What's it like to have an egotistical, egomaniacal dumb bastard for a leader? The faculty at the Wayne State University (WSU) College of Engineering have almost six years of experience to draw upon for answering that question.
Recap of the Fotouhi problem
Back in 2010, Provost Ron Brown tried to give the Engineering faculty the illusion that they had a say on who the next dean would be. Brown would certainly have preferred that the faculty rubber-stamped his pre-selected choice, but ultimately the decision was all Brown’s, with no semblance of an Electoral College process whatsoever.
Six candidates gave presentations in the auditorium of the Marvin I. Danto Engineering Development Center that the late Dean Emeritus Ralph Kummler had helped get built. Farshad Fotouhi, Chair of the Computer Science Department, was dead last in the faculty vote.
Interim Dean Mumtaz Usmen was being way too coy about wanting the job, spoke up too late, and his presentation to the faculty changed nothing. Prof. X told me a couple of years ago that Usmen wouldn’t have been a good permanent dean either anyway.
But Usmen would have been a thousand times better than Fotouhi, whose early days in 2011 were marked by a definite antagonism for the Chemical, Civil, Industrial and Mechanical Engineering Departments, and against the Electrical Engineering Department with a vengeance.
Public Affairs Officer David Reich was the first to go, taking an almost Buddhist attitude to the whole thing. No one had told Fotouhi that Reich’s salary was paid by the university, not the college; so getting rid of Reich had no effect on the college budget.
Associate Dean Gerald Thompkins, a decorated naval officer, did not go quietly, but the news did not pick up his story despite the efforts of students grateful for his mentorship. Thompkins was the lowest paid of the associate deans, but getting rid of him did free up some money in the college budget.
Next, Fotouhi set his sights on Prof. Gregory Auner’s Smart Sensors and Integrated Microsystems (SSIM) staff. Supposedly, Auner’s SSIM staff was too large. But no one told Fotouhi that SSIM was making money for the university, as well as raising the college’s prestige.
So in March 2011, Fotouhi tried to fire the SSIM staff through e-mail. When they didn't take that seriously, instead of confronting them face-to-face, Fotouhi had the locks to the SSIM labs changed, unaware of the silane gas.
What’s silane gas anyway? Seems Fotouhi didn’t know either. Silane gas is a very useful material for working with microsystems, but it is also volatile and dangerous, requiring at least daily monitoring.
Which is normally not a problem, except the day the SSIM guy with silane expertise showed up to find himself locked out of the lab, and escorted out of the building by campus security.
Fortunately for everyone in the building at the time (including Fotouhi himself), Scott Chang explained it to Fotouhi, who ordered the silane guy called back to shut down the silane gas.
The silane gas incident was reported in Crain’s Detroit Business more than two years after it happened. Instead of denying that it happened or claiming that Chang's memory of the incident was hazy, Fotouhi just said “no comment” to reporter Tom Henderson.
Surely a narrowly averted silane gas explosion would have gotten Fotouhi fired? Nope. Compared to that, his failure to respond to requests for teachers’ assistants and student software license renewals were minor sins.
When you pay tuition to a university, you expect that your money pays the salaries of the faculty, their assistants, and the software used in class, ranging from the commonplace (like Microsoft Word) to the specialized (like NX 7 and WaterGEMS).
The university takes care of common programs like Word, but it’s up to each college to make sure the licenses for specialized programs are up to date. The College of Engineering takes a strong moral stance against software piracy. I know because I wrote an assertion to that effect in December 2011.
What I did not know at the time was the reason that had become such an important issue that year. Fotouhi was ignoring requests for money to pay software license renewals. Whether that was deliberate or not doesn’t matter, the result was the same: faculty and students were frustrated, stymied.
Obviously Fotouhi could not fire tenured faculty (though the university at one point did try to eliminate tenure). But for some professors, Fotouhi could reduce their paychecks by removing them from associate dean or department chair positions.
