THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 17, 1994 TAG: 9408170417
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: By MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines
Professor Carol Shapiro Kerr, an Elizabeth City State University child education teacher who won reinstatement to the faculty after she was fired last year, has resigned.
``The unfriendliness, the coldness that has greeted me at ECSU since my reinstatement made me decide that I could not continue to work in such a hostile environment,'' Kerr said Tuesday in Watertown, S.D., where she is spending the summer.
Kerr, with Professor Carol O'Dell, a mathematics professor at ECSU, created campus furors in 1993 when they challenged the policies of Chancellor Jimmy R. Jenkins in separate confrontations.
Both teachers are white. ECSU is a predominantly black institution within the University of North Carolina system.
Jenkins fired Kerr, 55, from her $40,000 job after a faculty committee recommended her dismissal after she had a squabble with an education department supervisor. Charges against Kerr included failing to follow ECSU procedure and refusing to go to a teachers' seminar in New Orleans.
Kerr appealed to the Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina and last March the board in Chapel Hill ordered Jenkins to ``immediately reinstate Dr. Kerr with appropriate back pay.''
Kerr returned to her ECSU job and remained until the 1993-1994 school term ended in May. She said that at first she was made to feel welcome.
``I thought the tensions had relaxed - but they hadn't,'' Kerr said Tuesday. ``Finally, on July 27, I decided to send in a one-sentence resignation.''
During her dispute with the ECSU administration, Kerr filed charges against the university with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Raleigh.
``They still have the case,'' Kerr said. She said she had spent ``a great deal'' of her reinstatement money paying the Raleigh lawyer who represented her before the UNC Board of Governors.
Meanwhile, O'Dell said earlier that her contract on the Elizabeth City campus was not renewed and she subsequently accepted a teaching job at Chowan College in Murfreesboro.
``Actually, Dr. O'Dell is the new chairman of our mathematics department,'' said a Chowan College spokesperson this week.
O'Dell accused Jenkins of making ``racist'' remarks at a faculty meeting last summer. Jenkins later apologized, saying he had been misunderstood.
O'Dell acted as an adviser to Kerr during the faculty hearings that ended with a recommendation for Kerr's dismissal. by CNB