Former San Antonio professor says he was fired over newspaper op-ed

A former University of Texas at San Antonio professor has sued school officials in federal court, alleging he was fired in 2021 for publishing an Express-News op-ed critical of his department's credit requirements.

UTSA disputes that claim, however, arguing in a court filing that Bruce Smith, a tenured professor in the school's engineering program, was terminated over poor performance and a failure to meet requirements laid out in a performance-improvement plan, or PIP. The university also began discussions about removing Smith months before the op-ed was published, officials allege.

Smith worked at the university since 2001 and was let go Nov. 18, 2021, according to his complaint, filed in April in U.S. District Court in San Antonio. The former professor also filed two amended complaints this fall.

The Current reached out to both UTSA and Smith's attorney for comment. Neither was available at press time.

In his filings, Smith alleges the op-ed, which criticized the engineering program's degree requirements, was the "motivating factor" behind his firing. He also maintains that UTSA President Taylor Eighmy explicitly brought up the newspaper article during termination proceedings.

Smith is asking the court to make UTSA reinstate him. He's also seeking unspecified damages for lost compensation, mental anguish, emotional pain and harm to his reputation.

In the op-ed, published in July 2018, Smith argued that reducing the number of credit hours in UTSA's electrical engineering program from 126 to 120 would lower students' tuition costs by $2,000 while saving taxpayers $1 million annually, according to the complaint. He also said the reduced hours wouldn't diminish the degree.

Months later, on April 5, 2019, university president Eighmy met with the plaintiff to deliberate whether to fire him, according to the complaint. Eighmy ultimately opted to put Smith on a PIP rather than terminate him, the document states.

In its motion to dismiss the case, UTSA's attorneys said JoAnn Browning, then the dean of UTSA's College of Engineering, first recommended Smith's firing due to poor performance in November 2017 — seven months before the op-ed's publication.

Smith was placed on a PIP in June 2019, according to UTSA's filing. That plan was later amended to focus on research instead of teaching after Smith was involved in a bicycle accident, the document also argues.

Despite amending the PIP, Browning determined that Smith hadn't fulfilled the requirement laid out in the plan, leading to his eventual termination, according to the university's filing.

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