More Cracks in UNR's College of Engineering
A recap of our weekly reporting plus bonus content.
While the UNR communications team is touting how its engineering school brought in $33 million in research awards in 2023, topping 2022 by $11 million, other headlines concerning the College of Engineering have been less kind in recent days.
A widely read blog called Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science this week got attention on X by declaring: “It’s bezzle time: The Dean of Engineering at the University of Nevada gets paid $372,127 a year and wrote a paper that’s so bad, you can’t believe it.”
The Nevada Sagrebush followed up with an in-depth piece titled “UNR Dean of Engineering’s questionable research papers arise.”
Earlier in the week, multiple local media outlets reported that UNR mechanical engineering professor Feifei Fan who had previously alleged rampant work related sexual abuse in a lawsuit against the university is no longer an employee there, with her last day as staff January 19th.
The engineer professor she accused in her complaint Yanyao Jing also had his last day on January 19th as well, right before the current Spring semester started.
Our Town Reno spoke to several students in engineering off the record who were all aghast at recent developments, one of them calling it a “stinking s*** show.” They said they felt it was embarrassing for the degree they are working so hard to obtain.
According to the blog post written by Andrew Gelman, a professor in statistics and political science at Columbia University, the well-paid UNR dean frequently publishes extremely short articles with a three day or less peer review turnaround in a journal published by a company which he presides. Many of the articles according to the blog post don’t make much sense and appear to have been written with AI.
The story has not really caught on yet outside of X but the Sagebrush did add an official UNR emailed statement today from communications officer Jessica Lozada at the top of their story indicating:
“We take such claims seriously, and it is standard practice for the University to review and investigate, which we are currently in the process of doing.”
In the Feifei Fan legal dispute, despite causing student protests and online activism previously as well as statements from UNR, including a pledge for improving the Title IX office by the university’s president Brian Sandoval, the departure of both the accuser and accused from faculty staff has so far generated few ripples either.
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