Penelope Kyle will now be a tenured professor of business law

RADFORD -- The Radford University Board of Visitors voted unanimously Thursday to make President Penelope Kyle a tenured professor of business law.

"We wanted to help connect her to the academic side," said Wayne Saubert, the faculty's representative on the board. "We wanted her to be one of us."

Kyle, who practiced law in Richmond, earned a law degree from the University of Virginia. But her only teaching experience came as an assistant professor of English at Thomas Nelson Community College in Hampton for six years in the 1970s.

"She does not teach, but now she can," Saubert said. "In today's decreasing resources, it's a potential pick up of at least a class."

Rector Thomas Fraim said, "It's an honorary thing and, I think, a way for the faculty to acknowledge she's doing a good job."

Tenure is considered a bulwark of academic freedom, providing professors some insulation from administrators' pressure.

"For the most part," Saubert explained, "tenure means a professor can't be summarily discharged without justification."

Typically, he said, a professor can apply for tenure after six years. The applicant compiles a package explaining why he or she deserves tenure. The department's personnel committee would review that and make a recommendation to the department head. The dean, provost and board of visitors must all approve after that.

In Kyle's case, Saubert said, the personnel committee realized she wasn't tenured, reviewed her resume, decided she qualified and started the process that ended Thursday.

"Normally, presidents come in with tenure," Saubert said. "Primarily, we've hired people, before President Kyle, out of academia."

Jordan Kurland, associate general secretary of the American Association of University Professors, said it's not unusual for university presidents to be professors, too. At some schools, it would be remarkable if the president weren't qualified to be a tenured professor.

John Casteen, the University of Virginia's current president, is an English professor. Virginia Tech President Charles Steger is a professor of architecture.