Faculty Members

Through a series of steps small and large, the Johns Hopkins University Department of Medicine appears to have made major advances in five years to reverse decades of poor results in retaining and promoting female faculty members.The department, the university's largest, was able to change course without involving "set asides" or quotas, according to a report published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.The study's authors said the gains resulted from moves to ensure that women were treated more fairly and generally felt welcomed by the traditionally male department.

THE ADOPTION, by the trustees of Baltimore County's community colleges, of guidelines abolishing tenure for new faculty is sure to be applauded by those in, and chiefly out of, higher education who have been long argued that academic tenure is an unnecessary and outmoded benefit.These critics claim that granting faculty members ''lifetime contracts'' burden colleges with redundant and expensive personnel and protect the lazy, the senile and the incompetent.These criticisms are the result of a widespread misunderstanding of what tenure does and does not do and of the reasons colleges offer it.An award of tenure is not a ''lifetime contract;'' it does not prevent schools from setting a mandatory retirement age. (Federal law does, and that is part of the colleges' problem.

In the past two months, the dean of the University of Maryland School of Medicine has ousted the chairmen of the school's two largest departments and the director of its cancer center in a flurry of moves that has set many faculty members on edge.It was not clear yesterday why Dr. Donald E. Wilson, Maryland's dean of medicine, made the changes.But medical faculty members interviewed suggested two possible factors: a clash of egos between the dean and the two strong-willed department chairmen, and the dean's concern that the school was not sufficiently addressing financial pressures facing it.The departments of medicine and surgery include the majority of medical faculty members, and their leaders tend to exercise great influence within the institution.

The recent series by reporter David Folkenflik showed that higher education can't be improved simply by forcing professors to spend more time on instruction and less on research. These twin components of a professor's job are equally useful to the student body, the good name and the bottom line of most public and private universities.Still, the frustration of students who complain they're taught more often by young doctoral candidates than by tenured professors is understandable. Maryland legislators, tuned into the steady buzz of displeasure across the state and peeved themselves at the seeming reluctance of University of Maryland officials to address the topic, have withheld $21.5 million from the UM system.

WASHINGTON -- Widespread opposition to a $1 million settlement offered to American University's former president to sever his ties to the school has prompted the trustees to schedule a special meeting next month to discuss the offer.The offer to Richard Berendzen was made earlier this month.Mr. Berendzen, a physicist and tenured faculty member, resigned in April after 10 years as president, admitting he had made obscene calls to a woman who runs a child-care service. The woman said he discussed fantasies of sexual relations with children.

ST. MARY'S CITY -- Thirty months ago, the state named St. Mary's College a "public honors college."Yesterday, college officials canceled classes to figure out what that means. The experts at hand: the school's 1,500 students."It's only fitting, as students, that we are given this opportunity, as the changes that will take place will affect us most," senior Alex Kovalski, a student who helped to arrange the event, told several hundred students, professors and administrators who assembled yesterday morning on a residential quadrangle on campus.

Workers can learn Spanish phrases The Center for Workforce Solutions at Anne Arundel Community College is expanding its Command Spanish program into the Washington marketplace this fall. The program teaches English-speaking employees key Spanish phrases and words that are relevant to their specific occupation. Information: 410-777-2732 or aacc.edu/cws. Long & Foster offers scholarship Long & Foster Real Estate Inc. has announced a $200,000 scholarship program for well-rounded graduating high school students entering accredited four-year colleges or universities.

"Space Divided by 3" at Goucher College's Rosenberg Gallery is devoted to the work of three members of Goucher's art faculty: sculptor Stuart Abarbanel, installation artist Allyn Massey and photographer Ed Worteck. The show groups these artists not only because of their status as faculty members but also because their work has something in common: a concern with making the media in which they work a noticeable part of the art. Abarbanel leaves chisel and pencil marks on the wood he sculpts.

Faculty members of the Community College of Baltimore County packed a meeting of its board of trustees last night asking for recognition of their newly formed union. But the chairman of the board, Francis X. Kelly, said the board does not have the authority to recognize the union. He said state legislation would be necessary. More than 70 percent of the colleges 360 full-time faculty members have signed cards authorizing the union an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers to represent them in collective bargaining, union leaders said About 100 people attended last nights meeting, holding signs with messages including "Fairness, Input, Respect."

Faculty members at Bowie State University have voted no confidence in their president, Nathanael Pollard Jr., after a contentious meeting in which he was accused of running roughshod over professors and administrators in his efforts to reform the school.The vote Wednesday was merely advisory, because the University of Maryland System chancellor and board of regents are Dr. Pollard's bosses.Such a move generally signals a breakdown in the ability of an academic leader to guide his or her campus.