Professors, former MCC president fire back

Mesa Community College has fired 15 veteran fitness professors, including a former college president, arguing they aren’t qualified to teach classes they’ve led for years.

VIDEO: Hear what Theo Heap has to say

The part-time professors, on the other hand, accuse MCC officials of replacing them because of their age, not their qualifications. They recently filed a discrimination complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Theo Heap, 80, has worked at the college since it opened in 1966. He taught classes, coached teams and, for six years starting in 1978, he ran the entire campus as president.

Heap began teaching exercise part time in the late 1980s and expected to continue this semester.

But Ann Stine, chairwoman of MCC’s exercise science department, stripped Heap of his classes.

Stine said she fired Heap when he didn’t show up to teach on the first day of school, Aug. 20. Heap said his classes were taken away earlier and done in retaliation for his efforts to get 14 adjunct professors rehired after Stine fired them in July.

“We have been lied to, discriminated against, treated unethically and delayed every step of the way,” Heap told the Maricopa County Community College District’s governing board at a meeting last week.

College officials vigorously deny discriminating against the teachers.

The department is improving exercise science instruction by making sure fitness teachers have kept up with medicine’s ever changing body of knowledge, Stine said. But college officials admit Stine did not clearly explain the situation to Heap or the other fired professors.

Bernie Ronan, MCC’s acting president, apologized and offered to provide or pay for the required training so they can return to teach.

None of the adjunct professors have answered, said Sonia Filan, an MCC spokeswoman.

Tana Martin, one of the fired adjunct professors, said she and her colleagues remain angry and distrustful.

Non-responses have become common in this dispute, which represents another embarrassing low for the Mesa college.

For much of the past year, news reports have detailed misconduct at MCC and several other campuses within the nation’s largest community college system. Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies raided the colleges in January.

Larry Christiansen, MCC’s longtime president, was fired just weeks later.

MCCCD Chancellor Rufus Glasper pledged widespread reforms last spring. At the same time, Stine said she was planning big changes for her department, primarily a more highly educated faculty.

Professors must earn a personal-training certification from one of three companies that are accredited by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies. The commission is one of many private organizations that higher education relies on to ensure colleges’ instruction reaches expectations.

Stine called the commission the industry’s “gold standard.”

The professors said Stine never told them which certification to get until she had mailed their termination letters.

Stine provided the Tribune a flier she said she distributed to all fitness professors in April explaining the changes. While the document does name which certifications Stine expected the teachers to earn, it states that they are “preferred,” not required.

Several of the fired professors said they spent most of April and May studying to finish a certification from a different company, the International Sports Science Association.

Stine had agreed that certification would fulfill the requirement, said Denver Latimore, a full-time MCC fitness professor. Latimore said he met with Stine in April to see if the ISSA certification would count.

Stine denies every part of Latimore’s version of their discussion. Latimore didn’t come to talk with her until May, she said, and she had never before heard of ISSA.

Stine said she did not agree to accept that certification.

Neither has documentation to back up their claims.

“It wasn’t in writing. You know, I didn’t feel we needed to put anything in writing,” Latimore said. Stine’s “word, from my standpoint, was good enough.”

Stine shares that sentiment. “In hindsight, I would have written it down on every single piece of paper,” she said.

All 15 passed the certification exam, which cost each professor several hundred dollars.

“I assure you, we would not have spent that much money or spent that much time if it wasn’t acceptable,” said Mary Boyd, one of the fired fitness professors. She taught at MCC for 19 years.

Adjunct professors at MCCCD colleges do not have due-process rights. Department chairs have the authority to assign classes to any adjunct professor who meets the basic requirements or to withhold classes from whomever they choose.

Some of the department’s most senior teachers were not allowed back. The termination letter, which Stine addressed to all “lifetime fitness centers faculty,” stated that this fall “has become the semester for change.”

To fill in for the fired professors, Stine said she hired graduate students from A.T. Still University and Arizona State University Polytechnic campus. Stine began recruiting at the universities during the spring before she knew the adjunct professors would not complete the preferred certification.

Heap spent 42 years at the college and helped build it. The gym, which holds most fitness classes, carries his name.

His MCC career is ending with an unlikely title: disgruntled former employee.

“The hardest thing in the world for me is to accuse Mesa Community College of anything,” Heap said.