Akella v. Regents of the Univ. of Cal.

• Decision Date: 16 February 2021
• Docket Number: H045886
• Citation: 276 Cal.Rptr.3d 250,61 Cal.App.5th 801
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: Ramakrishna AKELLA, Petitioner and Respondent, v. The REGENTS OF the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Respondent and Appellant.

61 Cal.App.5th 801

276 Cal.Rptr.3d 250

Ramakrishna AKELLA, Petitioner and Respondent,

v.The REGENTS OF the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Respondent and Appellant.

H045886

Court of Appeal, Sixth District, California.

Filed February 16, 2021

As Modified on Denial of Rehearing March 26, 2021

Attorneys for Appellant: The Regents of the University of California, Charles F. Robinson, Margaret L. Wu, Michael R. Goldstein, Los Angeles

Attorney for Respondent: Ramakrishna Akella, John Gregory Derrick, Michael Joseph DeNiro

Bamattre-Manoukian, J.

In this appeal we address whether the instructional workload policy of a department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, authorized the department chair to assign an additional course to a professor to compensate for deficiencies in the professor's fulfillment of his standard teaching workload. Professor Ramakrishna Akella refused to teach the additional course, which he believed department chair Brent Haddad had no authority to assign. Haddad, together with Joseph Konopelski, then dean of the school of engineering, filed a disciplinary complaint against Akella. A hearing committee of the Academic Senate Committee on Privilege and Tenure found that Akella had violated the Faculty Code of Conduct. The chancellor adopted the committee's recommendations and imposed disciplinary sanctions. Akella sought review by writ of administrative mandate. The superior court ruled in Akella's favor and ordered respondent, the Regents of the University of California (Regents), to set aside the disciplinary order. The Regents appeal from the judgment of the superior court. We find that substantial evidence in the record supported the university's decision and reverse the judgment of the superior court.

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND¹

A. Department Workload Policies and Course Load Dispute

The Department of Technology Management (department) is part of the University of California at Santa Cruz (university) Baskin School of Engineering. The department houses the technology and information management degree programs. Haddad became the department chair shortly after the department was formed in 2013.

The department adopted an instructional workload policy. The document, effective spring 2013 and titled "The Technology Management Department Instructional Workload Policy" (workload policy), described in pertinent part the teaching mission of the department and instructional workload for faculty members. Paragraph (a) of the workload policy addressed the "annual departmental course load." It stated, "The standard annual course load for a faculty member in the ... program is five course equivalencies. Of these, three are formal 5 unit courses at the undergraduate or graduate level and two are for the advising, mentoring, research supervision, and training activities associated with our graduate and undergraduate programs." The workload policy stated that each course counted "as a single course equivalency," except for research group seminars which were not "formal courses" but counted "toward the fourth and fifth equivalencies."

Paragraph (b) of the workload policy described "[a]dditional teaching responsibilities" to include activities like supervision and support of research projects, grant applications that support student research, conducting research group seminars, academic mentoring and advising of graduate and undergraduate students, teaching assistant training and mentoring, curriculum maintenance and revision, and advertising and outreach for the department. The workload policy specified exceptions to the standard course loads based on teaching or other leadership responsibilities outside of the department, sabbaticals, and course buyouts.

In a separate paragraph titled "Course Scheduling," the workload policy stated that the department chair is "responsible for assigning courses to meet the needs of the undergraduates and graduates" in the program. It described procedures for scheduling course assignments among faculty members and stated that the chair "resolves any differences and has final authority for the teaching schedule."

Professor Akella joined the department as a faculty member in 2014. Haddad provided Akella with a copy of the workload policy in an e-mail from March 2014 and asked him to review it, "since it frames our expectations of year-to-year teaching." In a curriculum planning e-mail to department faculty in January 2015, including Akella, Haddad reminded the faculty that under the workload policy, "5 courses per year are expected, one can be reduced for equivalent graduate advising, and one can be reduced for equivalent undergraduate advising. The balance of one's schedule depends on other things, such as one's service or research demands. Of course the prime commitment is providing our curriculum."

