Wednesday, September 14, 2005
!! September 12, 2005 link to the
Taos Discussion [36]
and strategy
for mathematics education renewal !!
Send comments to
psp**@ontologystream.com (remove the “*” to get a valid email address)
educational renewal
My note is to ask that the NMHU Board be aware of a situation at New Mexico Highland University. It is a public note and may be published by the newspapers. I am not an employee of NMHU. I have not signed a NMHU code of ethics that would bind me not to talk in public.
I have called John Loehr, Board member and left a detailed message by voice mail, but I do not have his email address.
I talked on the phone in detail with Ricky Serna. I am appreciative of his perception and understanding that my information about what has happened in incomplete. He listened to the new information I gave him.
I talked to Mari-Luci Jaramillo and was appreciative of her insights and courtesy
Javier M. Gonzales and Walter G Adams are in this email circulation. I welcome a phone call from them (President Aragon's Senior Administrative Assistant (Laura LaCour-Johnson has my phone number). I ask that someone forward this email to John Loehr.
The story, as I see it now, can be obtained in Internet posting starting with the more recent:
http://www.bcngroup.org/beadgames/renewal/11.htm
and including
http://www.bcngroup.org/beadgames/renewal/10.htm
http://www.bcngroup.org/beadgames/renewal/9.htm
http://www.bcngroup.org/beadgames/renewal/8.htm
and
http://www.bcngroup.org/beadgames/renewal/home.htm
These posting started over a year ago.
I note that I am not bound by any code of ethics that would restrict my First Amendment right to free speech. I note that Dean Mendez has objected to my communicating in public over this matter. I also note that Dr Turner’s firing last year is perceived by several of the NMHU faculty to have been because he violated a code of ethics agreement (which I question as being an issue in and of itself). The public needs to know what occurs within the university system.
Faculty perceptions about why Dr Turner was fired are important, as some faculty now express reservations about any expression of opinion regarding matters like the outsourcing of the freshman classes.
There is a marketplace of ideas, and in this case; Dr Turner appears to have felt justified in making public comments about the outsourcing of responsibility by the two or three computer scientists who wanted to control (and now do) the department for which Turner was chair.
In my opinion, if he violated a code (that might be un-Constitutional) he did this out of frustration.
I also note that the issues involve need to be fully transparent and that I do not as yet have this transparency.