FULLERTON : Tenure Offer Greets New University Head

Cal State Fullerton’s mathematics department on Wednesday voted unanimously to offer tenure and teaching rights to the university’s new president.

Milton A. Gordon, now vice president of Sonoma State University and a tenured mathematics professor at that campus, will arrive at Fullerton in August to replace retiring CSUF President Jewel Plummer Cobb.

The tenure offer comes after reports that some faculty members felt Gordon’s lack of recent research made him unqualified for a teaching position in the department. Gordon, 54, taught mathematics when he first became vice president at Sonoma in 1986, but his efforts have mainly been in the administrative arena for more than decade.

“This is an invitation of welcome and courtesy to the new president,” mathematics department Chairman James Friel said of the tenure offer. “We really don’t expect the president to be a member of the department in any usual sense, but we welcome him to campus.”

The offer of tenure is expect to win quick approval from the dean of the school of natural sciences and mathematics. The proposal then moves to CSUF’s vice president of academic affairs, and finally to the university faculty’s personnel committee. It is expected to take about a week before Gordon is formally offered tenure, Friel said.