Incoming Chancellor Michael Martin is under scrutiny at New Mexico State University about the handling of plagiarism allegations.
Martin is investigating allegations about the masters’ theses of two former NMSU professors – John Moraros and Yelena Bird, according to Wednesday’s The Las Cruces Sun-News report.
Moraros is quoted by the Sun-News saying the allegations are a “‘public smear campaign’ to make sure they never work again.”
Martin told The Daily Reveille on Wednesday he was approached by two faculty members expressing their concern about potential non-original material in the theses.
“While I was at the library, I took a look at the theses, and I found some suspicious language,” Martin said. “I asked three different people officially by e-mail to look at it and give me their opinions.”
Robert Buckingham, NMSU health sciences professor, and Laurence Creider, NMSU library sciences associate professor, were two of the people Martin asked to evaluate the theses.
“I [told them] I only took a few minutes to look at one section, and in that one section I found some identical verbiage between the two theses,” Martin said. “[I stepped] aside because I don’t want my own angst over these two people to cloud my judgement.”
Buckingham told The Albuquerque Journal both theses had different topics – Bird’s was about tobacco use among sixth-graders in Ciudad Juàrez, Mexico, and Moraros’ was about partner violence toward pregnant women in Juàrez.
Creider told Martin in an e-mail that there were similarities in the methodology of both theses.
In the e-mail, Creider said on Page 38 of Bird’s thesis, “The purpose of this process was to compare completeness of responses to the instrument, as well as to ensure that the question in the instrument were clearly understood by sixth grade students” and on Page 72 of Moraros’ thesis, “The purpose of this process was to assess completeness of responses to the instrument, as well as to ensure that the questions in the study were clearly understood by the participating pregnant women.”
“While both Drs. Bird and Moraros mention each other in their acknowledgments and while it could be expected that they would talk about their work to each other, the similarity of the wording in the two sections leads me to conclude that they either looked at each other’s work or have very, very good memories of oral exchanges,” Creider said in an e-mail response to Martin.
Creider told Martin he looked into other theses led by Larry Olsen, who was the thesis adviser for both Moraros and Bird, to determine if the similarities were because of his instructions.
Martin wanted to see if there was any substance to the plagiarism allegations and to determine whether or not they had “practiced something short of academic integrity.”
Martin had previous conflicts with Moraros, who is Greek and Hispanic, and Bird, who is black, beginning in March because their contracts were not renewed at NMSU, and the racial accusations that followed.
“That specific decision was made at the department level, then the college, then by the provost,” Martin said.
Martin said he asked his senior-most professors to conduct an evaluation of the renewal process to determine if the policies were followed.
Following a month and a half investigation, the professors reported to Martin that the decision did not violate NMSU’s policies.
Buckingham told the Journal that Martin threatened him with the release of a “three-inch file of dirt” unless he filed plagiarism charges against Moraros and Bird.
“I did have a conversation with Dr. Buckingham, who released all of this to the press,” Martin said. “He’s the one who took this public before we had any chance to do this evaluation.”
Buckingham was unable to be reached for comment by press time.
Martin said he would hope that as the senior professor of the health sciences department, Buckingham would try to be a part of the evaluation and rectification of the issue.
“Instead, for reasons that are unclear to me, he went out on this tirade about how this was unfair and went to the press,” Martin said.
The Journal quoted Buckingham as saying Martin was irate and red-faced when he confronted him about the plagiarism allegations.
Pearl Hawe, health sciences assistant professor, said Martin did not appear to be combative, aggressive or threatening, according to an e-mail response from Hawe to Martin.
“This has been the most miserable experience of my professional life,” Martin said. “These people have assaulted lots of people’s character, including mine.”
Martin said he does not think these attacks were because of him leaving NMSU to become LSU’s chancellor, but it may be retaliation for Moraros’ and Bird’s firing.
“All I did was respond to a concern expressed to me by a couple of faculty members who felt they believed that there was some question about the integrity of their master’s thesis and the journal articles that were published by them,” Martin said.
—-Contact J.J. Alcantara at jalcantara@lsureveille.com