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Comments and news tips:

Why is this Blog anonymous? Because people who speak up at UO get hammered down. Bang, bang, bang and bang. So post all your comments and news tips here – they are completely anonymous, even to us.

Please post all your comments at the link at the bottom. Comments don’t appear until we approve them so be patient. If you don’t want your comment to be on the blog – even anonymously – we don’t even know who sends them – say at the top of your comment: “DO NOT POST”. We may use any info you provide but will not post your words. Note that there is no way we can respond privately to comments unless you give us an email address.

Info:

A link to the latest UO Foundation IRS 990 form is below. The 07-08 form is full of interesting info we haven’t yet figured out – like $1 million plus payments for “UO President’s Office”, whatever that means. Anyone got a clue read here: 2007-08

(We’ve now heard that these payments were authorized by former Foundation head Karen Kreft, but that the new Interim head Jay Naymet thought they were inappropriate and stopped them this year.)

We’ve had some very helpful tips about Lorraine Davis’s questionable “job”, Frances Dyke’s replacement/replication, Frohnmayer’s golden parachute contract, Bend and Moseley (damn is that a popular subject!) Martinez’s double dipping, the ICC return grab-back, … Thanks!

Several readers have asked about Frohnmayer’s upcoming asian junket. Apparently he is taking a few aides on a tour of Asian universities. Macau has been mentioned – perhaps because of the lack of an extradition treaty. (Nope, saw that movie – you’re thinking Venezuela, friend.) If you’ve heard anything more detailed – as in who is going, where, and most importantly who is paying (just so we can help out with a contribution, of course) drop an email to [email protected]

160 Comments

  1. Anonymous 05/08/2009

    Posted by the Editors, from a reader:“.. the bizarre, paranoid and problematic culture of secrecy at the University of Oregon …”

    And who is hiding behind their anonymity? Unfortunately, you’ve taken a lot of your credibility and flushed it by peddling rumors and innuendo from behind your anonymous blog. The President and Provost make a lot of money. So what? Just because you don’t think you get paid enough, it doesn’t mean they don’t deserve their pay. It’s interesting that you purport to care about the UO, but you fail to see how your vendetta laced sniveling only reflects poorly on you–not the administrators

    UO Matters reply:I hope the attached newspaper article about Jean Stockard, a former UO professor who was hounded into retirement by the UO administration for daring to take the side of two foreign students in a financial dispute will give you some idea for why we are trying to stay anonymous.

    The quote you mention is not from a disgruntled professor – it is from Steve Duin, a longtime columnist at the Oregonian, with a lot of experience dealing with Dave Frohnmayer and other UO administrators.

    The problems we describe in this blog are very serious. We apologize if the language offends you. For years we have tried more polite and discreet approaches to dealing with UO’s problems – with no effect.

    Making detailed information on exactly how excessive salaries for Frohnmayer and his associates have become, on their golden parachute contracts, and their efforts to hide how wastefully public money has spent has been very embarassing to them, and has already produced substantial changes here at UO – and we believe will soon bring more.

    That said, we take your point on the “vendetta laced sniveling” and will try to clean up our style – but not at the expense of the content.

    UO Matters.

    The Reader replies:Thank you for the response. I didn’t expect one in the first place and certainly not something so polite. Now that your blog on has appeared on the local scene (I read about it in EW), I will keep an eye on it and try to understand the issues. My initial take was that this was a sad example of biting the hand that feeds, but I will keep an open mind. For outsiders who have a positive impression of President Frohnmayer and his accomplishments, this type of information creates quite a dissonance. Again, thank you for the gracious response to my rather angry reaction.

  2. Anonymous 05/12/2009

    There was a report last year about an open-book accounting system that is now in use at Oregon State:

    http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/03/07/financialIt seems to me this is the kind of thing that should exist at every public university, so that the public can see where all the money goes. It’s just good government. Perhaps the citizens of Oregon can lobby their legislature to mandate such a system for all the state’s public universities. It’s very cheap in institutional terms, and the only people who would be afraid of it are people with financial dealings they’d like to keep hidden.

