Updating an old blog

Jaclyn LaPlaca Ricords works as a Learning Consultant for d'Vinci International, a company that purports to assist teachers improve their performance.

Years before Jaclyn worked for d'Vinci, she worked for Marywood University as a history professor. Her story is below:

As I've indicated before, I don't talk about my workplace too often, but this is a sad story.

Last year was my first year at Marywood. During the fall semester, the group of new faculty would go out from time to time. One of those new faculty was a new history professor, Jaclyn LaPlaca. She had previously taught at Kent State-Stark, and had her master's and doctorate from Oxford.

Jaclyn really was doing well at Marywood. Students loved her. She accompanied students to Guatemala for a service-learning trip. She had begun a major oral history project of Scranton-area World War II veterans, getting their recollections on video, and having a public presentation of their remembrances.

Unfortunately, Jaclyn won't be back at Marywood this year. Turns out, according to the principal (provost) at Oxford, LaPlaca was never granted a doctoral-level degree and her master's-level degree was revoked when she was found guilty of plagiarism. Because of the plagiarism, Oxford expelled LaPlaca.

How Jaclyn was able to get the job at Kent State-Stark is a bit murky. Oxford provides certificates, not transcripts, of graduate work. Apparently, Jaclyn included a copy of her Doctorate of Philosophy certificate from Oxford, their equivalent of a doctorate degree, when she accepted the position at Kent State. When she applied, she said she had defended her thesis and was waiting for faculty approval. Instead, Oxford had asked Jaclyn to return the certificate they had given her before she was expelled, but she had not. It is unclear how she had such a document in the first place.

Just as Jaclyn was leaving Kent State-Stark, someone at the Stark campus had anonymously contacted Oxford questioning her degree completion, Frances Lannon, the principal at Oxford, contacted Gayle Ormiston, Kent State's associate provost for faculty affairs, in August 2005 to inform him that Jaclyn did not have any graduate degrees from Oxford. Ormiston did not take any action against Jaclyn, or even inform Marywood at the time. The story broke in the Kent State newspaper, the Daily Kent Stater, about six weeks ago. Normally, no one would notice a student newspaper during the summer, but Kent State's is online. Shortly afterwards, even Marywood students were submitting comments about Jaclyn's story to the Daily Kent Stater website (welcome to the Internet Age!). Once the story became that public, Jaclyn's fate was sealed.

I want to shout at her, "What were you thinking? Did you really think you could get away with it? How fair is it that you had a tenure track job in a field where many with legitimate credentials are having to teach adjunct at two-three schools just to make ends meet?"

Then again, what else was she to do? She either kept up the ruse or gave up her career. She was desperate.

The softie in me wishes there was some way to keep her -- reduce her in rank to instructor, take her off the tenure track, cut her salary, etc. Of course, that's impossible. It would be a terrible message to students -- both the fabrication of her credentials and the plagiarism.

It's too bad that someone who had so much promise finds her career in tatters.