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Friday, February 25, 2005
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UD has already said ... ... in connection with Ward Churchill’s terminal Master's degree, that she’s got a liberal policy on the question of whether faculty members at colleges and universities absolutely must have Ph.D.s. But faculty members do have to have accomplished something to be hired - let alone promoted all the way up: ‘ SCHOOL CAN’T LOCATE CHURCHILL’S THESIS U. of Illinois officials not sure if master's paper was required By Berny Morson Rocky Mountain News February 23, 2005 University of Illinois officials said Tuesday they can't locate Ward Churchill's master's thesis and aren't sure if he was required to write one. The embattled University of Colorado ethnic-studies professor claims undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Illinois' Springfield campus, which was known as Sangamon State University until 1995. Springfield is in Sangamon County. University of Illinois at Springfield spokeswoman Cheryl Peck confirmed that Churchill received a bachelor's degree in 1974 and a master's degree in 1975. But no thesis is on file, she said. "We can't say for sure he didn't write one," Peck said. It is not clear if a thesis was a requirement at the time Churchill received the degree in communications, she said. CU spokeswoman Pauline Hale said she did not know if faculty members inquired about Churchill's thesis in 1991 before giving him tenure. Documents released last week by CU indicate some faculty members had reservations about granting tenure to a professor who lacked a doctorate. The documents are silent on a master's thesis. On Tuesday, Illinois faculty members described Sangamon State - in the 1970s, when Churchill attended - as focused on innovative teaching methods, including an emphasis on social issues of the day. The campus did not have academic departments. Instead, faculty members were rostered under interdisciplinary groupings, including Churchill's major, communications in a technological society. Students could major in traditional subjects, such as history or English, but they could also design their own majors in consultation with the faculty. Larry Golden, a political scientist and one of the original professors when Sangamon opened in 1970, said the school was not as freewheeling as it sounds. Proposals for self-designed majors were given extensive faculty review, he said. The campus served only juniors, seniors and master's-degree students. They would have taken the standard courses at a two-year college before coming to Sangamon. The program included an "applied-studies term," in which students earned credit by working off campus. Projects ranged from working with a state legislator to community organizing. The students were required to take part in a seminar and write journals or term papers as part of the program, Golden said. "You couldn't just go to an anti-war rally in Washington and say, 'That's my experience,' " Golden said. ' These dipshit degrees always have guys like Golden around to defend them. Sangamon State circa 1970 sounds like a diploma mill with certification. The continued unraveling of Ward Churchill’s Gatsby-like life will eventually, UD predicts, do some good for academic standards in the nation's universities... Meanwhile, though, the American professoriate couldn't, in its most self-destructive nightmares, have conjured anything like the non-stop nihilism which is Ward Churchill. |