and Yale University, died on November 17. He was 92.

Jay M. Pasachoff, an astronomer at Williams College, died on November 20. He was 79.

Edward C. Prescott, an economist who taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Minnesota before moving to Arizona State University, died on November 6. He was 81. While at Arizona State University, he won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Economics with Finn Kydland.

Submit items for Gazette to people@chronicle.com.

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Julia Piper

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December 21, 2022
University of California Reaches Tentative Contract Deal with Striking Academic Workers

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The University of California system reached a tentative agreement with striking graduate students late Friday that, if ratified, could bring an end to a monthlong strike that has paralyzed the 10-campus system.

One of the two bargaining units representing the striking workers, UAW 2865, wrote on Twitter that the tentative agreement includes raises of up to 80 percent for the lowest-paid workers. The strike will continue, it said, until the union’s members ratify the deal.

The university’s statement said it would provide minimum salary scales for academic student workers, including TAs and graduate-student researchers, as well as multiyear pay raises, paid dependent access to university health care, and enhanced paid family leave. If approved, the contracts would be in effect through May 31, 2025.

By October 1, 2024, the minimum nine-month salary for TAs working about 20 hours a week would be $34,000, the university said of the agreement. Currently, the lowest-paid workers earn $23,000. The rates would be slightly higher at the Berkeley, San Francisco, and UCLA campuses, where housing prices are especially high.

The UC strike, which began November 14, started with four bargaining units representing 48,000 graduate students, postdocs, and researchers. It’s created a chaotic end of semester with many professors saying they would be either unable or unwilling to submit final grades, even with extended deadlines. Some said they would forego grading to support striking workers, while others said that without readers or TAs, they couldn’t handle the volume.

Postdocs and researchers were back at work this week after overwhelmingly approving new contracts that included higher wages, paid family leave, and transit benefits. The academic workers who remained on strike agreed to continue negotiating with the university through an outside mediator, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg.

In a statement, the university system’s president, Michael V. Drake, thanked negotiators “for coming together in a spirit of compromise to reach this tentative agreement. This is a positive step forward for the university and for our students, and I am grateful for the progress we have made together,” he said.

“These agreements will place our graduate student employees among the best supported in public higher education,” Drake said.

In a statement, UAW President Ray Curry said the tentative agreements include “major pay increases and expanded benefits which will improve the quality of life for all members of the bargaining unit.” He added that “Our members stood up to show the university that academic workers are vital to UC’s success. They deserve nothing less than a contract that reflects the important role they play and the reality of working in cities with extremely high costs of living.”

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Katherine Mangan

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December 16, 2022
‘It’s a Mess’: Grades Are Due Soon, and U. of California Professors Are Struggling

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Professors nationwide are currently immersed in an end-of-term ritual: grading. At the University of California, however, fall grades have been thrown into disarray as a strike involving teaching assistants reached its one-month mark.

Many professors say they are forgoing the submission of final grades, either out of solidarity with striking workers, or because they simply can’t grade hundreds of assignments without the help of readers and TAs — even with grading deadlines extended through the holidays.

Several faculty members told The Chronicle that communication from administrators — on a campus- and system-wide level — has been vague and unrealistic, with messages repeatedly stressing the obligation to maintain “continuity of instruction.“

“It’s a mess,” said Paul V.A. Fine, a professor in the integrative biology department at UC-Berkeley. “I’m surprised that the administration hasn’t been taken more to task by this, because I feel like they’re letting us all down.”

Instruction he received from his department for administering finals and grades, Fine said, was essentially reduced to a general directive: “Follow your conscience.”

UC officials say they’re trying to mitigate the impacts of the strike. Berkeley lecturers are being offered additional pay for picking up extra grading work at the end of the term, according to a university spokesperson.

At Berkeley, grading has been extended to December 31; other UC campuses are taking a similar approach. But Fine is frustrated. “Even if you extend the grade deadline, [then] what? You’re supposed to just do that instead of enjoying a holiday break? Forget that. That’s ridiculous,” he said.

