Pearson resigns over health, conflicts
By Liz Gobeski
Staff Writer

A degenerative physical condition led to the abrupt resignation of Gwen Pearson, former assistant professor of biology, at the finish of last semester.

“My health condition was deteriorating,” explained Pearson, who became epileptic after being hit on her bicycle by a drunk driver in 1991. “It was getting really hard for me to just function, period. When you have epilepsy, you have to take a lot of drugs like barbiturates, which are sedatives, so they make you really sleepy, and it’s hard to do everything a professor has to do. It’s a grueling schedule.”

“I was really sad to leave,” Pearson said, “but I had asked the college if I could restructure my job, and they said no. So for reasons of my health, I resigned.”

According to Pearson, her ideas for restructuring her job included teaching only part-time, sharing a position, or serving as an adjunct professor for spring semester, so that she could continue to help two seniors who were doing theses under her. Her ideas were refused.

“A tenure track position is a full time position, not a part time position,” said Jeffrey Carrier, vice president of academic affairs and dean of the faculty.

According to Carrier, “the College offered alternatives to Pearson that she declined.” He would elaborate only so far as to say that one of the options she was given was to take time off in the spring, as he said Pearson had requested.

“If they had seen me as worth keeping they would have found a way. They have created positions for people they wanted to keep in the past . . . I wouldn’t compromise, and they wouldn’t compromise. And so that was the end of that,” Pearson said.

Pearson said that if she had taken a semester off, as Carrier suggested, it would have been without pay. She would have also had to provide documentation of her medical condition within 15 days, which was not possible in such a time frame.

“Sometimes I think we forget that the college is essentially a corporation that looks for the bottom line. “It is cheaper for them in both time and money to replace me, and I think if I was working for someone like Exxon, rather than Albion College, that would be easier to remember.”

The effect of Pearson’s resignation was felt all over the College.

“I lost my academic advisor; my thesis advisor. I lost a great professor, and I lost a great friend, someone I could talk to,” said Sabrina Friedline, Howell junior. “You never fell asleep in Dr. Pearson’s class. She’s one of those professors who treats you like a person, and she’s always there to talk.”

“She added creativity, a fine sense of humor, a genuine affection for her students and her colleagues, and a commitment to the goals of a liberal arts education,” said President Peter Mitchell.

“Obviously it’s a loss for the department and we hope we will be able to find someone to contribute to the extent that Dr. Pearson contributed to the department and the college,” said biology chair Dr. Dan Skean.

The biology department had replaced Pearson. Dr. Charles Elzinga was hired on a single semester basis to instruct the classes Pearson was scheduled to teach this spring. Like Pearson, Elzinga is an invertebrate zoologist.

“It was not good luck to lose Dr. Pearson. She’s an extremely intelligent and creative professor who did a lot for her students, especially research students,” Skean said. “So we’re going to miss her, but to find Dr. Elzinga is an unbelievable stroke of good luck.”

“I think that [Elzinga is] an excellent biologist and that he’ll do a very good job,” Pearson said.

Pearson’s exit, however, has not been as smooth as Elzinga’s entrance. “I think some of the decisions the college made were wrong,” she said. Of specific mention was the short notice she received that all of her files would be deleted from the College, including her website on invertebrate zoology, which was rated number one for hits by Lycos and GoTo.

“This bugged me primarily because I intended to leave the material to be helpful to the new guy. Oh well,” Pearson said.

Carrier explained that the deletion of Pearson’s files was college policy. “When any employee resigns and no longer works for the College, their accounts automatically expire,” he said.

Pearson also said that initially the college made it extremely difficult for people to contact her. Carrier, however, said that he was not involved in, nor has any knowledge of such a situation.

Pearson indicated that she will gradually fade away from all contact with the college. “I definitely found out who my friends were. The students were incredible, most of the faculty was pretty silent. I’m going to go to graduation to see my students, and I miss them a lot, and I feel bad, and I loved my job, but it wasn’t worth dying over.”

In the wake of her resignation, Pearson has found another job as an instructional designer for a dot.com company that makes educational websites, although she is not sure if she will continue with such a career permanently.

Those who wish to contact Dr. Pearson should do so via e-mail, at bug_girl@onemain.com, or gpearson@siweb.com.