An engineering professor on the University of Illinois’s Urbana-Champaign campus says he has not been allowed to teach a course in three years, though he’s continued to earn a $61,460 salary. He is suing five administrators whom he blames for his circumstances.
Louis Wozniak has filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois, charging that the department chairman, the engineering dean, the provost, the chancellor, and the university’s president violated his rights to due process and free speech when they prevented him from teaching and forced him out of the office he had worked in for 30 years.
The officials say the lawsuit is without merit, and in December they filed a motion to dismiss it.
Dr. Wozniak, an associate professor of general engineering, says he was removed from his office and his teaching assignments in August 1995. He and the department chairman, Thomas F. Conry, had had a history of conflicts that came to a head in the spring, when Dr. Wozniak refused to hand over his grade book, showing how he had arrived at final grades for students. Professors in the department are required to turn in the grade books, not just the final grades. That semester, Dr. Wozniak balked at the requirement, saying he did not want to deal with Michael H. Pleck, the associate chairman. “I did not feel comfortable turning in this sensitive information to this particular individual,” Dr. Wozniak said in an interview.
The professor’s explanation for his reluctance was vague. The chairman’s response was explicit: He prohibited Dr. Wozniak from teaching for a year. In turn, the professor plastered his office door with the pertinent correspondence between himself and university officials. Administrators then moved his office to another engineering building.
Dr. Wozniak filed a grievance with a faculty panel, which found that Illinois had a legitimate right to demand his grades. But the panel said the university violated his rights by denying him courses without giving him a hearing.
Since then, Dr. Wozniak has been assigned to create and teach two graduate-level courses. But he called the assignments bogus, because graduate enrollment in the department has dropped. No students have enrolled in either course.
“I feel I’ve been dehumanized. I’ve been made the laughingstock,” he says. Members of the faculty panel said Dr. Wozniak should either file a grievance on that matter, too, or stop complaining.
But Dr. Wozniak says he’s tired of the internal process. “I can afford the lawsuit.”