College board upholds professor’s termination

De La Torre claims racism a factor in dismissal

Metro State’s Board of Trustees has voted to dismiss an award-winning tenured professor employed by the college for 19 years on grounds that she lied about publishing an article in an academic journal.

The board, at its Nov. 4 meeting, denied Angelina De La Torre’s appeal of a November 2008 decision to terminate her, which was made following a college investigation into whether she had committed academic dishonesty. During a post-tenure review process, which every tenured professor is subject to every five years, De La Torre submitted her updated curriculum vitae, or dossier. On the dossier, she listed a paper as having been published in 2005 in a specialized academic journal.

A review of the dossier showed that the journal did not contain the article De La Torre claimed to have published in 2005.

The college’s investigation report said she “intentionally” lied on a review of her performance. According to the Handbook for Professional Personnel, the code of conduct for professors, such dishonesty is grounds for dismissal.

De La Torre, a criminal justice and Chicana/o studies professor, said in her defense that she made a mistake in reporting the publication on the dossier but had no intention of misrepresenting her work.

The dismissal has left De La Torre without a job and salary for a year. Her career has been ruined for a mistake she made innocently, she said.

She said she intends to take the college to court.

De La Torre’s case highlights how one false declaration, whether intentional or not, can mean the loss of a career.

The case also allows a rare glimpse into Metro’s process for the dismissal of a professor. The appeal in front of the board was held publicly at De La Torre’s request, not in executive session, where the majority of personnel issues are handled.

While Metro spokeswoman Cathy Lucas said the school was unable to comment on the case, the investigation is documented in a 21-page “Faculty Dismissal Hearing” the college made public after the board meeting.

Under Colorado law, personnel matters are one of the few topics an official board is allowed to discuss privately because of the sensitivity and privacy issues involved.

A spotless record

The faculty dismissal hearing report said De La Torre’s performance before 2008 and her post-tenure review have not been called into question. She was tenured in 1995, promoted to associate professor and received the 2007 Espiritu de Aztlan Award, an award for commitment and mentoring in the Latino community.

De La Torre, who received a doctorate of law from the University of California at Los Angeles, is an adviser to the Colorado Supreme Court and is also featured in a 1999 college publication highlighting Metro.

“I’ve always tried to be an advocate for Latinos and especially Latino women,” De La Torre said Nov. 8 in an interview with The Metropolitan.

The college’s reason for terminating De La Torre centers on her article “Emerging Global Issues,” which she claimed in her post-tenure review dossier was published in Vol. 30, Issue 1 of the fall 2005 National Social Science Association Journal.

The National Social Science Association, a group that promotes exchanges of ideas among academics by holding several conferences each year, has two publications: the NSSA Journal and the NSS Perspectives Journal.

De La Torre attended the October 2005 conference, presented a paper and wrote a $25 check in order for her paper to be published.

De La Torre made several mistakes in reporting the issue number she claimed to have been published in and failed to properly confirm that the article had been published, the file says. The proceedings of the conference De La Torre attended were published in Vol. 31, Issue 1 of the NSS Perspectives Journal: wrong volume and wrong publication.

Communication breakdown

De La Torre said she called the NSSA in 2008 when she was completing her dossier to ask what volume and issue contained her article. She said NSSA Director Jerry Baydo told her the numbers she included in her record.

The school investigation says it is doubtful the NSSA director would have told her the wrong volume and journal name.

De La Torre had published in 1994 with the NSSA, and though the association’s publishing rules had changed, the NSSA would have advised De La Torre of the new rules, the investigation report said. The new rules stated papers submitted would not be included unless the prescribed format was used, and that the NSSA would provide no notification to the author if guidelines were not followed.

Nancy Connick, the faculty dismissal hearing officer, concluded that De La Torre “either knew” or “that she made no effort to determine publication and simply invented citations.”

De La Torre has a copy of her Metro phone record showing the phone in her office was used to call the NSSA’s number in California for 3 minutes and 20 seconds on the day she testified she did. She has a copy of the check that NSSA cashed in 2005, dated when she said she submitted the article for publication.

The investigation report said Baydo did not testify in the case, and the college’s report misspells his name as Baxdo throughout the document.

By e-mail, Baydo declined to comment, citing legal grounds.

Another contention is that De La Torre’s name could have been confused with another professor, Nena Torrez, whose article appears in Vol. 30, Issue 1. In both names, the accent falls on the second half of the words, which is common in Spanish and on the telephone, De La Torre said.

Torrez wrote a letter in support of De La Torre, saying their names could have been confused. Put in charge of the investigation, professor Luis Torres also included the name-confusion idea as a possible reason for the mistake in a report about the investigation of De La Torre.

Connick’s report does not mention the issue of name confusion, and De La Torre stated in her written appeal to the board that the issue hadn’t been taken seriously.

Torres did not respond to attempts to contact him.

De La Torre points out that she published the global issues article with the NSS Perspectives Journal in its August 2008 issue after she found out it wasn’t published in 2005. The investigation report also does not mention this.

Proving intent

“By intentionally and clearly misrepresenting in her dossier that she had published an article as part of her professional development when she had not done so, Dr. De La Torre did not practice intellectual honesty, in violation of the handbook,” according to the college’s initial decision, which the board upheld.

The ruling, focused on De La Torre’s intent to misrepresent, said: “Sloppiness is an inadequate explanation . . . leading the hearing officer to conclude that the misrepresentation here is intentional.” The number of mistakes De La Torre made in reporting the publication prove she intended to deceive the school, Connick’s report said.

De La Torre’s motive, the school’s file says, was promotion. President Stephen Jordan met with De La Torre after the initial investigation.

“She had sought benefit in the post-tenure review process,” the file said Jordan concluded from the meeting.

De La Torre said that she had little to win from the publication, that the publication was not required by her department and that she had enough other material to put in her review.

The trustees heard a final appeal by De La Torre’s lawyer, David Lane, followed by a counter-argument from the college’s legal consul before voting unanimously to terminate her contract.

This article was published first in The Metropolitan, the student-produced newspaper at Metropolitan State College of Denver.