CSUN University News Clippings

CSUS counselor sues school, professor

(August 20, 2009)

By Laurel Rosenhall

A lawsuit filed by a long-time Sacramento State employee claims that one of the university’s engineering professors has harassed students and staff for more than 15 years and sabotaged graduates’ job prospects, with little response from administrators.

Cici Mattiuzzi, a career counselor in the engineering department, alleges in her lawsuit that professor Miroslav Markovic has jeopardized the university’s relationship with major employers, including Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. She claims in her suit against the school and the professor that she was passed over for promotions because she repeatedly complained about Markovic.

Markovic declined to discuss allegations laid out in the suit filed earlier this month in Sacramento Superior Court.

He said during an interview Wednesday outside his office at California State University, Sacramento, that he decided this week to retire and that Friday likely will be his last day. The fall semester begins Aug. 31, and Markovic, 68, had been scheduled for classes. He said he’s leaving because of furloughs and budget cuts at the university.

“It has nothing to do with (the lawsuit),” he said. “It was quite a logical thing for senior faculty to make the decision to leave.”

Sacramento State spokesman John Kepley confirmed that Markovic has filed for retirement but declined to discuss the lawsuit. The university has not yet filed a response with the court.

Kepley said the university took seriously Mattiuzzi’s allegations that she was passed over for promotion. “We’ve hired an outside investigator to investigate her claims,” he said. “The independent investigator found no evidence of unlawful retaliation.”

Mattiuzzi’s 200-page lawsuit alleges an 18-year pattern of misconduct by Markovic including claims of inappropriate advances toward students and violent threats toward staffers. It includes 150 pages of letters and e-mails to university officials from Mattiuzzi, engineering students, alumni and staff members, as well as employers who hire engineering graduates, expressing concerns about Markovic’s behavior.

“A huge number of people have complained about it,” Mattiuzzi said. “And it’s just like, well, suck it up and ignore it. Graduate and get out of here.”

Markovic and Mattiuzzi both began working at Sacramento State in 1978. Markovic is a tenured professor who teaches electrical engineering; Mattiuzzi helps engineering students land jobs. As the liaison between the engineering department and industry recruiters, Mattiuzzi said many students and employers have complained to her about Markovic over the years.

In 1991, the suit says, Markovic allegedly invited a student to travel with him and offered to pay his graduate school tuition. After the student told Markovic he had gotten a job in Nevada, the suit says the professor called and visited the company, saying the student had cheated and warning them not to hire him.

A company representative reported the calls to Mattiuzzi, who counseled the student to report Markovic’s behavior to the dean, according to the suit. After that, she alleges, Markovic loitered outside the home of the student’s friend and left a threatening letter on the student’s car.

Markovic eventually was put on leave, the suit says, then returned to his position.

Kepley, the university spokesman, said Wednesday he cannot discuss the leave because it is a personnel matter.

S.K. Ramesh, former chairman of the engineering department, wrote a memo in 2002 to the heads of the university’s legal and faculty affairs departments, saying that students had told him of “an escalating pattern of intimidation” in Markovic’s classes.

Markovic allegedly had threatened to fail students who missed his class to attend interviews at PG&E’s office in San Francisco.

“Students who were selected to attend employment interviews with PG&E have expressed serious concerns about Dr. Markovic’s behavior,” Ramesh wrote in the memo, which is included in the lawsuit. “PG&E is a utility company that hires significant numbers of CSUS graduates and is eager to build a long-term relationship with the University.”

PG&E representatives wrote that they were encountering problems with Markovic in the process of recruiting students; their letters also are included in Mattiuzzi’s suit.

A university lawyer responded to Ramesh, the suit claims, and said nothing could be done about Markovic’s behavior.

Nathan Laye, a former student of Markovic’s, graduated from the engineering department in 2002. He said this week that the university didn’t take student concerns about Markovic seriously.

In 2003, Laye wrote a three-page letter to then-President Donald Gerth describing Markovic’s intimidation of students and staff.

“I just get the feeling it disappeared, or got pushed into some file or something,” said Laye, who now works as an electrical engineer in Portland, Ore.

The university did not ignore all of the complaints about Markovic.

The lawsuit contains a June 2008 letter to Mattiuzzi from Peter Lau of the university’s human resources department. He wrote that the university investigated her complaints of Markovic having inappropriate relationships with students but could not find evidence. Lau acknowledged in the letter that Markovic had verbally harassed Mattiuzzi, but he wrote that there wasn’t enough evidence to proceed with a formal complaint.

Publication: Sacramento Bee