The faculty leadership group at Southern Illinois University’s Edwardsville campus called Thursday for embattled university President Glenn Poshard to resign.
The 45-5 vote by the Faculty Senate comes a week after a separate faculty committee at the university’s sister campus in Carbondale concluded that Poshard, who was found to have committed “inadvertent plagiarism” in portions of his master’s and doctoral theses, should fix his work but remain as president.
“We are hoping he will resign,” kinesiology professor Kay Covington, Faculty Senate president, said Thursday night. “The academic integrity of the university has been undermined. The plagiarism policy is not being applied equally across all groups. Our students have questioned us on this already.”
The university’s board of trustees said last week that Poshard will remain as president.
“It is disappointing that a more deliberative effort was not made to understand the well-reasoned decision reached by the faculty review committee which, during a lengthy adjudication proceeding, ruled out a recommendation of resignation,” SIU spokesman David Gross said in a statement.
The seven-member committee in Carbondale concluded that while portions of Poshard’s work were lifted from other sources, he was following the same loose standards used by his peers.
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