January 12, 2009
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What’s Going On with Applied Technologies?
First, there was the abrupt suspension and termination of Drs. Bennett and Hall. This was reportedly due to Dr. Bennett padding his class rosters in order to get the classes to “make,” or go on as scheduled. The classes “made,” but the Optics course I took had to go the “independent study” route, which is a real pain for a regular course. Taking a six-credit, two-hours-a-day, four-days-a-week course on that basis leads to some serious stress.When talking to Dr. Bennett, he told me that the faculty union is (or maybe was, since his terminaton?) up in arms about the fact that he was put on leave and then terminated over this, as lots of instructors “pad” their class rosters using “audit” students. (An “audit” student signs up for the class, can attend some or all of the classes, as convenient. The only difference between an “audit” student and a regular student is that when you take the class on an “audit” basis, you don’t get a grade for it.)
The real reason this action was taken, according to Dr. Bennett, was that Dr. Hall and he had taken note of a large pile of cash donated to the School of Applied Technologies — specifically the Photonics Department — by various companies, and that some of the cash had gone missing from the SAT coffers. Two specific donations were mentioned, one from Intel for $60K, and another from Schott Solar to the tune of $500K. The unstated idea was that if he and Dr. Hall had kept quiet about the cash being taken from the Photonics budget, the both of them would still be employed by CNM at present.
Last week, I received the following from Dr. Bennett –
I am quickly getting the impression that no one gives a shit whether CNM keeps the Applied Technologies programs going or not.
