uOttawa engineering supervisor bullying scandal

uOttawa engineering – Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), Faculty of Engineering, University of Ottawa – is trying to hide a scandalous culture of supervisor bullying.

This is what three teaching faculty at uOttawa engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (School-EECS), did to a former PhD graduate student of their own with an excellent academic track record and who has been studying at uOttawa for close to a decade, with equally culpable university administrators and with the university President Jacques Frémont looking the other way.

You may also be interested in Disgraced uOttawa President Jacques Frémont ignores bullying problem.

Whistleblower black silhouette yellow background about uOttawa engineering bullying scandal — Whistleblowing about supervisor bullying at uOttawa Engineering for a better tomorrow (image courtesy of hrreporter.com)

University of Ottawa professors Liam Peyton and Andre Vellino sat on the thesis advisory committee of Baha Abu-Shaqra when he was enrolled in the PhD in DTI uOttawa Program, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (School-EECS), uOttawa engineering. Liam Peyton and Andre Vellino denied Abu-Shaqra any academic support when he decided to blow the whistle on his PhD thesis academic advisor Rocci Luppicini for supervisor bullying incidents, specifically for malicious acts of academic career sabotage and specifically after Rocci cut him off from communication and much needed support abruptly after a short postdoctoral fellowship with him. Please see Related content for evidence/documentation.

Luppicini – and Peyton and Vellino – did this shamelessly because they knew they could get away with it: they knew the university will have their backs. They knew there is no accountability for any damage they inflect on a student’s academic career (more on uOttawa’s structural bullying problem).

As far as Vellino was concerned, this type of supervisor bullying and malicious academic behavior is commonplace at the university, he wrote me, adding that I should just get over it and look for other people for help. Peyton did not respond to emails requesting academic support.

Don’t get me wrong, the University administration asked me to fill out forms about my grievances (which would not have helped me in any way – what would have helped me is support from my thesis advisory committee members). I quickly discovered the administration was handling me by being selective about which regulations apply and even about whether or not I can be considered a student.

That’s politics for you.

And it’s a clear case as to why you cannot trust uOttawa with your academic career. It can be hard to know the ugly truth when a corporation suppresses cases of career wrecking by punishing the victim and prefers to handle its bullying problem by whitewashing its public image through PR/propaganda.

I obtained my PhD in Digital Transformation and Innovation in April 2020 from the PhD in DTI uOttawa Program, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), uOttawa engineering on the topic of ethical hacking sociotechnology (thesis title, Technoethics and sensemaking: Risk assessment and knowledge management of ethical hacking in a sociotechnical society).

MDTI uOttawa

To enrol in the PhD in DTI uOttawa Program, a student can first complete a master’s degree from the MDTI uOttawa Program (Master of Digital Transformation and Innovation) and then enrol in the PhD in DTI uOttawa program. Alternatively, a student can first complete a master’s degree from one of the faculties/departments participating in the PhD in DTI uOttawa Program and then enrol in the MDTI uOttawa Program.

Note that the former title of the MDTI uOttawa Program was: Master of Electronic Business Technologies.

Why reform?

I launched Supervisor Bullying (SupervisorBullying.com) to make my story known. But structural reform is needed.

If liberalism is grounded in a belief in reason and an aversion to coercion, bullying has no place in Canadian higher education and all possible measures must be exhausted to restrain bullying.

When things can go wrong, they do.

Some bad apples will always exploit policy holes – and when bullying goes on unrestrained, it becomes culturally ingrained.

We’re especially concerned here with the dreadful imbalance of power between graduate students/postdoctoral researchers and tenured university professors.

The question for good governance is what underlying structure, what policies, exist to minimize the likelihood of bullying of students and of compromising their academic career?

When The Guardian published a series on bullying in academia, bullying victims contributed articles anonymously (see Academics Anonymous).

The numbers are hard to come by, whether nationally or at uOttawa. Because if you blow the whistle, you will be punished by a ruthless corporate system.

The case for policy reform in higher education to curtail supervisor bullying of students and postdoctoral researchers is easy to make. Reform itself is easy to implement.

Through minor policy reforms at the organizational level, one university at a time, Canada can begin to claim a global leadership position in combating supervisor-student bullying by working to eradicate university policy holes that can be exploited by unscrupulous university professors to the detriment of individuals and society.

University students cannot continue to live in constant fear of having their hard work trashed at the whim of a supervising professor.

There is also a great economic ROI potential when Canada gains a competitive edge in the global market of post-secondary education by positioning itself as the country in which a student or postdoctoral researcher is least likely to be bullied.

Suggested reforms

Here are some easily implementable suggestions for improving university policy governing supervisor-student power relations to reduce the likelihood of bullying and exploitation of students at uOttawa and other Canadian universities.

1) Extend the applicability of the provisions of human rights policies to at least 10 years, given that human rights are imprescriptible. Even if a long time has passed on an incident, justice must still be served.

The relevance of violations of human rights cannot be capped at a mere few days–which is what you find in the provisions of the University of Ottawa’s Policy 110 where a student has a five-day window to file a complaint about being harassed by a supervisor. This is just tokenism or window dressing: any half-witted university professor can maneuver the situation, back down momentarily and later on extract “revenge.”

In the context of uOttawa, an expeditious reform measure to reduce the likelihood of an abuse of power happening in the future by a university professor to other graduate students and postdoctoral researchers is to reform Policy 110, to extend its provisions to university alumni for up to 10 years, at least.

In my case, a small change to Policy 110 – extending its coverage from its current five-day timeframe–could have prevented my former supervisor from taking liberty in trying to wreck my academic career (and succeeding in at least making me lose time and money).

2) Two university professors independently are required to give a verdict (recommendation) on moving the PhD thesis manuscript forward to the written evaluation.

3) Regulate and formalize reference letter writing. Reference letters should not be used by supervising university professors as some kind of bargaining chip or as a way to intimidate or subjugate or extort a graduate student or postdoctoral researcher. A document stating the hard facts should not be an instrument of coercion.

4) Establish an amnesty office designated specifically to handle supervisor-student disputes pertaining to intellectual work/issues of authorship and workplace bullying/harassment. Graduate students cannot be penalized or shushed in any way for wanting to speak out and expose demonstrable injustices against them by a university professor.

5) Postdoctoral fellowships with the same PhD supervising professor should be discouraged because it can create a form of professional “dependency” and unspoken and sometimes unfair expectations.

6) Make the eradication of bullying a strategic goal and a corporate value and priority. In this vein, the corporation can deliver awareness training about how bullying and exploitation of students can happen, the possible consequences, and the available remedies and countermeasures.

7) Enact a whistleblower protection policy. Some universities are already doing this.

Bullying is a systemic and cultural problem. And only policy reform, awareness training, and visionary leadership can set the wheel of reform in motion.

MDTI uOttawa

Why reform?

Suggested reforms

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