A former Cal Poly professor faces a misdemeanor criminal charge for allegedly exposing himself at the university library last spring.

Shaun Kelly, 50, of San Luis Obispo, will appear in court for a pretrial hearing on Jan. 30. He is charged with indecent exposure. After the charge was filed, he lost his job as an associate professor in the Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering Department.

In a case that will rely heavily on eyewitness identification, Kelly has pleaded not guilty. His attorney, Guy Galambos, had no comment.

According to a report written by Cal Poly’s University Police Department, the following occurred on May 27:

A 20-year-old student was studying at a table on the library’s fifth floor when she saw a man sitting two seats to her left exposing and “massaging” himself.

The student went to the library’s fourth floor, where she reported the incident to campus police, describing the subject as being in his late 40s or early 50s with blond hair, blue jeans, a red long-sleeve shirt and carrying a black backpack. Another witness — a 23-year-old male — said he too saw a man matching that description in the area, though he did not see the man expose himself.

When police arrived at the library, they encountered Kelly, who matched the description of the suspect, walking down a staircase. When one of the officers asked Kelly if he’d been to the fifth floor, Kelly told them he’d been on the second floor. He then said he was headed to his office.

Later, when police went to Kelly’s office, they noticed he had changed his clothes and wet his hair. Kelly told them he’d changed at home because he planned to go for a run in Poly Canyon with his dog.

Because he was wearing different clothing, police said, the witnesses could not positively identify him as being the man on the fifth floor.

On June 4, however, another witness came forward, telling Cal Poly police that she had been studying on the same floor at the library that January when Kelly sat next to her and began masturbating. She did not report it at the time, but she said she read about a similar incident at the library in the Mustang Daily a week or two later.