THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 18, 1994 TAG: 9411180468
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY LENGTH: Short : 42 lines
Carol Kerr, a former Elizabeth City State University education professor who was fired and later reinstated, has been presented with an ``academic freedom'' award by the American Association of University Professors.
Kerr was dismissed in 1993 by the ECSU administration after a lengthy dispute on campus teaching policy.
A few months later, the Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ordered Kerr reinstated with back pay because of what the governors said were irregularities in the method of her dismissal.
Kerr subsequently resigned from ECSU last summer, charging that ``the unfriendliness, the coldness, that has greeted me since my reinstatement made me decide that I could not continue to work in such a hostile atmosphere.''
Kerr, 55, has moved to Las Vegas with her husband, Hugh.
The award by the American Association of University Professors was made known this week by William Kane, president of the N.C. Conference of the AAUP. Kane is a professor of business at Western Carolina University at Cullohowee, N.C.
``You faced a difficult and stressful situation and pressed to insure that your rights as a faculty member were recognized and eventually evidenced in due process,'' Kane wrote Kerr.
``The NC-AAUP Foundation wants you to know that we recognize your courage and persistence as you fought for your faculty rights,'' Kane continued. The AAUP also sent Kerr a check for $150 - ``a small token of our recognition of your efforts to secure your own and thereby every faculty member's due process. . . . ''
A copy of the letter was sent by Kane to Dr. Carol O'Dell, another ECSU professor who became embattled with Kerr in last summer's running fight with ECSU Chancellor Jimmy R. Jenkins over faculty policy.
O'Dell also left ECSU and is now head of the mathematics department at Chowan College in Murfreesboro. by CNB