No to 17 new Tech positions, state says
Panel rejects plan after controversy
A legislative panel refused Friday to approve Arkansas Tech University’s proposal to create 17 positions after President Robert Brown said the university is going to cease sponsoring faculty members from foreign countries and a state lawmaker accused Brown of making anti-immigrant remarks, an allegation Brown disputed.
Brown said the decision to stop these sponsorships means a faculty member who is an economist “will have to return to [his] native country and then re-enter the United States under another scheme.”
“And that’s not personal,” he told the Legislative Council’s personnel subcommittee, which rejected a motion to recommend the council OK the positions. Subcommittee CoChairman Michael Lamoureux, R-Russellville, said the council may consider the request during its next
meeting.
Afterward, state Sen. Jimmy Jeffress, D-Crossett, said Kadir Nagac, an assistant professor of economics at Arkansas Tech from Turkey, was informed about the school’s decision Monday and Nagac’s visa expires about Aug. 1.
Reached at Tech, Nagac declined to comment Friday except to say he wants to resolve the matter and continue at the university.
Several lawmakers questioned Brown about the personnel issue amid his pitch for allowing Tech to create the positions in fiscal 2012 and 2013. The positions include six assistant-professor positions with maximum-authorized salaries of $90,240 each, a director of health services post with a maximum-authorized salary of $89,739 a year, and a special-projects coordinator job with a maximum salary of $77,200.
Shane Broadway, interim director of the state Department of Higher Education, said in a letter to lawmakers that the positions are sought because of the growing demand for health services, more advanced technology and enrollment growth at Tech.
In response to a query from Rep. Johnnie Roebuck, D-Arkadelphia, Brown explained that Tech during the past decade has seen about 40 percent of the people from foreign countries that it has sponsored leave the school after they get permanent residency in the United States “and they go to California or New York or someplace else where there is a conclave of their ethnic fellows.”
“It has not been a good situation for us, so we have had to make the decision this year that we are going to cease sponsoring people who come from foreign countries,” he said.
“When we sponsor we have to certify [to the Immigration and Naturalization Service] that we can’t hire Americans with those same qualifications and that’s a very serious undertaking,” Brown said. “It has been a financially losing proposition for us, and when you make that decision there is always one or two people that is someplace in this process that it falls on their shoulders.”
One person “didn’t make tenure, so it really doesn’t matter,” he said, but another “who was making some progress” during four years at Tech toward getting tenure in seven years will have to return to his country and attempt to re-enter the United States.
Brown described Tech’s decision to stop sponsoring people from foreign countries after their visas expire as “strictly a business decision” that isn’t intended to be inhumane.
He said the economist is in a discipline “where I can hire U.S. citizens pretty easily.”
That led Roebuck to wonder why Tech hired the economist.
“Well, the ex-dean of the College of Business did that, and that’s one of the reasons he is an ex-dean,” Brown replied.
“Our experience in the past is that we have spent the money [$5,000 to $6,000 for an attorney in each case] and they have flown the coop on us,” he said.
“Our first responsibility is to our Arkansas students at Arkansas Tech, and we have got to be the best stewards we can be of their resources, and we made the determination that to hire people under these circumstances is not being good stewards of our resources,” he said.
“It is very sad. I think the situation stinks if you want to know the truth,” Brown said.
Rep. Ann Clemmer, RBenton, told Brown that it’s “highly unethical” for a tenure-track faculty member to be informed about this matter two months before the start of the school year.
“This is a shocking way to treat a professional,” said Clemmer, who is a faculty member at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
Clemmer said Tech runs the risk of being censured by the American Association of University Professors.
But Brown said, “There is nothing anti-immigrant about this. You are speaking with a person whose priest is from India and whose physician is from Pakistan, and I have total confidence in both of those people.”
Brown said he can’t in good conscience certify to the Immigration and Naturalization Service that he can’t get an American to do the job of the economist at Tech.
“I am sad for that person in that situation. I shed some [tears] about this. This is not much fun,” he said.
Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, lamented that the economist “is going to pay a very high price.”
Jeffress said he’s been told that the young man hadn’t sought other employment because he’s been told many times by Tech officials that he would be taken care of.
Brown replied, “That’s not so.”
In response, Jeffress said, “So, we might have to take a lie-detector test.”
He said Brown has a publicrelations problem with some lawmakers, and he would like Tech to take steps to retain the economist.
Afterward, Brown refused to answer any questions from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette about this matter.