UWA president could be fired Monday, responds to evaluation process

University of West Alabama President Dr. Richard Holland will likely be fired Monday according to a letter from Mike Holliman, President Emeritus of the UWA National Alumni Association.

“This Monday morning, March 3, 2014, the University of West Alabama’s Board will publicly fire Dr. Richard Holland because he refuses to look the other way while Board members commit acts that undermine the university’s integrity and violate its accreditation standards,” Holliman wrote in a letter disseminated to UWA alumni association members earlier this week. Holliman’s letter is also posted on the page of the Facebook group We Love UWA.

Holliman does not name any specific board members in his letter, but states “Dr. Holland has warned the offending Board members that their actions put the university at risk of losing accreditation, and, unfortunately, other board members have condoned the behavior by their silence.”

Holliman’s letter and Holland’s hot seat come in the wake of an evaluation of the UWA president that was conducted in Oct. 2013 and was recently presented to the UWA Board of Trustees.

Holland has since posted his response to that evaluation on the UWA website with a document dated Nov. 30, 2013. Wednesday, Holland published an addendum to his response.

“I respect fully wish to respond to certain aspects of the Performance Evaluation Report filed by Dr. Thomas Z. Jones. I was told by Dr. Jones that I would have an opportunity to do so prior to the completion of the report, but this did not occur,” Holland wrote in the introduction to his initial response to his evaluation. “I have also become aware of actions by certain parties that clearly appear to have been designed to skew parts of the evaluation toward the negative by hand-selecting a small group of faculty and staff who are disgruntled for a variety of reasons, including those who have been demoted or reassigned, who have had issues with promotion and tenure, or who work for or have close ties to two of the parties mentioned above. What I believe to be substantial proof of the tainting of the evaluation has been captured in a separate document, which I will share with Trustees at an appropriate time.”

In the document, Holland responds to 13 different points of the evaluation. The common theme throughout most of Holland’s response is the lack of substantiation of the claims made against him.

“It is both telling and disturbing that Dr. Jones concludes the section in which the negative comments above are contained with ‘In general, I cannot attest to the validity of the concerns and shortcomings reported above.’ To me, an evaluation should be based on well-documented and tangible material, not on a simple collection of anonymous comments, most of which amount to little more than hearsay and some of which arise from a tainted pool of interviewees,” Holland writes in concluding his original response.

Holland’s second post, the addendum to his response, is a 19-page document that points to what he calls “collusion” among trustees to undermine his office and alleges misconduct that he says could result in UWA being discredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

“The materials contained in this report point to collusion among certain Board

of Trustee members and administrators at the University of West Alabama aimed toward unfairly and unjustifiably undermining the Presidency of Dr. Richard Holland in order to achieve their own goals,” Holland’s addendum began.

“The report indicates violations of Board By-laws and the Board Code of Ethics, other published policies and responsibilities, and several standards of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), the regional accrediting body for the University. A violation of a SACS core requirement results in automatic probation for an institution. This report calls for an investigation and appropriate response by the Board of Trustees and by the Governor of the State of Alabama, who serves as President of that Board.”

The report presents a timeline that begins July 30, 2013 with an email from Vice President of Institutional Advancement Clemit Spruiell to Board of Trustees President Pro Tem Terry Bunn. In the that email, Spruiell outlines a bulleted list of 16 grievances he has toward Holland.

The report went on to cite the UWA faculty Code of Ethics, the Board of Trustees By-laws, the Handbook for Faculty and Professional Staff and the SACS Comprehensive Standard, alleging that the correspondence may be a violation of each.

Holland reports that an Aug. 1, 2013 meeting between himself and Trustees Terry Bunn and Jerry Smith led to a “threat” in which he was told his contract would not be extended beyond Sept. 2014.

“Trustees Terry Bunn and Jerry Smith met with Dr. Holland and asked about his plans for retirement. Dr. Holland said that he planned to retire in September 2016. Mr. Smith said that there was not any way his contract could be extended beyond September 2014,” the report states. “Mr. Smith said that ‘they’ had the votes and that the best thing for the institution would be for Dr. Holland to announce his retirement. If he did so, celebrations of his service would be held.”

The report also states that a third party evaluation process took root at the Sept. 9, 2013 meeting when Bunn requested and receive approval to allot $20,000 for an external evaluation of Holland.

The report goes on to allege a tainting of the evaluation process and provides evidence that unethical communications took place.

“Ken Tucker was seen in a closed-door meeting in his office with Brian

Burnes, an aggrieved faculty member from another UWA college whose name would be forwarded by Clemit Spruiell to Jerry Smith and who would be interviewed by Thomas Z. Jones, the outside evaluator of the President,” the report states of a Sept. 17, 2013 communication.

The report also collects emails and cell phone records pointing to apparent misconduct on the part of those involved with selecting the pool of interviewees for the evaluation process.

Pages nine and 10 of the report provides an analysis of the individuals on the list provided to Jones by Spruiell. Included on the list are Sharon Stipe, Chuck Smith, Brian Burnes, Richard Hester, Aliquippa Allen and Venkat Sharma.

“The above strongly supports the concept that the evaluation process was intentionally slanted in a negative way by parties with clear agendas of their own, and this undercuts the integrity of the entire process itself,” the report states.

Page 11 of the report begins an appendix in which Holland directly responds to the grievances noted by Spruiell in the July 30, 2013 email correspondence.

The evaluation of Holland can be read in its entirety at here.

Holland’s initial response to that evaluation can be found here.

Holland’s addendum to his response can be read here.

It should also be noted that Wednesday, the Alabama Legislature confirmed the appointments of Jean Dearman Anderson, Jerry W. Groce, Sheila S. Cloud and Hal W. Bloom Jr. to the UWA Board of Trustees.