Despite the strike, Fine continued teaching his undergraduate course on the ecosystems of California. Typically a graduate student works alongside him as an instructor and is responsible for half of the course’s grading. The course’s enrollment is small enough — 22 students — that he could complete grading by the deadline. But he said he won’t turn in grades until the strike is over, in solidarity with the graduate students.

“Although I am doing my job because I care a lot about my undergraduates’ education, I’m not going to do extra work,” Fine said.

Adding to the turmoil are questions about next term, which starts in a couple of weeks. Some classes don’t have teaching assistants assigned to them yet. On Wednesday, the UC-Davis Academic Senate sent out guidance suggesting that professors could do some of their winter-term teaching asynchronously and continue with modified instruction for up to two weeks after the strike ends.

‘At a Breaking Point’

The strike, which began November 14, initially involved four bargaining units made up of 48,000 UC graduate students, postdocs, and researchers.

Last week, postdocs and researchers overwhelmingly approved new contracts with the university system that secured wage increases, transit benefits, and paid family leave. They ended their strike on Monday. University officials and the union representing the remaining academic workers have agreed to continue negotiations through a third-party mediator.

“We remain committed to securing a fair and reasonable contract with the union that honors the hard work of our valued graduate student employees,” Letitia Silas, executive director of systemwide labor relations, said in a statement. “With the help of a neutral mediator, we hope to secure that agreement quickly.”

In the meantime, UC campuses have been scrambling to find solutions to the chaos — including paying lecturers to grade assignments.

The union that represents lecturers across the UC system, UC-AFT, released a cease-and-desist letter alleging that Berkeley’s offer interferes with lecturers’ right to refuse to pick up struck work under California law. The letter states that the union is aware of similar plans on “several other campuses.”

When asked if UC-Irvine was extending similar offers to their faculty, a university spokesperson said that deans and department chairs “have been advised to consider a range of approaches to support continuity of instruction,” which may include tapping lecturers to help. The Chronicle did not receive responses from the other UC campuses on Wednesday.

They have to figure out a way to solve this strike in a way that doesn’t harm students and also doesn’t try to exploit other vulnerable workers.

Unlike tenured professors, lecturers have a no-strike clause in their contracts. While some faculty members opted out of teaching their courses in solidarity after the strike began, lecturers had to continue.

Joanna Reed, a continuing lecturer in the sociology department at Berkeley, kept teaching, though she said lecture attendance “absolutely plunged” after the strike started. But she has told her students to expect a delay in getting their grades. (Reed is married to Fine.)

Reed would usually have eight readers to do the vast majority of grading for her two undergraduate lecture classes, for which the combined enrollment is over 300. It would be physically impossible, she said, to grade hundreds of assignments before the end of the month.

Still, she’s pushing ahead with the work she’d usually do at the end of the semester: preparing rubrics and answer keys, dealing with plagiarism issues, and getting the gradebook cleaned up. She’ll submit final grades after the strike ends and the graduate students can resume their work.

As Reed sees it, refusing to grade final assignments, which is considered struck work, is a way she can show solidarity with graduate students while continuing to fulfill her contractual obligations as a lecturer.

A lecturer at UCLA, who asked to remain anonymous because he fears speaking out could put his job at risk, said he feels pressure — both from the university and from students — to submit final grades.

But the lecturer, who teaches two courses with 300 students total, said it’ll be impossible for him to release accurate grades at the end of the semester. The lecturer has hundreds of essays from the semester ungraded — work that is partly done by the lecturer’s team of TAs. That’s not including the finals the classes completed last week. It doesn’t help, he said, that guidance from the administration on finals and grading arrived in the last week of classes after he had already put together plans for his final.

Although the deadline to turn in grades has been extended to January 2, he doesn’t plan to release grades.

“Those of us who don’t have job security, like me, are just at a breaking point,” he said.

Uncertainty Abounds

Many faculty members say they are torn between wanting to respect the picket line and feeling an obligation to their undergraduate students.

Catherine Liu, a professor of film and media studies at UC-Irvine, said she won’t file final grades with the registrar until the strike is resolved. But she plans to evaluate her students’ work and share grades with them directly. At 39 students, her class is small, and she doesn’t depend on a TA to help with grading. At UC-Irvine, the deadline to submit grades was extended to January 19.

