Dive Brief:
- University of Illinois trustees voted Thursday morning to revoke engineering professor Louis Wozniak's tenure, firing him effective immediately.
- Issues between the 75-year-old and the school's administration began around four years ago when he felt he was wrongfully passed over for a student-selected teaching award with a plaque and $500 prize presented at a dinner.
- Things spiraled downhill from there with accusations of publicly embarrassing a student, videotaping students without consent, approaching students about the following year's award and sending seniors an email in which he improperly joked that he only remembered the names of those he'd had sex with.
Dive Insight:
Known to students as "Woz," the well-liked but controversial professor's termination may be a first for the university. A faculty committee decided in January that he shouldn't lose his job despite acting inappropriately in one instance, though that was dependent upon the condition that he not share on his website a private conversation he had with a students about the 2009 teaching award. Wozniak, who was on paid suspension since 2010, refused to remove the conversation, which resulted in his case going before the board of trustees. As far as that award? It was ultimately revealed in a faculty report that he received 9 of the 49 student votes—more than any other professor.