Updated: 11/26/2009 11:32:56 AM
By Jennifer Brooks, The Tennessean
As professor-turned-convict Pamela Holder prepares to appeal her yearlong prison sentence, a review of her university personnel files revealed no evidence of her legal troubles.
Holder, the former head of the nursing program at Middle Tennessee State University, was convicted on four counts of bank and wire fraud in April and has a string of legal and financial woes that dogged her through most of her decade-long tenure at the school.
But as recently as May - a month after she became a convicted felon - Holder received a sterling evaluation on her job performance at MTSU. On Tuesday, Holder's court-appointed attorney filed an appeal to Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. She remains out on bond, pending the appeal.
Holder was convicted of using another woman's identity and credit history to take out $2.4 million in bank loans to purchase a $1.5 million home for her family. It was one in a string of bizarre financial dealings, which included bankruptcies and angry creditors across the Metro area. But in spite of the fact that court records show that Holder's university paycheck was being garnished to repay her creditors, none of it was a factor in her job reviews, even after she was charged and convicted.
Nevertheless, MTSU Nursing School director Lynn Parsons praised Holder's superior job performance.
"During the fall 2008 semester, she was given reassigned time to retool her education strategies and build a program of research," Parsons wrote.
During the fall of 2008, Holder was on trial, accused of four federal felonies and facing up to 30 years in jail - a fact not mentioned in the evaluation.
"Dr. Holder is an extremely effective online nurse educator," Parsons wrote in a letter dated May 17, 2009. She gave Holder top marks in all categories, including "credibility."
Holder's personnel documents, obtained through an open records request to the university, reveal Holder as an administrator well-regarded by her superiors but detested by some of the faculty.
"Seems to be a pathologic[al] liar," one member of the faculty wrote in the spring of 2003, toward the end of Holder's contentious four-year term as head of the department.
Her detractors in the department described her as: "very dishonest and dishonorable," "will lie when it is easier to tell the truth," and "does not display genuine 'caring.'"
Her supporters wrote: "She holds her head high and provides outstanding leadership to a group of pit vipers who would like to see her replaced with themselves," and "Dr. Holder's patience with this often rigid and high-strung faculty is nothing short of saintly."
Messages left for several faculty members seeking comment were unreturned.
Holder left her position as head of the nursing school in 2003 - a shift the university declined to describe as a demotion. Although her evaluations paint the picture of someone running a department divided by "conflict and hostility," there are no mentions of financial misdeeds.
In May 2003, the nursing school held a vote. Seven out of nine faculty members voted "no confidence" in Holder. Only one expressed confidence in the director, records show. She left her post that June and became interim associate dean of the college of basic and applied sciences - with an $8,000 salary boost.
After Holder was sentenced this month, MTSU announced that it would begin reviewing her tenure contract. For now, she is still on faculty. As of last year, she was earning an annual salary of $87,000.