Debates about obligation are complicated by questions about how withholding grades may impact undergraduates — including student athletes, veterans, students on financial aid, and graduating students seeking jobs. Some campuses have stressed that these students will not be affected if grades are not submitted. On other campuses, the possible implications remain unclear to faculty, and some are making arrangements for students in vulnerable situations.

At Berkeley, Reed said, some graduate students in her department have said they will work with professors to make sure students with a documented need receive grades. But Reed said the burden shouldn’t fall on instructors to protect students.

“The university created this situation with their unfair labor practices. So in my mind, it’s their problem to solve,” Reed said. “They have to figure out a way to solve this strike in a way that doesn’t harm students and also doesn’t try to exploit other vulnerable workers.”

And if the graduate-student strike continues into 2023, professors will have to figure out what to do about the next term.

This is a question that we’re all asking ourselves this week: What do we do in January?

With uncertainty about whether TAs will be on the job in January, UC-Davis instructors will be allowed to switch lab hours and discussion sections, normally taught by TAs, to asynchronous instruction, according to the Academic Senate’s guidance. Instructors must maintain the same amount of instructional time with students in a course.

The university “will allow these course adjustments to remain in place for up to two weeks after the end of the strike, at which point courses must return to their normal instructional modes,” the guidance states.

“I have a feeling that this is going to make a lot of faculty pretty unhappy,” said Stacy Fahrenthold, an associate professor of history at UC-Davis. “The implicit language in this policy is that faculty will be responsible for taking on not only the grading but also the instructional duties of their TAs if they remain on strike.”

Fahrenthold, who is scheduled to teach two undergraduate courses with a combined enrollment of 150 in the winter term, said she won’t be opting into the asynchronous option. “I see it as an attempt to break the strike or remediate its impacts,” she said. As for what next quarter will look like for her courses, she said that’s an open question.

“There’s about 450 faculty who are actively on sympathy strike,” she said. “And I think this is a question that we’re all asking ourselves this week: What do we do in January?”

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Carolyn Kuimelis and Grace Mayer

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December 14, 2022
Colleges Face More Pressure to Keep Students With Mental-Health Conditions Enrolled

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A lawsuit filed last week against Yale University has reignited a debate about how colleges should best help students who are going through serious mental-health crises.

The complaint against Yale reflects a larger shift in which colleges are under increasing pressure — from the federal government, court rulings, advocacy groups, and students themselves — to accommodate students with mental-health conditions so they can stay enrolled while they receive treatment.

The new lawsuit centers on colleges’ withdrawal policies, which have been the subject of scrutiny by mental-health advocacy groups in recent years. The plaintiffs, two current students and a nonprofit that’s pushing for mental-health reform at the university, argue that Yale’s policies are punitive and violate the Americans with Disabilities Act by depriving students of access to an education.

The complaint recounts students’ “traumatic” experiences of being pushed out of college after disclosing symptoms of distress and facing barriers to reinstatement. (According to a joint filing on Wednesday, the lawsuit had been put on hold while the parties try to come to an agreement out of court.)

A similar lawsuit filed against Stanford University in 2018 resulted in a settlement and policy changes that were hailed as a model of student-centered, compassionate, and transparent practices. At Stanford, forced mental-health leaves are now supposed to be a last resort, and students can apply to stay in campus housing even if they do go on leave.

The Stanford and Yale lawsuits are part of a broader push in recent years to make campus mental-health policies more flexible and student-centered.

College officials say that involuntary leaves are rare, and that most students are accommodated and stay enrolled while they’re going through mental-health treatment. But in some severe cases, administrators say it’s best for students to pause their studies until they’re ready to return to campus. Drawing that line, however, is a challenge.

Colleges and universities need to explore all potential reasonable accommodations that might enable the student to safely remain on campus and meet the college’s academic standards without resorting to exclusion.

Mental-health advocates say colleges often don’t get it right. Colleges should — and are legally obligated to, the lawsuit against Yale argues — provide reasonable accommodations to students with mental-health diagnoses so they can continue their education. And if withdrawal is necessary, advocates stress that the process for a student to re-enroll should not present financial and academic roadblocks.

