((CORRECTION: This article originally described the student with whom Cook was alleged to have had the relationship as “a reesenews.org student editor.” The student was actually “a reesenews.org employee,” not an editor. The erroneous phrasing came from an article in The Daily Tarheel, which has since corrected the mistake. The Brew regrets their error, and ours. – Fern Shen))

Monty Cook, the former Baltimore Sun editor who presided over the firing of a third of the newsroom staff in April 2009, resigned yesterday from his job as a lecturer at the University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication amid allegations that he had a relationship with a female student, according to The News & Observer.

Cook, who is married, had been told over the phone by UNC-Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication Dean Jean Folkerts, that she would recommend his termination, according to the newsobserver.com article.

Deeper reporting on the Cook incident can be found, ironically, at the student publication created recently by Cook, in his role as executive producer of The Reese Felts Digital News Project.

“Conversations of a sexual nature occurred between Cook and the student over G-chat,” the G-mail instant messaging service, according to Reesenews, the student-produced website at the school, which also reported that this is not the first time school officials have received a complaint that Cook was involved in inappropriate online chat with a woman.

According to the article, by Shane Ryan, “a reesenews multimedia journalist:”

“Several members of UNC-CH faculty received an e-mail in May 2010, two months after Cook was hired, with the text of an alleged G-chat conversation between Cook and an unidentified woman. The conversation was explicit in nature. The e-mail was sent by the woman’s husband and received by 25 faculty members, including Dean Folkerts.”

The latest incident has made for some awkward moments for the  student reporters at the school. (From the Twitter feed that runs on the reesenews.org site: “The director of my newsroom resigned due to improper g-chats with a student. I wrote the story. WEIRD.” Adding to the awkwardness, according to The Daily Tar Heel‘s article , the student is  “a reesenews.org student employee.”

J. Montgomery Cook was at The Sun during a low time in the institution’s recent history. Here’s a Brew story about a talk he gave in April 2009, about the organization’s attempt to deal with sinking circulation and revenue and its future as a more web-oriented organization.

That was right before the layoffs.