UTSA profs lose jobs over deal on landBy Melissa Ludwig -
SAEN
The University of Texas at San Antonio has fired two tenured engineering professors for allegedly violating the school's ethics policy when they bought a piece of land in Helotes that students were studying for a class project.
In letters sent last month, UTSA President Ricardo Romo accused Alberto Arroyo and Chia-Shun “Rocky” Shih of putting their personal business interests above those of the students when they bought the parcel last September, forcing the students to abandon their project midyear and start over.
Romo also faulted the professors for ignoring a department boss' warning to avoid such conflicts of interest and for failing to tell students or administrators about the purchase.
The professors' behavior violated an ethics rule barring state employees from “making personal investments that could reasonably be expected to create a substantial conflict of interest between the employee's private interest and the public interest,” Romo wrote in a July 25 letter.