Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

A stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) has been ac­cused by a pro­fes­sor of un­eth­i­cal be­hav­iour-to the point of cheat­ing to gain a de­gree.

The stu­dent is sched­uled to grad­u­ate lat­er this month with a Doc­tor of Phi­los­o­phy. But the pro­fes­sor, Dr James Speight, al­though no longer at the state-run uni­ver­si­ty, was still hop­ing that of­fi­cials would look in­to the ac­tions and mo­tives of the stu­dent. He said the stu­dent's ac­tions were ques­tion­able at the time of sub­mit­tal of the first draft of his the­sis. Speight was an ad­junct pro­fes­sor of chem­istry and vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor be­tween 2005 to 2009.

Speight spoke to the then provost, David Mc­Gaw, telling him about the stu­dent's con­duct re­gard­ing his work but that got no at­ten­tion. Fol­low­ing Speight's com­plaints, for­mer vice-provost for post grad­u­ate stud­ies, Prof Adel Sharaf, rec­om­mend­ed that a com­mit­tee be set up to ex­am­ine the con­cerns raised about the stu­dent. Sharaf said he al­so pre­pared a 75-page fold­er which was sub­mit­ted to a for­mer act­ing pres­i­dent and oth­er uni­ver­si­ty of­fi­cials but they all ig­nored the sit­u­a­tion.

Even though he left UTT in 2009, Speight e-mailed the cur­rent provost and act­ing pres­i­dent Dr Fazal Ali in May about the stu­dent but al­so got no re­sponse de­spite his re­quest that "you please look in­to this to pro­tect the good name of UTT."

Ali did not re­spond to the Sun­day Guardian's e-mail sent on Fri­day.

'Is­sues re­flect bad­ly on UTT'

The Sun­day Guardian ob­tained a copy of Speight's e-mail which de­tailed the stu­dent's ap­proach to a doc­tor­al de­gree. Speight wrote, "I have been ad­vised re­cent­ly that plans are un­der­way to con­fer up­on (name) the de­gree of Doc­tor of Phi­los­o­phy.

"Since (name) was un­der my su­per­vi­sion while I was at UTT as a vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor and since I have nev­er been in­formed by the ver­bal word or by the writ­ten word that I was no longer the su­per­vi­sor/men­tor of (name) there are some is­sues that you need to be brought to your at­ten­tion.

"These is­sues re­flect bad­ly on UTT and I have no qualms about ac­cus­ing (name) of un­eth­i­cal be­hav­iour to the point of cheat­ing by (name) in or­der to gain the de­gree." Con­tact­ed in Wyoming, US on Fri­day, Speight stood by his e-mail. He said one of his ma­jor is­sues while at UTT was the stu­dent who was un­der his di­rect su­per­vi­sion.

He said the stu­dent was at first "an easy fel­low" but lat­er stopped talk­ing and be­came..."I don't know what to call it...in­di­vid­ual op­er­a­tor, some­thing of that na­ture." Speight said he was hired by UTT's first pres­i­dent Prof Emer­i­tus Ken­neth Julien in 2005 but left in 2009. He did not want his con­tract re­newed be­cause "I didn't like what I was see­ing."

'Stu­dent's the­sis was of poor qual­i­ty'

He claimed in the e-mail the stu­dent's the­sis was of poor qual­i­ty. "In fact, I be­lieve that the poor and un­ac­cept­able con­di­tion of the the­sis is di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to the ef­forts by (name) to avoid meet­ing with me dur­ing my time at UTT. Every time I set up a meet­ing date and time with (name), he was al­ways un­avail­able at the ap­point­ed time.

"I re­port­ed this to the provost at that time (David Mc­Gaw) who promised to look in­to it but nev­er did," Speight stat­ed in the e-mail. Speight al­so said in the e-mail he was nev­er ad­vised of sev­er­al of the stu­dent's pub­li­ca­tions, nev­er giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­view them pri­or to be­ing pub­lished and nev­er saw a reprint of the ar­ti­cles.

He said he asked the stu­dent sev­er­al ques­tions such as:

• Who wrote these pa­pers?

• Was any of the writ­ing re­pro­duced ver­ba­tim in the the­sis?

• Why was I not ad­vised of these pub­li­ca­tions?

• Why was I not giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­view these doc­u­ments pri­or to pub­li­ca­tion?

• How much of the pa­per did you write and was your own work?

• Are the con­clu­sions ac­tu­al­ly yours con­clu­sions?

For­mer vice-provost: It's a pe­cu­liar case

Sharaf, pro­gramme pro­fes­sor of en­er­gy sys­tems, who was ter­mi­nat­ed last De­cem­ber said in an e-mail that the case of the stu­dent "is re­al­ly a pe­cu­liar one." He said, "The way UTT han­dled my writ­ten mem­os re­quest­ing full as­sess­ment of Dr James Speight's of­fi­cial and re­peat­ed com­plaints is be­low stan­dard and re­flect the way things de­te­ri­o­rat­ed at UTT fol­low­ing my ter­mi­na­tion based on my stand in this is­sue and oth­er is­sues."

Sharaf claimed that Speight was mar­gin­alised, treat­ed un­fair­ly and dis­hon­ourably. He said he sent more than six mem­os and e-mails to the uni­ver­si­ty's hi­er­ar­chy to look in­to the com­plaints and ac­cu­sa­tions of mis­con­duct by the stu­dent but they were ig­nored.

'UTT has tremen­dous po­ten­tial'

Asked about his thoughts of the uni­ver­si­ty, Speight said he still be­lieved it was "a good idea to have a tech­ni­cal­ly ori­ent­ed uni­ver­si­ty in a re­pub­lic that is re­ly­ing on its nat­ur­al re­sources for sur­vival." He said more tech­ni­cal peo­ple were need­ed in­stead of aca­d­e­mics.

"UTT still has po­ten­tial. It needs...I don't know what it needs...right, and I am just mis­quot­ing this...maybe the right kind of man­age­ment, the right kind of at­ti­tude. I re­al­ly don't know." Speight said he was one of the few peo­ple who was brought in­to UTT with re­al in­dus­tri­al and com­mer­cial ex­pe­ri­ence. He has a PhD in chem­istry, a DSc in ge­ol­o­gy and a PhD in pe­tro­le­um en­gi­neer­ing.

"I still be­lieve that UTT has tremen­dous po­ten­tial," Speight said.