For example, Prof. Carol Miller, Chair of Civil Engineering and one of the most important Great Lakes water researchers, was replaced by newcomer Prof. Joseph Hummer, who was presumably the yes-man Miller refused to be. And Prof. Trilochan Singh was removed as Chair of Electrical Engineering and replaced by Prof. Mumtaz Usmen, a certified professional civil engineer.
With or without help, Fotouhi eventually realized how silly it looked having a civil engineer head up Electrical Engineering. Usmen is now civil chair and Prof. Mohammed Elnaggar is in the electrical chair. It doesn’t have to be the Music Department to play musical chairs.
While moving these professors to different offices, Fotouhi’s biggest concern in 2011 was making his own office physically larger and more luxurious. No prior dean in the college’s 80-year history had cared about the size of his office, which I do admit was tiny; the dean’s receptionist had a bigger office.
I don’t know if it was tax money or tuition money that paid for the office enlargement, but I do know it cost $142,772.79. Purchase Order P0616416 of December 20, 2012 was made out to Sorensen Gross Construction Services for the “renovation of the dean’s suite.”
Meanwhile, the front steps to the building, on the Anthony Wayne Drive side, were crumbling, something Rachel Kast, a grad student at the time and SSIM staffer, pointed out in a letter to Crain's. Those steps were eventually taken care of, thanks to a grant from DTE Energy. It goes to show you where Fotouhi’s priorities are.
A ball dropped by the Board of Governors
By the state constitution, Michigan voters elect boards to oversee Michigan State University, the University of Michigan and Wayne State University. The boards have different names at each of the universities, but I’m pretty sure they serve the same function.
The Wayne State board is called the Board of Governors. The 8-member board appoints the university president, who runs the board meetings ex-officio but is subordinate to the board.
In 2014, Prof. James Woodyard, a tenured professor, had had enough of what he called Fotouhi’s “lack of integrity.” Woodyard resigned, making it clear that he was not retiring. And he tendered that resignation at a Board of Governors meeting. The board listened but did nothing.
I have also addressed the Board of Governors. I don’t think that had any effect. When I finished my remarks, WSU President Roy M. Wilson just said “Thank you” and what I said was promptly forgotten.
Later in 2014, Wilson moved Auner and SSIM out of Fotouhi’s hierarchy and into the School of Medicine. In hindsight, that was only because Dr. Paul Strauss, a millionaire donor and staunch supporter of the SSIM program, had paused an endowment to the university.
So President Wilson wouldn’t have cared in 2015 that Fotouhi looked like a pervert in a social media photo in which he shoved a pie into the face of a Tau Beta Pi student. As long as the president, the provost and the deans are getting their perks, who cares about the faculty and students?
Fotouhi had his 5-year review last year. Provost Margaret Winters concluded the review by renewing Fotouhi’s contract for three more years. The original dean contract specified a $260,000 salary, which had been raised prior to the review.
The $300,087 salary specified by the new contract merely codifies what Fotouhi had been paid the previous year. By the way, there’s yet another new provost now, who seems just as unable (or unwilling) to fix the mistake of a predecessor.
Both contracts say Fotouhi’s service as dean is “subject to the pleasure of the [university] president” and his employment is “at will.” But remember, Fotouhi is a tenured professor, however much we may think he’s an idiot. Both contracts say his “professorial base salary” is protected by tenure.
So it would seem that one way or another, WSU is stuck with Fotouhi. But there’s a very easy solution to that problem: tell Prof. Fotouhi that the new dean will give him a taste of his own medicine. Fotouhi will whisper in his lawyer’s ear, asking for a way to leave quickly.
If I understand the 2016 dean contract correctly, even after early termination, Fotouhi would be entitled to take a yearlong paid administrative leave at the $300K dean salary, then resign as professor on his first day back from leave.
Don’t worry about Fotouhi’s cost of living expenses. During his leave, he could line up a job with one of his cronies. Is former WSU Provost Ron Brown still president at the University of North Texas? Surely Brown could give Fotouhi a nice sinecure. Or if Fotouhi’s smart and frugal, he might be a millionaire and able to retire now.
