N.C. State University has narrowed its list of candidates for job of provost to three people, including the current interim provost, Warwick Arden.

Arden is the dean of the NCSU’s highly-regarded College of Veterinary Medicine.

The provost is the university's loftiest academic job.

The other candidates are Robert T. McGrath who has held several positions at Battelle Memorial Institute and Cathryn R. Newton a professor of interdisciplinary sciences, professor of earth sciences, and dean emerita at Syracuse University.

Battelle is a private, non-profit science and technology company based in Columbus, Ohio.

The job has been vacant since Larry Nielsen stepped down in 2009 as part of a wave of resignations during a scandal over allegations of improper influence related to former state First Lady Mary Easley’s job at the university.

A committee of faculty, staff and students began work this summer on the search. More information on the candidates and interview schedule while each is on campus is available at:  www.ncsu.edu/provostsearch/.

Here are the thumbnail profiles of each candidate that were included in the unviveristy's official news release, topped by the dates of their formal campus visits.

Robert T. McGrath, Nov. 8-10

Since 2008, McGrath has served in various roles with Battelle Memorial Institute and its affiliates, managing national laboratory acquisition, operations and university partnerships. From 2004 to 2008, he served as senior vice president for research, professor of materials science engineering, and professor of physics at Ohio State University.  Prior to 2004, McGrath was associate vice president for research, director of strategic and interdisciplinary initiatives, and professor of engineering science at Penn State University.  He received his Ph.D. in nuclear science and engineering from the University of Michigan and holds an M.A. in mathematics, M.S. in physics, and B.S. in engineering sciences from Penn State.

 Warwick A. Arden, Nov. 10-12

Arden has served as interim provost and executive vice chancellor at NC State University since May 2009, following five years as dean of N.C. State’s College of Veterinary Medicine and professor of clinical sciences.  Prior to joining NC State, Arden served as professor and head of the department of veterinary clinical medicine at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.  He held prior academic appointments at the University of Kentucky, Michigan State University, and the University of Sydney.  He received his Ph.D. in physiology and biophysics from the University of Kentucky, an M.S. in physiology from Michigan State University, and B.V.Sc. in veterinary medicine from the University of Sydney.  Arden recently served as president of the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges.

Cathryn R. Newton, Nov. 17-19

Newton is currently professor of interdisciplinary sciences, professor of earth sciences, and dean emerita at Syracuse University.  Between 2000 and 2008, she led Syracuse University’s largest college, the College of Arts and Sciences.  Previously, she was Jessie Page Heroy Professor of Geology and chair of the department of earth sciences from 1993 to 2000, and co-founding director of the Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) at Syracuse from 1997-2001.  Newton earned a Ph.D. in earth sciences from the University of California, Santa Cruz, an M.S. in geology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a B.A. in geology from Duke University.

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf isn't even been permanently capped yet, but N.C. State University has moved aggressively to become among the first in the nation to offer an academic exploration of the lessons to be learned from the nation's worst oil spill.

The one-hour course will be offered in the fall semester, and be led by none other than former Provost Larry Nielsen, who returned to teaching this spring after resigning from his administration post last year, a casualty of the Mary Easley scandal.

The evening course, in the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, is called "It's a Disaster: The Oil-Well Catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico", and can be taken with or without academic credit.

According to the course description it's expected "to explore the facts, causes and implications of oil exporation, extraction "and use in the U.S."

There's more information at Nielsen's NCSU web pages,  http://www4.ncsu.edu/~lanielse/

Former NCSU leaders James Oblinger and Larry Nielsen are back at work.

Both have returned to their faculty positions following unceremonious departures related to the controversial hiring of former First Lady Mary Easley.

Oblinger, the former provost, is at work on the new research campus in Kannapolis.

Jay Price has the details here.

The UNC Board of Governors plans to take up the issue of paid leaves for administrators at its meetings Thursday and Friday, addressing concerns that the often six-figure payments to campus officials have gotten out of hand.

The leaves are intended to help administrators prepare for a return to teaching, but The News & Observer reported in August that paid leaves had been given to campus administrators who then retired, got jobs elsewhere or were shown the door. Some leave deals also violated UNC system policies.

Here's more from staff writer Eric Ferreri's Campus Notes blog. 

Documents:

Another too-long yet interesting letter about the N.C. State situation:

 A few letters, most recently by Prof. Phil Doerr on June 19, have been written in reaction to Larry Nielsen's speech to the N.C. State "faculty," from which the N&O printed excerpts on June 6 [read them here]. The speech is stunning on many levels, but it is most likely the most stunning to the "other faculty" who do not have a work situation even close to the reality about which Nielsen waxes so poetically.

Nielsen's speech addressed only the Tenured or Tenure-Track Faculty.  However, an increasingly greater number of faculty on college campuses across the country are Non-Tenure Track "contract" Faculty or Adjunct "class only basis" Faculty.  Even these two "other" levels of faculty are quite different.    

