It's been years since Columbia State University has been exposed as a flagrant diploma mill, even on national television, yet there are still "graduates" out there teaching for RA schools. The latest victim is the University of Texas-San Antonio. https://www.utsa.edu/ucat/appendiceA.cfm Scroll down to almost the bottom, under "Freshman Initiative, Core Mathematics Program". Under "Lecturer II" is......drum roll please..... Linda Passaniti, Ph.D., Columbia State University.
A Response Hello, I stumbled upon this by accident -- and I can see it has been a long time since this thread was posted. I have to defend Linda Passaniti. I am a close family member and know her situation. She has a serious chronic illness. She was very close to completing a PhD in Applied Mathematics from Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering when she was no longer able physically to put in the required (very) long hours of research, etc. that is part of a prestigious and demanding degree. She settled for the degree she currently has so that she could at least teach a small part of what she an intense passion for. I'm not angry by the comments. Had I been you I would have come to the same conclusion. She probably would not like that I have posted this -- and does not know -- but I have a tremendous amount of love and respect for her and was there as worked hard to complete the degree at Johns Hopkins that she wanted even as a child. I am currently working on my own graduate degree in Chemical Engineering at a top 5 institution. I know what I'm talking (writing) about. I only hope that I could do what she was able to if were to be in her situation.
Dragging up this old thread does absolutely nothing to help Linda, IMHO. Becoming an academic fraud only diminshed her efforts and in no way completed them.
Is this the same Linda Passaniti? https://www.ktbs.com/news/murder-for-hire-trial-day-3/article_752598ad-b9a7-56b2-8503-c84f19c9069e.html: https://www.ksla.com/story/22271368/passaniti-sentenced-to-life-for-conviction-in-murder-for-hire-plot/: Eerie.
Does that demonstrate a pattern of being willing to pay for various things with “suspect” outcomes/return on investment? How did this rabbit hole start for you today?
Amazing (and to Dustin too). I somehow think that resurrecting this old thread didn't exactly make a case for Passaniti or clear the record (assuming it is the same person and there seem to be points of connection).
Ok, but how did you remember a nondescript thread, about a nondescript person, that was posted 14 years ago?!
He responded to someone else (new) who claims to be close to the woman and revived the thread to defend her. Dustin did some digging and it was very interesting.
I'm not surprised at all, Dustin. I often find links to DI on Google searches, where we've at one time or another discussed the search topic. In fact, I seem to remember in my early days here, maybe 2008 or so, our internal search-thing did not appear to be functioning properly for a while, and someone advised that using Google would probably find at least some of the previous DI posts on the search topic, until our search-thing was fixed. As I remember, it worked not too badly. "Somebody's Watching Me..." (Kennedy Gordy - a.k.a "Rockwell")
That post is from 2009. I think they're still labeled as a "new" member because they have fewer than 10 or 20 posts.
Yes it was my bad. Dustin did resurrect the thread because of something he saw on TV. I scrolled back and missed the date of the new member's post. Still interesting though! Wonder what that person would post now.