AMHERST — A former faculty member at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has sued the school and her former department chairman, alleging gender discrimination in denying her tenure.
Mi-Hyun Park, who was a faculty member in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department from 2008 to 2016, alleges that department head Richard Palmer treated male non-tenured faculty differently than Park and her female peers. That treatment ultimately led to the denial of Park’s tenure, the lawsuit alleges.
In an email to the Gazette, Palmer referred questions to UMass Amherst employee relations specialist Robert Judge, who did not return email and voice messages Monday. University spokesman Daniel Fitzgibbons said the university has not been officially served with notice of the lawsuit, filed in Hampshire Superior Court on Thursday. He added that UMass Amherst does not comment on pending litigation.
In her lawsuit, Park alleges that Palmer excluded her from opportunities that are important to establishing credentials for tenure — events to which male non-tenured faculty reportedly received invitations. Park also alleges that she and another female employee were the only non-tenured faculty assigned to teach freshman courses during her time in the department.
“In a conversation with Dr. Park, Dr. Palmer attributed the success of a male colleague in the Department to the strength of his academic acumen and, in the same breath, dismissed a similarly successful female colleague as ‘lucky,’” the lawsuit states.
Park’s lawsuit also characterizes Palmer’s attitude toward her first tenure application as “careless, dismissive, and lacking in transparency,” alleging that his actions — including recommending against her receiving tenure — ultimately led to her being denied tenure in 2015.
Park alleges that Palmer said he would not change his recommendation against tenure unless Park secured millions of dollars in new research grants, and that then-Dean Timothy Anderson rubber-stamped Palmer’s decision, according to the lawsuit.
“Dr. Palmer has not presented male tenure applicants with fait accompli decisions recommending against tenure, nor conditioned favorable recommendations on male applicants’ securing millions of dollars in new research grants,” the lawsuit reads.
As of 2015, the department had six female faculty members out of a total of 25 faculty members, and all but one of the department’s tenured faculty were male, the complaint reads. The lawsuit also states that from 2005 to 2010, 100 percent of male applicants were granted tenure, compared to only one third of female applicants.
Park previously bought her case before the university’s Office of Employment Opportunity and Diversity, which did not sustain her grievance, according to the lawsuit. After the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination declined to take action on the case, Park filed suit against Palmer and the university.
Park’s attorney, Nicole Horberg Decter, did not return a phone message seeking comment on the lawsuit, and on the actions of the Office of Employment Opportunity and Diversity and the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination.
Park’s lawsuit comes amid a growing conversation, both nationwide and at UMass Amherst, about gender discrimination in science, technology, engineering and math fields, commonly referred to as STEM.
For example, a report was recently commissioned in the university’s Polymer Science and Engineering department after several sexual misconduct complaints involving faculty. The report found, among other problems in the department’s culture, “conduct antagonistic toward women.”
At UMass Amherst there were 556 STEM faculty members in 2017 and 156 of them were female and less than a quarter were people of color, according to statistics the university provided to the Gazette.
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.