From: "Gross, Louis J" Date: Friday, September 10, 2021 at 3:16 PM To: dplowman Cc: "Zomchick, John P" , "Scoggins, Matthew" , "Lyons, Beauvais" , "Gross, Louis J" Subject: Re: Important Update Chancellor Plowman, Thank you for this update. Professor Lyons has been working with the Faculty Senate Faculty Affairs Committee on a set of questions to Provost Zomchick as he suggested that the Faculty Senate meeting in September would be an appropriate time for him to address questions arising from this unfortunate situation. Those questions will be provided to the Provost before the Exec Council meeting next Monday in order to provide time for a response before the Senate meeting the following Monday. One of the issues involves the following section from the Faculty Handbook, and I am concerned that the plan outlined in the letter you just sent is not very consistent with this. The UTK-UTIA Faculty Handbook (3.12.3.1 Suspension or Reassignment Pending Completion of Termination Proceedings) states that “If the university’s final determination after either a UAPA proceeding or an ad hoc hearing committee proceeding is favorable to the faculty member and concludes both that the faculty member’s employment should not be terminated for Adequate Cause and that the faculty member should not have been suspended without pay pending completion of termination proceedings, then full restitution of salary, academic position and tenure lost during the suspension without pay will be made.” Certainly the intent of the Handbook here is to provide lost pay – the letter says nothing about this. Also there seems to be a bit of a catch-22 in this plan since Professor Hu lost his work authorization due to UTK action so it isn’t clear that he can possibly re-attain work authorization without first having his position and employment here restored. We have scheduled time at the Exec Council meeting for discussion on this. ‘ Stay well, Lou -- Louis J. Gross (he, him, his) Chancellor’s Professor and Alvin and Sally Beaman Distinguished Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Mathematics Director Emeritus, National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS.org) Director, The Institute for Environmental Modeling University of Tennessee - Knoxville President, 2006-2007, 2021-2022, UTK Faculty Senate Past-President, 2003-2005, Society for Mathematical Biology http://lgross.utk.edu/