Tech policy targets unproductive profs
Miller named distinguished mycologist
Instructor's novel read on Canada's NPR

Tech policy targest unproductive profs

Tenured professors at Virginia Tech whose work is repeatedly judged unsatisfactory will face tough sanctions, including dismissal, or suspension without pay, the board of visitors decided in August. Faculty would be reviewed by a panel of faculty and administrators.

The move completes Tech's post-tenure review policy. Colleges across the country are adopting similar post-tenure reviews to deflect public criticism -- unwarranted, some academicians say -- that the tenure system unfairly guarantees the jobs of professors whether or not they perform adequately. In 1996, the General Assembly made faculty raises at Virginia's public colleges contingent on the state's approval of schools' post-tenure review policies.

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Miller named distinguished mycologist

Orson K. Miller Jr., professor of botany and curator of fungi at Virginia Tech, has been named the Distinguished Mycologist of 1997 by the Mycological Society of America.

The award is given annually to an individual whose made outstanding contributions in research and service to the MSA. Miller was described as "the best known figure in American mycology on an international basis." His 1972 book, Mushrooms of North America, has probably done more to promote interest in mushrooms than any other book in American publishing history," according to the society.

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Instructor's novel read on Canada's NPR

Canada's national public radio, CBC Radio, broadcast a dramatic reading of Simone Poirier-Bures's novel Candyman in September. Poirier-Bures teaches English at Virginia Tech. Her novel, set in the 1950s in Halifax, Nova Scotia, is the story of the coming of age of a young woman in a French Acadian family.

Poirier-Bures' fiction and prose have been published in numerous literary journals and in five anthologies; she is also the author of That Shining Place, a memoir.

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