Non-Tenure Track (NTT) faculty teach higher courseloads, those courses with larger enrollments, and courses at less optimum times than the Tenure Track faculty.  Though fringe benefits (like health care and retirement) are included, the pay is greatly reduced ostensibly because of the lack of research requirements.  However, there are NTT faculty with Ph.D. and post-doctoral degrees who do engage in research and do participate in levels of service just as the Tenured and Tenure-Track faculty do, some out of a commitment to the profession and some out of the distant hope that they may be considered for a tenure track opening one day, though this rarely happens.  

Adjunct faculty are in the worst position of all.  They are hired as "temporaries" for certain classes on a class-by-class basis.  Some people teach a class or two because they like the university environment and it's some extra income.  But for those Adjuncts who try to use the position as a tenuous stepping stone to more permanent or full-time work, cobbling together a living wage with NO fringe benefits is very difficult.  Recall that the first number thrown out to the inquiry by Easley's assistant was only $4,000 per class.  Again, several Adjunct faculty with Ph.D. and post-doctoral degrees engage in research and service in hopes of one day landing a coveted permanent position (though often Adjuncts are overlooked in the permanent hiring process).

For both the NTT or Adjunct faculty, the pressure to perform and never get into any disputes with other faculty, staff and students is extremely ever-present.  There is no sacred principle of academic freedom to hide behind as with the Tenured faculty.  Indeed, these "other faculty" can be gone in a moment for little or no reason.   

It's interesting that the public thinks that the faculty of college campuses are liberal leaning, and yet a great number of the faculty (in the 40 percentile at NC State before the recent round of budget cutting ousted the underpaid adjunct faculty without concomitant cuts in staff) are treated as piecemeal, temporary wage earners in the knowledge industry. Many faculty rail against work conditions in foreign countries while doing nothing about the plight of other educational professionals on their own college campus!  And while it varies college to college on campus, the NTT and Adjunct faculty are clearly made aware of their lowly status by the Tenured faculty and the administration.

The N&O owes a service to these "other faculty" to set the record straight to the public on the extreme divisions in the priviledges of the Tenured/Tenure-Track faculty and the Non-Tenure Track and Adjunct faculty, the latter who — in Nielsen's own words — DO get evaluated routinely, not "every five years or so" where peers say, "Cool, go for it"; DO NOT enjoy "an incredible level of job security . . . and the promise of lifelong employment"; DO NOT get to "follow lines of inquiry and creativity without a close look to the bottom line," because as the recent budget cuts show, these faculty ARE the bottom line!

L.M. Green
Raleigh

A couple of more letters about the N.C. State University situation that didn't make it into the paper:

 With the media spotlight focused on regrettable events involving a handful of high-level administrators, it is easy to lose sight of what the other 99+ percent of us are doing at N.C. State, “the people's university." Among the UNC system universities, N.C. State is unique in its mix of education, research, extension and engagement, which reaches all 100 counties of this state.

With an enrollment of nearly 33,000 undergraduate and graduate students (the largest in the UNC system), N.C. State is integral to our economic recovery. During times of economic downturn, even more North Carolinians turn to N.C. State for a professionally oriented and well-rounded education, or for advice from top researchers and extension specialists on how to improve the economic and technical competitiveness of their businesses.

The entrepreneurship of N.C. State's faculty brings hundreds of millions of dollars of research funding into the state that supports students, advanced equipment, development of leading edge practices and technologies, and transfer of new knowledge into the classroom.

In the face of budget cuts nearing $100 million, we are facing difficult decisions in every department within every college about how much we need to cut back on our programs and employees, at precisely a time when our state needs us the most. The pending budget cuts will turn back decades of investment by the state in making N.C. State a flagship university. N.C. State needs your support.

H. Christopher Frey
Professor, Environmental Engineering
N.C. State University
Raleigh

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It is an outrage that James Oblinger and Larry Nielsen could be coming back to N.C. State as teaching professors drawing exorbitant salaries. I would not want my children to be taught by unethical professors and apparent liars. If N.C. State brings these two back to teach, or for any other reason, then they surely have no shame.

Robert Jones
Garner

One N.C. State University student says the situation with Mary
Easley's job and the resignations of the chancellor and provost is all the more galling because of how the state's budget cuts are affecting the students. Find more letters about NCSU under the letters tab above or click here.

Lots of letters this week on the situation at N.C. State. Here are several online-only comments. Look for more letters on the subject on tomorrow's editorial
page and in Sunday Forum this week.

It should be an interesting week in west Raleigh, where news continues to trickle out about ex-provost Larry Nielsen's pay.

We learn Sunday that the day before Nielsen resigned, Chancellor James Oblinger okayed an increase to Nielsen's severance package.

The change is apparently a violation of unversity policies. Read more about that here, and keep checking www.newsobserver.com. The plot will likely continue to thicken early this week.