Several weeks ago I was contacted by your reporter, Amber Layton, who asked me for a quote concerning the current situation in the Business School and, in particular, the fact that I would not be reappointed after this school year.

Imagine my surprise when I read the article and discovered that the author had not bothered to mention any of my comments. In addition, the article was full of factual errors. Here are some of the necessary corrections:

a. The AACSB requires that 90% of the faculty be academically or professionally qualified. To be academically qualified you must have a Ph.D. and two publications during the last five-year period before the review. To be considered professionally qualified you must have a Masters degree and significant work experience in the area in which you are teaching. Lecturers are not required to publish, although several of us have done so. What the AACSB found lacking was the level of publication by the faculty teaching at the graduate level since some of our tenured faculty had not published or had only published one article in the last five years and, thus were not academically qualified. I, on the other hand, was deemed professionally qualified by the AACSB.

b. The statement that the four lecturers were given notice in "a move to compy(sic) with the research requirements set by the collegiate accreditation board" implies that the four lecturers were lacking in performance. Again, lecturers are not required to publish. We are required to teach and do some level of service to the university. I might add that we have all finished at the top of the teaching evaluations, the job we were hired to do for the university. It is ludicrous to think that four lecturers are keeping the SBPA from reaccreditation.

c. The plan is to hire four Ph.D.'s who would be automatically academically qualified as new hires. Since I am professionally qualified, hiring an academically qualified person to replace me just substitutes one qualified person with another and does not change the percentages at all. This also assumes that the school will be able to hire four new Ph.D.'s, a feat that may not be easily accomplished. Even if the four new people are hired, the other tenured faculty will still need to publish to reach the 90% requirement.

As I said in my comments that the paper chose not to print, I am all for the school being reaccredited, but the reason it did not happen originally and we are under review is because some of the tenured faculty did not publish, not because of what the lecturers did not do. I believe your newspaper has a responsibility to carefully investigate the facts before writing an article, particularly when the resulting article places doubt on another's reputation and record.

I hope the paper will see fit to publish these comments and corrections so that the students will have the correct story.

Thank you,

Erin Alexander
Lecturer, School of Business
and Public Administration

I want to express my displeasure with the university's decision to discontinue seven o'clock classes on Thursday, Oct. 24th.

While flooding is a legitimate reason to suspend classes, students should be given the courtesy of significant prior notice, remembering that UHCL is predominantly a commuter's institution (30 min. notice before class is not adequate).

Personally, I spent three hours total driving to and from the school in the rain-I had left my house well before student services says the closing announcement was made.

UHCL should remember all the students who are not living in the area and are making significant sacrifices of time and money to pursue their educational goals.

Emily Broadway Masterson
UH-Clear Lake student

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