Resign, Dean Jones.
Resign, Dean Jones.
The Issue
On February 11, 2024, Retraction Watch reported that the Dean of the College of Engineering at UNR, Dr. Erick C. Jones, has routinely used the pay-to-publish journal he owns as an outlet for subpar and even nonsensical papers, with the effect of drastically inflating his apparent productivity. In an op-ed, the UNR Faculty Alliance has since cited Dean Jones' appointment as an example of "an ongoing failure of shared governance."
Most charitably, this might be explained as a long series of failures in the peer review process; this alone would seriously undermine Dean Jones' claims of expertise in quality assurance and supply chain management, on which pretense he was hired as CoEn's senior administrator in July of 2022. However, considering the length of the record of such offenses, and the fact that Dean Jones himself, his wife (Felicia Jefferson) and his son (Erick C. Jones, Jr.) are among the most frequent beneficiaries of these "oversights," it is difficult to imagine that these amount to simple accidents.
The students of the University of Nevada are intelligent and hardworking; they rightly expect competence and honesty from the people overseeing their studies. It is clear on the basis of the work to which he willingly puts his name that Dean Jones lacks either the competence or the honesty to execute his office as well as UNR deserves.
In the absence of a better explanation for this behavior than willful academic negligence, and out of concern for UNR's reputation, we demand:
- that Dr. Jones immediately resign as Dean of the College of Engineering; and
- that UNR subsequently conduct a review of its hiring processes, to ensure that senior faculty are held to at least the same standards of academic integrity as are undergraduate students.
These actions are essential to UNR's reputation as an R1 research university, and to the credibility of the degrees issued to UNR engineering students.
Further information:
https://nevadasagebrush.com/2024/02/07/unr-dean-of-engineerings-questionable-research-papers-arise/
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/02/12/torment-executioners-in-reno-nevada/
The Issue
On February 11, 2024, Retraction Watch reported that the Dean of the College of Engineering at UNR, Dr. Erick C. Jones, has routinely used the pay-to-publish journal he owns as an outlet for subpar and even nonsensical papers, with the effect of drastically inflating his apparent productivity. In an op-ed, the UNR Faculty Alliance has since cited Dean Jones' appointment as an example of "an ongoing failure of shared governance."
Most charitably, this might be explained as a long series of failures in the peer review process; this alone would seriously undermine Dean Jones' claims of expertise in quality assurance and supply chain management, on which pretense he was hired as CoEn's senior administrator in July of 2022. However, considering the length of the record of such offenses, and the fact that Dean Jones himself, his wife (Felicia Jefferson) and his son (Erick C. Jones, Jr.) are among the most frequent beneficiaries of these "oversights," it is difficult to imagine that these amount to simple accidents.
The students of the University of Nevada are intelligent and hardworking; they rightly expect competence and honesty from the people overseeing their studies. It is clear on the basis of the work to which he willingly puts his name that Dean Jones lacks either the competence or the honesty to execute his office as well as UNR deserves.
In the absence of a better explanation for this behavior than willful academic negligence, and out of concern for UNR's reputation, we demand:
- that Dr. Jones immediately resign as Dean of the College of Engineering; and
- that UNR subsequently conduct a review of its hiring processes, to ensure that senior faculty are held to at least the same standards of academic integrity as are undergraduate students.
These actions are essential to UNR's reputation as an R1 research university, and to the credibility of the degrees issued to UNR engineering students.
Further information:
https://nevadasagebrush.com/2024/02/07/unr-dean-of-engineerings-questionable-research-papers-arise/
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/02/12/torment-executioners-in-reno-nevada/
Victory
Share this petition
The Decision Makers
Supporter Voices
Petition created on February 12, 2024