No confidence? Spectator readers would like to disagree
Margaret Mattes reports in today’s paper that
“…tensions between Peña-Mora and the faculty remain high. Central administrators and School of Engineering and Applied Science faculty members are working to ease that tension by developing structural changes to the school, but for many professors, there’s still only one viable solution: Peña-Mora’s resignation.”
The four anonymous professors that Mattes spoke to all seems to think that the only way forward is for Peña-Mora to step down, citing their lack of trust in him due to his lack of experience and inability to understand and meet the needs of the entire school, as well as his tendency to make decisions without consulting others in the department.
However, it appears that the introduction of the new position of Vice-Dean, filled by Don Goldfarb, seems to have been well received by all parties involved. But, for some, it’s still not enough. A few faculty members have suggested a vote of no-confidence at the next faculty meeting on May 9th.
Many commenters, on the other hand, disagree with the charges of incompetency and the calls for Peña-Mora’s resignation.
“Peña-Mora has simply taken the school to its highest ranking in history (from 21 in 2009 to 15 in 2012). Today the school also receives more applications from high school students and potential graduate students than ever before and he has also increased the school’s research endowment. The professors do not “trust” the guy who has taken the school to its highest levels of excellence?”
“…Pena-Mora’s predecessors were rather freewheeling and let the faculty do what they want. Pena-Mora is bringing in some iron-fisted organizational discipline for the first time, which in my humble opinion, is long overdue and much-needed if we’re going to compete with Cornell and NYU Poly and all the other newcomers and old rivals alike who want to upsize their engineering programs in NYC.”
“Columbia’s engineering school is better than ever, has more funding than ever, more research dollars than ever, more students than ever, more faculty than ever, and more applicants on every level.”
Read more here.
These professors…are the ones who make SEAS work on a day to day basis, not only teaching, but through their research and managing to get research grants which are strictly peer reviewed. They supervise the dissertations that help grad students to get their degrees and jobs in their after-Columbia life. It’s the academic environment they build up what attracts young bright professors to come to Columbia. Fund raising is necessary, but the end is precisely the work they do in teaching and research. That’s why Dean and staff need to work together, which is obviously not happening here.
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