ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND TENURE: GREENVILLE COLLEGE (ILLINOIS)1

Academe, May/Jun 2006 by Scholtz, Gregory F, Murphy, Daniel P, Hollinger, David A, Collins, Linda, Et al

This report concerns action taken in December 2004 by the administration of Greenville College to terminate the tenured appointment of Professor Gerald W. Eichhoefer, a Greenville alumnus who seven years earlier had resigned a tenured position at another college in order to accept an invitation from his alma mater to return and help revitalize the college's computer science program. According to the notifications provided by college administrators, the termination of Professor Eichhoefer's appointment was necessitated by a severe budgetary shortfall coupled with his "failure to render satisfactory service." In implementing its decision, the Greenville administration did not afford Professor Eichhoefer an opportunity for an appropriate hearing at which to contest the stated reasons or to examine the possibility that the professor-whose persistent and widely distributed critiques of the college's theological position had provoked considerable hostility-might have been dismissed for reasons that violated his academic freedom.

Greenville College is located in Greenville, Illinois, a community of about 6,500 people situated approximately forty-five miles east of St. Louis on Interstate Highway 70. It dates its founding to 1892, when the Central Illinois Conference of the Free Methodist Church purchased Almira College, a previously existing Baptist women's institution, and established the new coeducational institution in its place, Though the conference relinquished ownership after the first year, Greenville College for over twelve ensuing decades has continued to maintain its affiliation with the founding denomination and is today one of six colleges and universities that form the Association of Free Methodist Educational Institutions. (The others are Central Christian College. Roberts Wesleyan College, Seattle Pacific University, Spring Arbor University, and Azusa Pacific University.) Because an ongoing controversy about the college's religious identity is a feature of the events described in this report, that identity requires a brief explanation.

A denomination with 77,000 members in the United States, the Free Methodist Church of North America traces its origins to 1860, when its leaders separated from the main Methodist body because they believed it had strayed from the basic teachings of John Wesley, its founder. In breaking away from their parent church, the Free Methodists, in common with members of the other groups that constituted the nineteenth-century Holiness movement, emphasized Wesley's doctrine of sanctification-the "second work of grace," a postconversion process of moral and spiritual development. Like other contemporary Holiness groups, such as the Wesleyan Church, the Church of God, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, the Salvation Army, and the Church of the Nazarene, the Free Methodist Church belongs to the National Association of Evangelicals, a defining organization for American evangelicalism.

Greenville's foundational documents"-official statements on identity, mission, vision, theological assumptions, institutional goals and objectives, educational philosophy, and academic freedom-describe the college as "a Christian community committed to challenging and nurturing students" and "dedicated to excellence in higher education grounded in both the liberal arts tradition and a rich Wesleyan heritage." The college, furthermore, provides an "education characterized by open inquiry into all creation and guided by the authority of Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience." This identity informs the college's mission, which is to "transform students for lives of character and service through a Christ-centered education in the liberating arts and sciences."

In recruiting students, (Greenville College draws from a wide variety of almost exclusively Protestant churches. In fall 2005, the denominations most represented in the student body were Baptist (11.8 percent), Free Methodist (9.4 percent), Disciples of Christ (6.6 percent), United Methodist (5.2 percent), and Southern Baptist (5.3 percent). The largest block of students (17.6 percent) claimed membership in nondenominational or interdenominational Protestant churches. Only 3.6 percent of students identified themselves as Roman Catholic. According to its annual reports, the college receives financial support-it is not clear how much-from a similar constellation of churches, though the Free Methodists are more largely represented (in 2004-05, about 23 percent of the churches listed) than any other group.

Accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (currently through its Higher Learning Commission) since 1947, Greenville College currently offers baccalaureate degrees in fifty majors (the most popular of which are business, education, biology, visual and performing arts, and psychology). At various off-campus locations and primarily through evening courses, the college also offers an undergraduate major in organizational leadership for working adults and master's degrees in education, teaching, and ministry. In fall 2005, the college enrolled 917 full- and part-time students in its on-campus undergraduate programs and 250 part-time students in its nontraditional programs. Instruction is carried out by fifty-three full-time and fifteen part-time faculty, more than half of whom received their undergraduate degrees from Greenville College. The college is owned and governed by a thirty-six-member board of trustees and administered by the president and six vice presidents who serve as the president's cabinet. The faculty conducts its business in a faculty assembly, whose elected moderator during the events to be described was Professor Donna Hart of the English Department. No MUP chapter has existed at the college, and no current member of the faculty belongs to the Association. Indeed, the only AAUP member at Greenville College in recent veal's has been Professor Eichhoefer. who joined in April 2005 after having turned to the Association for assistance.