It is quite ironic, and disheartening too, to hear that NIU teachers are lazy, cannot teach and are not doing well in research. This is absolute nonsense.

It might well be that what the Illinois Board of Higher Education NIU faculty negative report means is as the Igbos in Nigeria would express it: oil in one finger spills around the rest. But the truth is that the report is unfair to the many hard-working teachers that I know.

If there is any single student at NIU who can speak for NIU teachers—especially in the area of research and publication—I am the one. Why? My years of service at the Village Commons Bookstore and Kinko’s Copies put me in the position to say that NIU is among the top 30 universities in this country in research and publication. I have seen books and articles of international repute published by NIU teachers.

Not leaving out any department, I can say at the point of writing, I have seen books and articles from accounting, biostatistics, biology, computer science, communication education (adult, reading, education, psychology) history, geology, English, political science, philosophy and research areas to name but a few written and published by NIU teachers.

The IBHE has forgotten people like Dr. Jeff Chown of the communication studies department and other teachers here at NIU who have been decorated with all kinds of accolades for their scholarship and service in different professional areas in and out of this country.

I urge any teacher that might have been hurt by that report to remember Easter or Passover—that even Jesus Christ was nailed because of human nature. If NIU wants to do anything internally about the report, there is only one thing to do and that is, cut down on meetings. This is the Achilles heel that chips away some professors’ office hours and teaching preparation time.

Clifford O. Ihejieto-Aharanwa

Graduate Student

Adult Education