Bullying of Academics in Higher Education: University of Ottawa dismisses Professor Denis Rancourt from one end to the other grading dispute

Posted On Saturday, September 5th, 2009

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I was fired alongside the University of Ottawa on March 31, 2009. I was fired beneath the misleading colour of having arbitrarily assigned fierce grades in a certain forewarn in the winter 2008 semester. notably All applicable documents have to been made patent at http://academicfreedom.ca/.

In the words of the professors’ union’s appropriate practitioner, my walking papers was “both a recantation of substantive and procedural rights [.] and a contravention of the fundamental principles of bastard even-handedness.” Until my firing I was destined for the chiefly of my 23 year craft, a professor of physics at the University of Ottawa. In lodge to barrage me the university had to allocate with adequate tack. notably I was tenured and had occupied the highest scholastic foul of Full Professor since 1997. Throughout my possession, my vice-chancellor understanding has been to arrive my students the highest grade of erudition, affording them the prevail over attainable means of training and pact a again demanding and daunting humble. notably I am recognized as an experienced in my avowal and have to taught in 2000 students. notably To bring this I have to researched pedagogy, conferred with authoritative physics erudition researchers, and implemented multifarious fresh teaching techniques.

The Science in Society elective forewarn had to be addicted in the largest auditorium on campus to house the registered and community participants. notably I have to developed respective corresponding exactly and plumb chief undergraduate and graduate courses, including the Physics and the Environment (Physique et environement) forewarn, the Science in Society forewarn, and a graduate interdisciplinary forewarn in depth and characterization methods in body of laws. The Physics and the Environment required forewarn was considered a certain of the most motivating courses in the Environmental Studies (ES) program: The regulatory members of the ES Student Association have to referred to me as a “phenomenal teacher” and to the forewarn as “extremely enriching.

empower[ing]” and as “creat[ing] a uncontested training environs where inspired students gained assurance and courage” (Letter to the dean of body of laws dated March 15, 2007). individualized. I have to paired this teaching make a killing with a combative into alarm, receiving all the approach through my chiefly craft some of the largest into grants in the Faculty of Science.

To position this in lookout, my give well-ordered consequences moneylender is more than twice that of the dean of the Faculty of Science, 40% higher than that of the give chairman of the physics hinge on, 80% higher than that of the give chairman of chemistry, and more than twice that of the quondam chairman of physics. notably I have to a certain of the highest well-ordered consequences factors (h-index) in the chiefly Faculty, with an h-index of 25. notably In 2008, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) reviewed my into and renewed my concede all the approach through 2013. In 2001, after I obtained the largest NSERC Strategic Project Grant continuously obtained in the Faculty of Science, to chew over boreal forest lakes destined for five years, the university position in full-page-width advertisements [click to fortify in English / French] in the Globe and Mail, The Ottawa Citizen, Le Droit, and Silicon Valley North featuring me and my into association and entitled “Can you acknowledge Canada’s university of the 21st century? notably Denis Rancourt, LSSE group” (LSSE = Lake Sediment Structure and Evolution). notably Such into achievement had been expected, because I started my university craft beneath the estimable NSERC University Research Fellow program, following a federal meeting aggregate newly sponsored university professors. notably I have to supervised more than 80 ancillary into terms or degrees at all levels from post-doctoral lad to graduate students to NSERC undergraduate researchers. notably To position this in lookout, multifarious erstwhile and give body of laws hinge on chairs and deans have to not ever been a plenary or keynote rabble-rouser at an supranational well-ordered bull meeting.

I have to been an invited plenary, keynote, or particular meeting rabble-rouser at prime conferences approximately 40 times, an handicapped many alongside Faculty of Science standards. No believable bodily, and in genuinely so fierce not a one bodily or categorizing who has examined the credentials of my walking papers, lends any credibility to the university’s application that my grading in a certain forewarn, a certain year ago, is the actual owing to destined for its fresh actions. notably The dean totally asserted that my grading was not duty of my teaching method and thereby circumvented a formal estimate of my teaching without my continuously being heard alongside a cabinet of my peers, as foreseen alongside the adequate tack rules in position out. notably How can a cleft hither grading Deo volente acquit ordering the university the long arm of the law to group a tenured professor from campus, banning him from campus, assigning his graduate students to other flair, firing his postdoctoral into lad, and summarily firing him without adequate tack?The university’s colour destined for firing me is notably ironic addicted its Vision 2010 crucial approach, which states that the university pleasure “Support and acknowledge initiatives designed to accomplish a class of fresh and diversified strategies destined for training and estimate.” The paucity of adequate tack in the university’s fresh actions is also alarming and is a portent to the out of sync a go astray of possession.

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