Monica Porter, the policy and legal advocacy attorney with the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, which is one of the law firms involved in suing Yale, said students and their families are becoming more aware of their rights for reasonable accommodations.

Part of the shift, too, is that mental health is becoming less stigmatized, said Asia Wong, director of counseling and health services at Loyola University New Orleans. For students, instead of feeling the need to hide their mental-health conditions, there’s been a shift to “this is an illness I’m living with, and I believe that it’s within my rights to be accommodated for that,” Wong said.

Exclusion as ‘Last Resort’

There has been renewed interest from the Biden administration’s Education and Justice Departments in protecting the legal rights of students with mental-health conditions, as well as from lawmakers.

Senator Ed Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, sent a letter to the two departments last week, encouraging federal officials to scrutinize colleges’ use of involuntary leaves and issue guidance on the matter.

Federal investigations have forced several colleges to change their mental-health protocols. Recent landmark settlements include Brown University’s from August 2021, which required the university to modify its leave of absence and readmission policies. It also required the school to pay more than $600,000 in damages to students who had been denied readmission.

In 2018, Northern Michigan University had to overhaul a policy that threatened to punish students if they discussed thoughts of self harm with their peers as part of a Justice Department settlement. And in 2016, the department reached an agreement with Princeton, requiring the university to communicate the accommodations available to students before going on leave.

“Before resorting to exclusion or putting a pause on a student’s formal relationship with the university, colleges and universities need to explore all potential reasonable accommodations that might enable the student to safely remain on campus and meet the college’s academic standards without resorting to exclusion,” Porter said. “Exclusion should be a last resort and only resorted to in extremely rare cases if no reasonable accommodation can be identified.”

Victor Schwartz, a psychiatrist and the senior associate dean for wellness and student life at the City University of New York School of Medicine, spent eight years as medical director of the Jed Foundation, a suicide-prevention organization, advising colleges on how to handle students who might pose a threat to their own or others’ safety.

As the mental-health landscape has changed, Schwartz said there’s a sense among critics that colleges’ policies have not followed the larger cultural shift toward becoming more transparent and student-friendly. He thinks that in the last 15 to 20 years, as advocacy around the issue has increased, more colleges are seeing the virtue in being as reasonably flexible as possible.

Still, “it’s a complicated balancing act,” he said.

Sometimes, it is in a student’s best interest to take a break from college, Schwartz said — especially if they can’t get access to the treatment they need on or around campus, or if they can’t keep up with their academic work. There are also rare instances where students pose a risk to the community. But there are other scenarios in which returning home would have a negative impact on a student, he said.

“Ideally, you need to be taking a holistic picture,” he said.

Finding That Balance

Wong, the counseling director at Loyola New Orleans, said the question of whether a student should take a leave of absence boils down to a key issue: Can the university reasonably accommodate the student? Or is the student better served by taking some time off?

“If the second case is the case, then the university should be working to make it as easy as possible for the student to return,” Wong said.

Schwartz thinks reinstatement policies like Yale’s — which was updated in the past year but previously required coursework, an interview, and letters of recommendation — were created in good faith. Colleges want to make sure that students are in a position to succeed in terms of their health and academics when they return to campus.

For many students, the loss of tuition dollars can end their higher-education opportunities.

But when the bar is too high, rigid policies have the unintended consequences of making students hesitant to take leave, and frightened about the implications of alerting their university when they are experiencing a crisis, Schwartz said.

“When students believe it’ll be costly and hinder their academic progress to leave school, or if there will be hurdles to coming back, they might not leave when they ought to,” he said. Ideally, there should be a flexible system of tuition reimbursement or making students aware of tuition insurance, he said. Because “for many students, the loss of tuition dollars can end their higher-education opportunities.”

The recommendations made by Elis for Rachael, the nonprofit involved in the lawsuit against Yale, include eliminating roadblocks to reinstatement and allowing for the possibility of continued access to campus healthcare, facilities, and housing while a student is on leave. Schwartz said these recommendations are by and large sensible and in line with what a lot of colleges are doing.

Ben Locke, chief clinical officer at Togetherall, a peer-to-peer forum for students that’s monitored by mental-health professionals, worked in counseling services at Pennsylvania State University for two decades. It’s a good thing, Locke said, that colleges are rethinking their mental-health policies to have more parity with general health leave, and eliminating some of the barriers to re-enrollment.

