As Tufts moves to cement its standing as a prestigious national research university, one of its best-loved teachers feels he has been left behind.
Gary McKissick, a lecturer in community health who won the Professor of the Year Award in 2006, says he is leaving Tufts this summer after he was forced out by an administration that is putting a greater emphasis on research at the expense of classroom-oriented teachers like him.
McKissick, who was hired as a tenure-track professor in political science and a lecturer in community health, withdrew himself from the tenure track in 2006 because he and his colleagues worried that he had not conducted enough scholarly research to earn tenure at Tufts. McKissick had plans to write a book about American health care, but this project had stalled, and by 2006 he had not completed the book.
Withdrawing from the tenure track helped McKissick avoid receiving a negative review but also meant that the political science department would have to dismiss him so it could fill the professorship with a qualified candidate.
But to the surprise of McKissick and his colleagues in the Community Health Program, Dean of Arts and Sciences Robert Sternberg told him he would also not be allowed to keep his community health lecturer position either, McKissick said.
Sternberg refused to discuss McKissick's specific case with the Daily, but he did comment on the university's general policies. "[I]f a tenure-stream faculty member does not reach tenure, then the expectation is that, within a relatively short period of time, he or she will find employment elsewhere," he said in an e-mail. In McKissick's case, Sternberg refused to let him stay at Tufts, even in a position completely separate from the tenured position he had failed to attain. The Community Health Program is now in the midst of a job search for someone to fill the position McKissick is leaving.
"I think I had a very strong record of teaching. I had a very strong record within the Community Health Program, students and colleagues and all that, so there was a sincere desire to make it work so I could stay within the Community Health Program. And that's really the part of the job that I love most - I was really happy to stay full-time in community health," McKissick said.
"What happened was, we kind of had something worked out, it had gone through several layers of bureaucracy, deans and all that, and then Dean Sternberg, who's at the top of that bureaucracy, shot it down."