We’re testing using AI-powered tools to provide an audio version of this story. While this audio recording is machine-generated, the story was written by human journalists.An email landed in Ted Roberts’ inbox one morning last April. The acting dean of Tarleton State University’s liberal and fine arts college, where Roberts taught history, wanted to meet that day. He asked her what it was about, but got no response. At 4:45 p.m.
A Tarleton professor he had been close to had become the department chair and offered Roberts a job. The university, whose main campus is in Stephenville, about an hour southwest of Fort Worth, was dealing with an influx of students, and though Roberts wanted to go to law school, he agreed to help his former mentor so long as the position could be as a visiting professor rather than an adjunct. One semester turned into two, which turned into a yearslong profession.
Before the meeting, he did some research. He typed up a list of parking fees at other Texas A&M universities as well as those at other institutions outside the system. He included the average annual salary at Tarleton, according to Glassdoor, and listed the salaries of the university’s top earners . His research was cursory, he said, and there may have been some errors, but he stands by his point.
“Very rarely do things make it to the administration building as quickly as they did after the listening session with the president,” Shouse told Roberts, according to a recording he made of their conversation and shared with The Chronicle. “And I mean from a variety of sources.” Roberts’ colleagues were equally surprised. In a letter to the provost, the faculty senate wrote that Roberts had a “competitive track record” of teaching and service and that his role as a teacher and adviser to many ROTC students was critical. The administration’s decision, they wrote, made faculty feel less safe to speak up.