Lake Superior State University's Board of Trustees focused on faculty during their last meeting meeting by granting tenure to three professors and approving a labor contract with university instructors.
The board voted unanimously to grant tenure to professors Chad Barbour, Maureen O'Shea and Geoff Steinhart and also unanimously approved a three-year contract with the Faculty Association, which is the bargaining unit for all LSSU teachers.
Beverly White, LSSU director of Human Resources, presented the board with the new LSSU-Faculty Association contract, a three-year agreement that she said was negotiated easily in recent weeks.
"Our negotiations were a very amicable, common-sense approach to what the university can do, and that agreement has been ratified by the Faculty Association," White says.
The board approved the contract unanimously.
In recommending tenure for Barbour, O'Shea and Steinhart, LSSU executive vice president Morrie Walworth said all three have been teaching at LSSU since 2006, are noted for teaching skills and all receive excellent evaluations from their students.
Barbour holds a Ph.D. in English from University of Kentucky. Besides teaching many of the courses that are offered in the English and literature degree program, he has become the primary instructor for Honors English sections. His interests are in American literature before 1865, Native and children's literature, comics and graphic novels.
O'Shea, who holds a bachelor of science in nursing from LSSU and a master's degree in nursing from Michigan State University, is well-known on both sides of the St. Mary's River. She teaches a wide variety of nursing courses with a special interest in pharmacology and women's health.
Besides teaching fisheries courses at LSSU, Steinhart is co-director of LSSU's Aquatic Research Laboratory. He holds a Ph.D. in aquatic ecology from Ohio State University and had finished post-doctoral studies at Cornell University before accepting a position with LSSU.
Writer: Sam Eggleston
Source: Beverly White, LSSU
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