Front Page  news  metro

Monday, October 27, 2008

CNM Questioned on Dismissal

By Martin Salazar
Copyright © 2008 Albuquerque Journal
Journal Staff Writer
          A national faculty group is "troubled" that Central New Mexico Community College dismissed an instructor just weeks before he was to begin teaching five classes.
        Bill Nevins — who had taught at CNM since 1997 on an adjunct basis — was notified in April that he would teach five classes this fall.
        But two weeks before classes began, he received a letter from CNM notifying him that his services as an English instructor were no longer needed.
        After unsuccessfully trying to fight his contract termination, Nevins reached out to the American Association of University Professors, a national organization that champions academic freedom and tenure.
        "We are troubled by this sequence of events," associate secretary Gregory Scholtz wrote in an Oct. 16 letter to CNM President Katharine Winograd. "Mr. Nevins had taught at CNM for 10 years without apparent problems, evaluations of his teaching had reportedly been strong..."
        CNM spokeswoman Samantha Bousliman said the college can't discuss the case without a signed release from Nevins.
        Nevins contends that CNM referenced minor incidents in justifying its actions. Among them, he said, was his request for $10 in mileage for travel between the main and Montoya campuses and his decision to let students turn in final essays and leave on the last class of the summer session.
        "It threw me into instant poverty because of the timing of it ...," said Nevins, 61. "I could not get a high school job, because they were already filled. I could not get a college job; they were already filled."
        Merimee Moffitt, an instructor in the English department, said that Nevins was popular, and that students and instructors were upset that he was let go. "It was rude, inhumane and uncalled for and very disappointing," she said.
        In its letter, the AAUP concedes that it received all its information about the case from Nevins and invited CNM to tell its side of the story. But the group called upon the college to reinstate Nevins if what Nevins reported was true.
        CNM has chosen not to address the group's concerns.
        In a letter to the organization, CNM vice president Robert Brown states that the American Federation of Teachers is the exclusive representative of CNM's part time faculty and that responding to its letter could be a violation of the state's Public Employee Bargaining Act.