But this whole line of thought assumes President Wilson is displeased by Fotouhi, but there is nothing to indicate that this is the case. Actually, Wilson and the Board of Governors are setting an example for the provost and the deans, an example that says the university is your gravy train.
While the board has been consistently voting to raise university tuition, they held a secret meeting last year to raise Wilson’s salary to $522,000 (this was uncovered by the Motor City Muckraker). The issue was taken up again at a public board meeting, and the decision of the secret meeting was upheld.
Wilson was already making more money than the President of the United States. Couldn’t he decline the raise? Or maybe donate that extra money to a scholarship? I don’t know, something.
The only board member to vote against the raise was Dana Thompson (D), who mentioned Wilson’s salary increase in an interview with the Muckraker. If I recall correctly, Thompson was joined by only one other board member in voting against a tuition hike the last time.
The composition of the board has changed this year. I didn’t go to the swearing-in, but that was because I neglected to look at the university calendar. Though it wouldn’t have helped that my choices for the two vacancies did not win.
Instead, we got Michael Busuito (R), whose letter in parentheses doesn’t give me any hope he will be looking out for the students or the taxpayers. Nor am I too impressed with Mark Gaffney (D), despite liking his letter better. Please prove me wrong, but I predict they’ll vote for more tuition raises and more presidential salary raises.
Back in 2014, I would have voted for Woodyard (D) in a heartbeat, but predictably he failed to get the Democratic nomination. The board could use an engineer, because certain decisions (like those pertaining to the university’s parking structures) could really use an engineer’s perspective.
If the objection to Woodyard is that he’s a former WSU professor, how do you explain current WSU professors like Marilyn Kelly (D) serving on the board? Michigan Democrats seem to have no problem with putting current WSU professors on the board. Gaffney's another one.
And what about 4-year graduation rates? Fotouhi’s 2010 contract was very specific about requiring him to increase enrollment, but it said nothing about graduation.
Some of you are probably thinking that contractually requiring an increase in graduation would lead to an artificial graduation increase, and that’s a good point. But the College of Engineering seems to have experienced an artificial increase in enrollment.
I have not been able to corroborate that the calculus requirement for the College of Engineering has been relaxed under Fotouhi (and more recently the university suspended the general math competency requirement), but when I look at the enrollment and graduation numbers, it looks very plausible.
According to Exemplar, the magazine of Engineering alumni, in 2012, the college enrolled 2,437 students and in 2016 graduated 657 students. This suggests that if you came in as a freshman for the fall semester last year, you have a 1 in 4 chance of graduating in 2020.
You have to know calculus to be any good as an engineer, but you don’t have to be a calculus whiz to know that these enrollment and graduation numbers are not good, you just need basic arithmetic. The university’s overall 4-year graduation rate is slightly better.
So a bunch of students were set up to fail at engineering just so that Fotouhi could claim an increase in enrollment. That the university got some extra tuition money out it was just an added bonus. Maybe this is not the case anymore, since Fotouhi’s 2016 contract has no performance requirements whatsoever.
Despite all these facts, and many more that I’m leaving out to try to keep this to a reasonable length, and the still many more that the board members are privy to but we are not, they are still not taking in any action. The upcoming accreditation review looks like the last hope for a college beleaguered by despot.
Higher Learning Commission slated to do a “comprehensive evaluation” of WSU
As you know, universities have to be accredited every so often. The Higher Learning Commission (HLC) has scheduled a visit to Wayne State University on March 6 for a “comprehensive evaluation.”
A month prior to the visit, HLC will stop taking public comments, and gather up the comments received up to that point, to give them to WSU and the team visiting WSU.
This means that if you would like to submit a comment, you have a week left to do so on HCL’s website. If you prefer snail mail, here is the address:
Third-Party Comment on Wayne State University
Higher Learning Commission
230 South LaSalle Street, Suite 7-500
Chicago, IL 60604-1411
I’m not sure if that’s a postmark deadline, but if I were you, I would assume that it is not.
Maybe you are not a WSU alum. Even if you are someone who has only thought about going to Wayne State, I think you should send a comment to the HLC.