  3. Anonymous 05/14/2009

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

  4. Anonymous 05/16/2009

    Professor Sohlberg’s experience is reminiscent of a situation that I observed just a few years ago. Students from another country were being defamed in their home country by staff people associated with the University. The people associated with the University were claiming that the students had been expelled and worse – none of which was true. They were calling news reporters and visiting their former employers. The students were frantic, for this type of rumor mongering could destroy their careers and permanently harm them and their families.

    It was clear that the rumor mongering was retaliation against the students for complaints that they had presented regarding very serious misdeeds of the staff members. Even though their complaints were found to be justified and true, no actions were ever taken against the staff members.

    I tried desperately to get the higher administration (Davis and Linton especially) to intervene and tell the staff members to stop their campaign to destroy the students’ reputations. However, the administration simply ignored my efforts and the students had to combat the actions by themselves and from afar.

    My sense is that the University administration often takes this type of passive aggressive stance. If they don’t actively bully those who question a policy or decision (and they very often do that as well), they will simply step back and let others do the dirty work for them.

  5. Anonymous 05/19/2009

    My impression of what Jim Bean is saying when he says that UO’s administrative costs are 38% of comparators is not that he is comparing salaries of individuals, but that he is comparing total costs for administrative structures.

  6. uomatters 05/19/2009

    You’re correct, that is what he said at the Furlough meeting. Apparently it’s been folklore at UO for a long time, but has never had any basis in fact. See the 38% post. OUS now recognizes this, and told Bean to stop saying this or document it. He couldn’t, so he has fallen back on claiming that administrators are underpaid – but that also turns out not to be true. Hence the deeper and deeper hole. He still won’t just admit he was wrong…

  7. Anonymous 05/22/2009

    Re Moseley travel reimbursements: I’m no friend of JTM,but the attached spreadsheet is for 2005 and 2006, not for 2008-09. At least get your facts straught if you’re going to manufacture irresponsible conclusions.

  8. uomatters 05/22/2009

    The spreadsheet has tabs at the bottom – click on them for different years. The spreadsheet is from a public records request to UO General Melinda Grier’s office, I’m sure she will vouch for it.

  9. Anonymous 05/22/2009

    So, let’s see

    between June and Sept 08 JTM racked up

    $4441.75 reimbursable dollars for mileage

    at about 50 cents per mile that’s

    8800 miles

    its about 125 miles one way from JTM (Eugene) to
    JTM (Bend)

    so that’s about 35 round trips in a 4 month period or

    9 round trips a month …

  10. uomatters 05/22/2009

    Not many courses in session during those months (any?) but the fishing on the Deschutes is pretty good.

  11. Anonymous 05/27/2009

    on 5/8/2009 you said:
    [quote]A little UO history – email us if there are any errors. Until 2006 John Moseley was Provost and Vice President for Finance and Lorraine Davis was Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs. In 2006 Lorraine retired and her job was split in two – Russ Tomlin took the Academic Affairs part, and Robin Holmes the Student Affairs part. That same year Moseley retired and his job was also split in two. Jim Bean is now Provost and Frances Dyke is VP for Finance. [end quote]

    This is a very carefully sliced history. A more balanced view with a baseline from a few years ago: We had Moseley (Provost), Davis (VP Acad. Affairs), Anne Leavitt (VP, Student Affairs), and Dan Williams (VP, Administration), plus the other VPs for Development and for Research. They were replaced by Bean, Tomlin, Holmes, and Dyke. Lorraine only had the Student Affairs portfolio for a fairly short time, and Frances was mostly a replacement for Dan Williams, with the addition of some of JTM’s financial responsibilities. this sure looks like a one-for-one replacement, distracting us from the more serious issues of the huge growth in Associate VPs, support staff, and so on.

    Your stretching of facts (or is it bullshit?) puts into doubt some of your other sleuthing, which is sad, as much of it seems right: funny figures on salaries, lack of reality with regard to Bend and, to a smaller extent, Portland, and so forth.

  12. uomatters 05/27/2009

    Thanks Anon:

    We’ve added a pointer on that post to your comment. You seem like you know this history pretty well and that you believe it should be out in the open. If you see any other errors – or know anything else that you think should be public – please send another comment.

