Spurned Surgeon’s Lament: ‘One Kick . . . After Another’

Dr. Marjorie Mosier has accomplished many firsts in her career. She was the first female student in the Jules Stein Eye Institute at UCLA and one of the first female surgeons at the school. She was among the first women to teach ophthalmology.

In 1983, she would have been the first female surgeon granted tenure at UCI, but that honor has not come to pass.

Mosier, who was hired by the UCI medical school as an assistant professor in 1976, said she was told she was denied tenure because she didn’t do enough research. But Mosier believes she wasn’t promoted because she is a woman. She has undertaken a 5-year battle to force the school to grant her tenure.

In 1986, she sued UCI in U.S. District Court, alleging sex discrimination.

Bucking the System

Mosier, a composed, reflective woman who exudes a quiet determination, said she is not a complainer and did not easily decide that she would have to buck the system to force what she calls “simple justice.”

“I really delayed because I didn’t want to be vindictive or hurt the university. I just wanted them to conform to the law, to take a leadership role in setting standards for fairness,” she said. “I sued because I felt the school was rigidly immobile in approaching the issue.”

Leona Miller, a former associate professor of medicine at UCI who is familiar with Mosier’s work, said she was surprised to learn that Mosier had been denied tenure.

“She is top-notch in her field,” said Miller, now director of the Diabetes Medical Group at St. Vincent Hospital in Los Angeles. “I think her situation tells you that there is something wrong” at UCI.

A UCI spokeswoman said the “university has investigated the case and found no evidence of discrimination” but declined further comment.

Male Colleague Got Tenure

Mosier contends that she has been treated differently from men in the department, and in her legal complaint cites the example of a male colleague hired at the same time as her, with roughly the same experience and background, who was granted tenure.

Mosier said she was not consulted when, on two occasions, her duties as chief of retina services at UCI and the UCI-administered Veterans Administration Hospital in Long Beach were turned over to what she believes were lesser-qualified men--in effect, demoting her.

When another woman joined the department several years ago, the two, despite protests, were required to share office space, though no men had to share space, Mosier said.

“You have the feeling there must be something terribly wrong with you,” she said. “It’s demoralizing to work in a situation where you get one kick in the gut after another. It takes a great emotional toll.”

In 1986, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission upheld Mosier’s charges, finding that she was given “limited funding to support her research . . . assigned a disproportionately heavy clinical teaching load . . . and that clerical support, equipment, travel and leaves of absence were not equally provided” to her.

Her case is scheduled for trial next month.

Claibourne Dungy was a professor in the UCI School of Medicine for 13 years before leaving earlier this year to take a post at the University of Iowa.

Dungy, who is black, was tenured and had attained the position of chief of pediatrics at the medical school but said he left because UCI failed to match an “excellent offer” from Iowa, which had recruited him heavily.

Many critics point to examples such as Dungy’s as evidence that UCI is not committed to retaining minority faculty. “My opportunities for advancement and promotion were much better by moving” to Iowa, he said.

Dungy said UCI made a counteroffer long after Iowa’s initial offer had been tendered and improved but that it still did not match the package offered by the Midwest school. One UCI administrative official who told him not to act until the two had spoken, never got back to him, Dungy said.

“And no one ever spoke to my wife (who ran the Summer Equal Opportunity Program at UCI) to ask what could be done to make things more comfortable for us to get us to stay,” he said.

University officials declined to respond to Dungy’s comments, citing “confidentiality of personnel matters.”

Dungy came to UCI in 1975 as an assistant professor with a medical degree from the University of Illinois, a master’s degree in public health from Johns Hopkins and a residency at Stanford University Hospital.

He was denied tenure during his first review in 1982 “for reasons that were never sufficiently explained,” but he reapplied and was subsequently promoted. Dungy said that although he has endured problems typical of all junior faculty, his department at UCI was generally supportive of him. Yet, he called the overall campus environment “unsupportive for minority faculty.”

He noted that at the time he joined the medical school in 1975 there were three black physicians. Now there is only one.

“Other schools in the UC system and major universities around the country have been successful in increasing the numbers of black faculty and promoting them through the ranks but not at UCI,” he said.

One major problem is Orange County’s reputation as a conservative, largely homogenous community. “There is a great difficulty in networking, finding other blacks or individuals with common interests and values,” he said.

Dungy said he found a far different environment at Iowa, where 15 black professors are in the medical school, and 14 blacks are tenured campuswide.

“Blacks are represented at virtually all levels of the administration and faculty,” he said. “At UCI you don’t have blacks in key roles that you can go to for leadership, support and advice. That makes it very difficult for junior faculty.

“The interesting thing to look at is not how many have left but what has happened to minority professors who have gone on. By and large, they have bettered themselves by leaving UCI. You have a situation where you have people who have capabilities, but the institution is not interested in advancing them.”