Photos by Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times

Moira Baker (center), a member of the Radford University faculty senate, speaks at a special meeting Tuesday between senators and President Penelope Kyle. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the senate's Oct. 22 vote of no confidence in Provost Wil Stanton's leadership. Baker said that when confronted about problems, Stanton has either evaded questions or given answers she said she could not believe, undermining her trust in his leadership.

Radford University President Penelope Kyle listens to a member of the faculty senate in Heth Hall on Tuesday. Kyle said she would take the senate's comments into consideration.

RADFORD -- Faculty senators from Radford University asked President Penelope Kyle to replace Provost Wil Stanton at a special meeting called Tuesday to discuss a no-confidence vote taken by the senate last month.

Until Tuesday, Kyle had made no public comment on the 29-16 vote at the senate's Oct. 23 meeting. Faculty addressed Kyle, who attended at the invitation of the senate, in respectful, but strong terms Tuesday.

"I think you need to replace Dr. Stanton," said Matthew Franck, political science department chairman.

Franck said he was on the search committee that chose Stanton, a longtime Radford administrator, as the university's second provost in 2007. But he said that Stanton failed to stand up for the faculty during several controversial administrative decisions, including a widely despised expedited program review conducted last spring.

"I really believe we need to replace Provost Stanton," English professor and senator Moira Baker said.

Baker, also director of the Women's Studies program, said that Stanton had failed to consult faculty according to established principles of university governance on major issues such as the revision of the strategic plan and a rushed revision of the core curriculum.

Some faculty, including Baker, have accused Stanton of failing to stand up to former board of visitors Rector R.J. Kirk when Kirk dismissed and ridiculed faculty concerns.

Baker said that when confronted about problems, Stanton has either evaded questions or given answers Baker said she could not believe, undermining her trust in his leadership.

"Departments have been ripped apart without the chair even being consulted," communications professor and senator Gwen Brown told Kyle.

Other departments have been merged without any consideration of whether it made "curricular sense" to combine them, Brown said.

"Faculty are beginning to see staying at Radford as professional suicide," she said.

"I just wish someone had come to see me, called me, wrote to me" or approached me in the parking lot "to tell me how you feel," Kyle said. "I think I would have jumped in with both feet."

Senators asked Kyle why a letter signed by 65 faculty and sent to her long before the October vote did not get her attention.

Kyle responded that "that letter absolutely would have been taken more seriously by a variety of people" if senators had come to her in person.

When asked what it would take to persuade her to remove Stanton, Kyle said she could not make personnel decisions at a public meeting.

In an interview later, Kyle said she would take the senate's comments into consideration, along with information she's gleaned from a dozen other meetings with faculty over the past two weeks.

Kyle said she expects to make a decision about Stanton's future "certainly before next semester. Nobody should have that hanging over them."