    We’ve got a point of view but we’re not trying to bullshit anyone – there’s enough of that flying around already.

  13. Anonymous 05/29/2009

    Yes, I have known about the IR site for years
    and often go there to get the actual facts – not that having real facts actually does any good around here. People hear only what they want to hear – helluva of a way to plan.

    In any event. To me one of the most striking features of the raw data, and one which most faculty and adminstrators don’t realize is true is that the actual number of tenure and tenure-track faculty has been essentially constant (631 +/- 17) over the last 15 years.

    Thus despite claims of “new programs” and more
    favorable faculty to student ratios, the plain truth as that has been no growth in these kind
    of faculty positions for the past 15 years.

    That defines institutional stagnation!

  14. Anonymous 05/29/2009

    “Who will be the next UO Senate President? Peter Gilkey. After that it may well be Nathan Tublitz, as this Daily Emerald article explains”.

    And wouldn’t that be a disaster for this University. The senate meeting was Tublitz as the back-stabbing, manipulative politico that he is. He should NEVER be senate president. It was nasty, unproductive, and reminiscent of the worst of Chicago and New York politics rolled together. Who the hell does he think he is?? He sure doesn’t represent me. And, no, if you’re wondering, I am NOT an administrator, just a long-time concerned faculty member. But you won’t print this anyway!

  15. uomatters 05/29/2009

    We don’t want this blog to be a place for this these sorts of posts. But this commenter did give the pass phrase: “But you won’t print this anyway!”

  16. Anonymous 05/30/2009

    This is an unproductive attack on Nathan and the whole concept of “disaster for this University” is silly since, by in large, this University may be a disaster already in terns of its overall
    Academic Integrity and purpose.

    All of us can be perceived by any of us in a maximally dismal manner where intentions don’t matter and only accidental outcomes do – this is the nature of Academic Politics. And even though I am just a dog that knows how to type, I would say that you could have a dog as president of the UO senate without negating the overall impact of the Senate.

  17. Anonymous 05/30/2009

    No, it is not unproductive. If Nathan was at all ethical, he would have told Paul that he was going to be nominated. He knew it. He set it up. Then Paul could have asked Andrea to also prepare a “spontaneous” comment. Then there could have been a real discussion of two different viewpoints. But that is not what Nathan did. He pulled a fast one, an end run. While that may be “Academic Politics” so is this. And it doesn’t mean we have to like it or live with it. Or respect the person who did it. Whether you agree with Nathan’s viewpoint or not, it was not a honorable way to get himself elected.

  18. Anonymous 05/31/2009

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

  19. Anonymous 05/31/2009

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

  20. Anonymous 05/31/2009

    With respect to the Bolt article, which was well written and fairly balanced (yet he is not an Academic) – the dog also admires VP Rich Linton for his clever way of claiming that the Reading First debacle was not the catalyst for the first
    version of the heinous COI/COC manifesto. If that’s really true, then I am not a dog. Woof.

  21. uomatters 05/31/2009

    We’ve deleted a few comments that were just too much like personal attacks.

  22. Alex Tomchak Scott 06/01/2009

    E-mails I have just received indicate that Tublitz did win the ballot. I made a post about it, which is here

  23. Anonymous 06/01/2009

    That’s UO faculty governance for you! A sneak candidacy meant to upend the traditional process, a botched election with a very questionable procedure, then a questionable reversal. Makes the hapless Administration look like a well-oiled machine! Perhaps the UO Senate should get some PR lessons from Nike. Just call up the Athletic Director!

  24. Anonymous 06/02/2009

    At least us faculty show up, teach our students and do our research – despite our 80% salaries and offices like in PLC, and the planets crappiest lab space. The administration, on the other hand, apparently won’t do a damn thing unless you pay them 120% of their comparators, give them wood paneled offices with AC, employ a bunch of toadying staff to do their work, and promise them a sweetheart golden retirement job they can do from their vacation homes over in Bend.

    8:35 PM, and I’m leaving now to go home. The lights go out in Johnson hall at 5.

