Jim CatanzaroBig cat Jim Catanzaro is no stranger to controversy, but Thursday his Chattanooga State Community College faculty hit him squarely with a "no confidence" vote.
"We as the faculty of Chattanooga State Community College no longer have confidence in Dr. James Catanzaro in his capacity as the president of the college," reads the simple, damning message.
Of the 75 or so professors present, 79 percent voted in favor of the statement, 3 percent voted against and 18 percent abstained. (Faculty Senate members voted to count their ballots in percentages, not whole numbers). The college employs about 240 full-time faculty, including about 40 at the Tennessee College of Applied Technology.
Votes of no-confidence are a relatively rare occurrence on college campuses. Tennessee Board of Regents spokeswoman Monica Greppin-Watts told Times Free Press reporter Kevin Hardy that she didn't know the last time a Tennessee Board of Regents school president was the subject of such a vote.
This vote comes after Catanzaro and the college have become the subject of investigations from both the Tennessee Board of Regents and the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury over Catanzaro's hiring of a Barbados woman who lacked an official college degree as his No. 2 administrator. (Barbados is Catanzaro's favorite vacation spot -- so much so that in 2013 he created a Chattanooga State academic partnership there with the University of the West Indies.) The college spent $5,000 on moving expenses for the new assistant and $2,050 on payments to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for the costs of her visa, Chattanooga State records show.
If the partnership and the hiring et al weren't enough to create questions, add the facrt that the new assistant said she had a degree but didn't, and Chattanooga State didn't seek an official college transcript as policy required. Then within about a year, her salary as the college's chief innovations officer jumped from $90,000 to $108,000. Most of the faculty at the college are adjunct and the most experienced adjuncts make under $1,500 to teach one course.
While new hire Lisa Haynes didn't have any higher education experience, she did have some business experience. In Barbados in 2013 she managed a construction supply company, a private lending firm and a boutique-blog called "Island Girl Lifestyle" for Caribbean women living overseas.
When all of this came to light, Catanzaro blew it all off as though the 10 Commandments were being questioned. After all, this was the man who proposed what resembled a Monastery Chapel in the Bog for a wetlands area on campus. Never mind wetlands -- we're talking a church here. It should be noted that Catanzaro said his assistant thought she did have a degree from Duquesne University. Later -- with his help -- she received a retroactive one.
But the Tennessee Board of Regents and the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury are asking hard questions.
A TBR document used to interview former and current faculty members references the chief innovations officer's hiring and lack of official degree. It also asks pointed questions: Do you have first-hand knowledge of any instances or occurrences that you feel were unethical or improperly handled by upper management? Have you personally experienced any work situation where you felt pressured by upper management to act or respond inappropriately or in a manner you did not otherwise intend?
These are hardly "nonsense" concerns, as Catanazaro termed them to faculty recently.
Perhaps to throw off these new concerns, Catanzaro needs to take a cue from Stephen Livesay at Bryan College and just completely wrap himself in God. (Livesay persuaded his college's board to change its more-than-80-year-old statement of belief to exclude opinions that God may have used evolution as part of creation. Instead, the new statement holds that Adam and Eve "are historical persons created by God in a special formative act. ...") Of note, Livesay survived a faculty vote of no confidence.
Perhaps the big cat might use his larger-than-life and no-limits attitude to brand Barbados as the New Jerusalem.
After all, this is the man who defied police orders closing I-75 during a January snowstorm: He steered his car out of the traffic jam, into ditches, down the shoulder. Then he drove the wrong direction down a one-way road. He's got the anointment, you see.
"I don't care what the rules are here," he told himself, according to a news story at the time. "I don't care what the probabilities are. I'm going to go for it and see what happens."
Well, go for it, Cat. Apparently God (and what you saw as opportunity knocking) told you to pitch the Chapel in the Bog (wetlands be damned), and now He and convenient opportunity seem to be telling you Barbados is the way to deliverance.
Who knows -- the faculty didn't fall for it, but the Board of Regents might. Stranger things happen in Tennessee all the time. Or maybe it's just time to retire to Barbados.