Courtesy Photograph / College of Texas at San Antonio
A UTSA professor alleges the varsity fired him for publicly sharing his opinion personal the engineering program’s diploma plan.
A former College of Texas at San Antonio professor has sued college officers in federal court docket, alleging he was fired in 2021 for publishing an Specific-Information op-ed important of his division’s credit score necessities.
UTSA disputes that declare, nevertheless, arguing in a court docket submitting that Bruce Smith, a tenured professor within the college’s engineering program, was terminated over poor efficiency and a failure to satisfy necessities specified by a performance-improvement plan, or PIP. The college additionally started discussions about eradicating Smith months earlier than the op-ed was printed, officers allege.
Smith labored on the college since 2001 and was let go Nov. 18, 2021, in response to his criticism, filed in April in U.S. District Court docket in San Antonio. The previous professor additionally filed two amended complaints this fall.
The Present reached out to each UTSA and Smith’s lawyer for remark. Neither was accessible at press time.
In his filings, Smith alleges the op-ed, which criticized the engineering program’s diploma necessities, was the “motivating issue” behind his firing. He additionally maintains that UTSA President Taylor Eighmy explicitly introduced up the newspaper article throughout termination proceedings.
Smith is asking the court docket to make UTSA reinstate him. He is additionally looking for unspecified damages for misplaced compensation, psychological anguish, emotional ache and hurt to his repute.
Within the op-ed, printed in July 2018, Smith argued that lowering the variety of credit score hours in UTSA’s electrical engineering program from 126 to 120 would decrease college students’ tuition prices by $2,000 whereas saving taxpayers $1 million yearly, in response to the criticism. He additionally stated the lowered hours would not diminish the diploma.
Months later, on April 5, 2019, college president Eighmy met with the plaintiff to deliberate whether or not to fireside him, in response to the criticism. Eighmy finally opted to place Smith on a PIP reasonably than terminate him, the doc states.
In its movement to dismiss the case, UTSA’s attorneys stated JoAnn Browning, then the dean of UTSA’s School of Engineering, first advisable Smith’s firing attributable to poor efficiency in November 2017 — seven months earlier than the op-ed’s publication.
Smith was positioned on a PIP in June 2019, in response to UTSA’s submitting. That plan was later amended to concentrate on analysis as an alternative of educating after Smith was concerned in a bicycle accident, the doc additionally argues.
Regardless of amending the PIP, Browning decided that Smith hadn’t fulfilled the requirement specified by the plan, resulting in his eventual termination, in response to the college’s submitting.
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