But he stressed that involuntary-leave policies exist for a reason. There are severe instances, he said, where keeping a student enrolled — or in student housing — poses a danger or disruption to other students and their learning.

“One of the huge challenges in reporting on and understanding these things is that due to confidentiality rules, you’re generally going to be missing the entire side of the story that holds much of the detail,” he said. “And that doesn’t mean that institutions haven’t done things wrong and should be held accountable, but it does mean we need to be really cautious about drawing very firm conclusions that institution has done X, Y or Z wrong, and we have no idea what actually happened with the student.”

He also said that calls for continuity of healthcare and housing for students on leave are contractually complicated.

“The school’s responsibility to a student who is no longer a student changes dramatically,” he said. “And I think that that really does complicate some of these requests.”

He added: “There has to be a line somewhere.”

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Carolyn Kuimelis

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December 8, 2022
Stanford Is Investigating Its Own President Over Research-Misconduct Allegations

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Stanford University’s Board of Trustees is overseeing an investigation into the university’s president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, over allegations that neurobiology papers that he co-authored contain multiple manipulated images, a university spokeswoman told The Chronicle on Tuesday night.

The announcement of the inquiry followed a report earlier Tuesday in The Stanford Daily about concerns relating to images in at least four papers of Tessier-Lavigne’s — two of which listed him as senior author — that date back to at least 2001. Concerns about these papers, along with others, have been publicly raised for years by, among others, Elisabeth Bik, an independent scientific-misconduct investigator, on PubPeer, a website where people point out anomalies about research, and the Daily reported that it had corroborated her suspicions with two other misconduct experts.

The Daily confirmed that at least one journal, The European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) Journal, was reviewing a 2008 study that lists Tessier-Lavigne, a decorated neuroscientist, as one of its 11 authors. Three other papers of his that contain “serious problems,” Bik told the student newspaper, were published in Science and Nature. A Stanford spokeswoman, Dee Mostofi, acknowledged to the Daily that there were “issues” in the papers, but said that Tessier-Lavigne “was not involved in any way in the generation or presentation of the panels that have been queried” in two of the papers, including the one being reviewed by EMBO. The issues in the other two “do not affect the data, results, or interpretation of the papers,” Mostofi told the Daily.

But on Tuesday night, the university said it would undertake its own inquiry. It will “assess the allegations presented in The Stanford Daily, consistent with its normal rigorous approach by which allegations of research misconduct are reviewed and investigated,” Mostofi said in an email to The Chronicle, citing the university handbook’s guidance.

“In the case of the papers in question that list President Tessier-Lavigne as an author, the process will be overseen by the Board of Trustees,” Mostofi added.

The situation is highly unusual, given that Tessier-Lavigne, who was named Stanford’s president in 2016, is a member of the board now charged with investigating him. Mostofi said that Tessier-Lavigne “will not be involved in the Board of Trustees’ oversight of the review.”

In a statement provided by Stanford, Tessier-Lavigne said, “Scientific integrity is of the utmost importance both to the university and to me personally. I support this process and will fully cooperate with it, and I appreciate the oversight by the Board of Trustees.”

Mostofi did not answer questions about how long the investigation was expected to take or if Stanford was coordinating or cooperating with EMBO’s investigation.

The university had told the Daily that in 2015, Tessier-Lavigne had submitted corrections for two papers to Science that were not published, but did not explain at the time why that was the case. On Wednesday morning, Holden Thorp, the editor in chief of Science, confirmed to The Chronicle that Tessier-Lavigne had prepared corrections for both papers but “due to an error on our part,” Science never posted them.

“We regret this error, apologize to the scientific community, and will be sharing our next steps as they relate to these two papers as soon as possible,” Thorp said by email.

Bik, one of the watchdogs who raised concerns about the papers, told The Chronicle that she was encouraged to learn that both Tessier-Lavigne and Stanford appeared to be taking the situation seriously.

“Somebody needs to investigate who was making these figures or making these errors,” she said. “It might not be him, but his name is on the papers.”

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Stephanie M. Lee

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November 29, 2022