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07/01/2004 Archived Entry: "Chronicle"

I think I'm going to write an article for the Chronicle about the University of Detroit Mercy. I woke up this morning to find my entire inbox deleted. Accident? I think not. Yet another little step in trying to make me inconvenienced.
All these little (and major) things add up. The article will outline what happens when a school gets angry at a faculty member for leaving. In this case, we also see how small insulated universities behave when they have no clue how the profession works. When no one (or very few) do research and publish, when few go to conferences, when few read academic publications, many lose track over how one should behave in an academic setting. In short, they aren’t academics. They are something else: clueless folks trying to keep a few buildings full of students who pay way too much for a growing faculty of part time instructors.
Take the email example: it is common practice to give faculty who are leaving a short grace period so that they can set up their professional email at their new place of employment. At UDM? No such knowledge of this practice. Why? Because no one talks to other academics or university officials. No one understands how other universities function. They live in their own little Jesuit world.
The other and related consequence is that professional relationships with faculty who once worked at the university are quickly lost forever. So the university remains insulated even more. They burn bridge after bridge. This is particularly true for the former UDM English Department chair Hugh Culik who brought in $500,000 in grant money (money which established the E-Crit and Dudley programs) only to be booted the next year on trumped up bogus charges. He turns around and sues; the university shells out who knows how many millions to stop the suit, and the university is now without a strong leader in English, disgruntled faculty in English who liked Culik, and a bad reputation. Smart thinking.
So, of course, the dozen or so things done to me don't equal what happened to Culik. But they are part of the unprofessional attitudes you see at this university. An article in the Chronicle won't solve anything, but it will put the facts out there for others in the profession to see.
And, yes. I hope UDM folks are reading this.