ANOTHER WIN FOR PROF. ROBERT STEINBUCH AT THE UALR BOWEN SCHOOL OF LAW: UALR panel faults handling of law school positions.
A faculty appeals committee at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock has found in favor of a law professor who filed an internal complaint regarding the handling of named professorships by the dean.
Robert Steinbuch, a professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law, has requested three named professorships — two of which were extended beyond their normal terms by Dean Theresa Beiner, and a third which she held intending to fill it with a new hire — be opened up for competition following the adjudication of his complaint.
Steinbuch claims Beiner unilaterally extended the named professorship she holds, the Nadine Baum Distinguished Professor of Law, for a fifth year. Named professorships in the law school are four-year terms for the holders, although the dean can extend them beyond four years if “development activities generate sufficient additional Named Professorships,” or if specific terms of a donor in creating a named professorship differ.
For Beiner, to extend her own named professorship beyond four years violates not only the law school’s stated rules — no new named professorships have been created recently, which is a condition for extending a named professorship beyond four years for the same holder — but is a conflict of interest, according to Steinbuch. “She can’t do that for anybody, [least of all] herself.”
Beiner extended another named professorship beyond four years, and elected to hold the Byron M. Eiseman Professorship in Taxation open in order to recruit a faculty member who specializes in teaching and research in taxation.
But the latter move is also “improper” because named professorships must go to full, tenured professors, and one can’t be hired with that status, Steinbuch said. In addition, he said “we were unable to hire anyone, anyway,” so that named professorship ought to be opened for competition immediately.
The university declined to comment on Steinbuch’s claims and requests.
The appeals committee said in its opinion, issued Dec. 13 and sent to the Office of Chancellor Christina Drale, that “named professorships cannot be used in recruitment and hiring because tenure cannot be offered to new hires and rank for new hires is limited to the level of associate professor.”
Additionally, “university policy classifies named professorships as ‘Rewards’ eligible only to tenured faculty members with rank of full professor; therefore, the assignation of a ‘reward’ (e.g., a named professorship) is of legitimate concern to all tenured/tenure-track faculty.”
The appeals committee met Nov. 18 to discuss the findings of an informal subcommittee and found “the concerns and recommendations of the informal subcommittee” — which held that Steinbuch’s complaint “regarding application and award process(es) for named professorships has merit” — to be “sound,” according to the decision. . . .
Beiner, who originally joined the Bowen School of Law in 1994 and became dean in 2018, was “twice reversed for her improper conduct” — by Drale in the instance of putting former President Bill Clinton’s name on a named professorship, and by a university panel in a case where Steinbuch was told he couldn’t have guest lecturers for his classes when he observes Jewish holidays — after Steinbuch complained, he said.
They keep screwing with him, and they keep losing. Obviously the consequences haven’t been severe enough to serve as a deterrent.