The dispute in this case arose when Haddad informed Akella that he would be assigned four "podium courses" to teach in the 2015-2016 academic year. The term "podium course" refers to a regularly scheduled course.

Haddad explained in an e-mail from January 2015 why he assigned Akella four podium courses, rather than three. Haddad wrote to Akella, "I put you down for four classes in [academic year] 15-16 because you are not participating in any undergraduate advising or undergraduate curricular leadership roles. Also there are no offsetting service or research activities that justify reducing your teaching load below 4 courses." Haddad testified at the disciplinary hearing that Akella had no undergraduate advising or curricular leadership roles at the time and a "catastrophic" record on graduate advising and graduate curricular leadership. Haddad believed that he would have been justified in assigning Akella five podium courses based on that record, but he limited it to four courses to leave room for Akella to "turn around" his graduate advising.

Akella refused to accept the assignment of four podium courses. He expressed in meetings with Haddad that his contributions to the department were underappreciated. He rejected one of the course assignments based on his areas of expertise and also disputed that Haddad could assign a fourth podium course under the workload policy. Haddad responded to Akella's concerns about the teaching assignments in an e-mail exchange from July 2015. Haddad wrote, "The assignment of 4 classes is not a penalty. It is a fair sharing of the curriculum based on your overall performance and contribution in research, teaching, and service. In the coming years, ... if you improve in these areas, it will certainly be reflected in your teaching load."

In e-mail correspondence from January 2015 with Kathy Beattie, academic personnel manager for the school of engineering, Haddad responded to Beattie's request for "clear metrics for measuring all of the faculty's course equivalencies." He compared his assignment of four podium courses to Akella against Akella's teaching and advising record and that of other department faculty members and their course assignments. Beattie told Haddad that the explanation he gave was clear and the assignments were reasonable.

Akella continued to dispute Haddad's authority to assign him the fourth podium course. In September 2015, Akella wrote to Haddad, "Departmental policy is three 5-unit courses per year. There is no policy permitting you to assign me 4 5-unit courses per year as you did .... [¶] I will accept an assignment of three courses. I will not accept an assignment of four courses." Haddad responded by reiterating that department policy allowed the chair to assign "up to 5 courses," and that while the standard course load was three courses, he had assigned four because "you did not meet the performance level in 2014-2015 for a standard 3 course load in 2015-6." Haddad tried to accommodate other concerns that Akella raised by allowing him to "buyout" one course assignment and by substituting the course that Akella claimed he was unqualified to teach with a different assignment. Akella responded by confirming the two courses that he would teach and his buyout of the third course, and repeated that he would "not be teaching" the fourth course "or any other course assignments beyond the two" that he had agreed upon.

Discussions about the dispute continued between Haddad, Beattie, and dean of the Baskin School of Engineering, Joseph Konopelski. In e-mail correspondence from September 2015, Konopelski told Haddad that he and Beattie had been discussing the matter. Konopelski confirmed that Haddad's assignment of four courses to Akella seemed reasonable based on the available data.

In November 2015, Akella filed a grievance about his teaching load and other issues with the "Academic Senate Committee on Privilege and Tenure" (Privilege & Tenure). In January 2016, Akella's attorney also wrote to the provost and executive vice chancellor, as the chancellor's designee under the Academic Senate bylaws, requesting that the chancellor ask Privilege & Tenure to appoint a committee to hear a preemptive disciplinary case against Akella for his refusal to teach the upcoming spring quarter course. He proposed that an advance ruling on the course load issue would enable the parties to avoid likely harm to the students who had enrolled in the course that Akella "will not teach." The provost responded that she did not support Akella's request.

Privilege & Tenure denied Akella's grievance in a letter from February 2016. The letter stated that as to teaching load, "it is the prerogative of a chair to assign teaching duties, and the chair's action in this case does not seem unreasonable. The chair is in the best position to balance the demands of advising and supervision of individual students against time devoted to formal courses. The ‘standard’ courseload is only a guideline, and not a limitation on the chair's assignment of courses."

Haddad was not aware of Akella's efforts to obtain a preemptive ruling on the teaching load grievance and expected...