  25. Anonymous 06/02/2009

    Terrific! The senate is as deeply divided as it is possible to be (12-11 vote), Gilkey’s credibility for next year is shot, he and Tublitz will be sniping at each other instead of trying to balance the administration. Tublitz will be under a shadow the year after next, as if he were not polarizing and divisive enough already. Dave F must be enjoying a good last laugh! If that’s too personal, so be it, but I’m just describing the way it looks out here.

  26. uomatters 06/02/2009

    Yes, Dave F has certainly set things up so that anyone who criticizes his decisions gets called “polarizing and divisive”. More to the point, what can Peter and Nathan do to restore some credibility to the Senate? Certainly both of them will want that, as should we all. A joint statement would be a big step forward.

  27. Anonymous 06/03/2009

    Anonymous said “The lights go out in Johnson hall at 5.” Well, if were really on campus after 5 and looked more carefully, you’d know that this is not so. And Saturday and Sunday too. We may have comlaints, but most of those folks work very hard, and do not punch a clock either. Wrong accusations do not help anyone’s case.

  28. Anonymous 06/03/2009

    This forum is going astray. There are real substantiative issues at the UO involving academic integrity, the mission of the UO, the responsible role of faculty governance and the overall interaction between the administration and the faculty. The forum has now degenerated to minor issues involving what time lights go off in certain buildings and the (non)importance of the faculty senate in our overall trajectory.

    Our campus is seriously broken in many respects (and has been for quite some time). This forum is the only place that really exists to express such views and to seek solutions for how to fix some of our ills. With a change in administration, critical yet thoughtful comments in this forum might make an impact.

    -the dog barks

  29. uomatters 06/03/2009

    We agree. We are making a real effort to focus this blog on serious issues regarding UO. Almost all the material we post is carefully documented from public records and that is a huge amount of work. Of course, none of this work would get done without the motivating emotion of our utter outrage over the total incompetence, criminal venality, and pathological ly…

    Wait, must get control of emotions… OK.

    Everyone need to vent a little and we don’t mind posting some of that. It would be nice to have more substantive comments too though.

  30. Anonymous 06/03/2009

    I find it hysterical that you think the UOMUTTERS spoof of your site was put up by UO administrators. It wasn’t. And it’s not “out of date.” The joke is just over.

    But it was fun.

  31. uomatters 06/04/2009

    From a reader:

    You make some decent points about accuracy of admin claims about pay. But you are still far from a complete picture – and I’m speaking as an under-paid tenured faculty. Total compensation, including benefits, is the real measure as you point out for Frohnmayer. Then if you’re talking about faculty pay and want to compare apples to apples, you’d need to know much better the age profiles of the departments you were comparing (much finer than asst/assoc/full breakdowns).

    I agree that more transparency from top to bottom is needed, and am duly outraged by the administration’s lack of frugality in some areas. But this kind of stone-throwing after a point becomes a distraction to addressing real issues we are facing.

  32. uomatters 06/04/2009

    Our response to “some decent…”

    We agree about transparency vs. stone-throwing. But UO Matters doesn’t have an IR department, we do the best we can anyway.

    It used to be the case that UO had great benefits relative to other places. I haven’t seen that quantified recently. If you have, please point me to it.

  33. uomatters 06/04/2009

    From a reader:

    The special $90K funds for “Diversity” faculty are a scandal, as is the entire Diversity program, but don’t forget, the faculty voted to continue and expand this stuff. After the eruption over the wretched Administration diversity plan in 2005, the UO senate overwhelmingly voted — I think it was about 5-1 — to implement the “Diversity Lite” program cooked up at Dave’s instigation after he realized the blunder of the original Plan (which he may not even have read before it was released).

    So there’s nearly as much to blame on the faculty as on the Administration.

  34. Anonymous 06/04/2009

    I find the concept of “under-paid” faculty to be one that very much depends on definition. Yes,
    I am a faculty member at the UO (woof), but am I underpaid. How do I measure this?

    a) Am I underpaid with respect to my faculty peers in my department?

    b) Am I underpaid with respect to average salary of my rank within the UO?

    c) Am I underpaid with my respect to raise a familty in Eugene?

    d) Am I underpaid with respect to my Market Peers (obviously yes)

    e) Am I underpaid with respect to working in the private sector (maybe, maybe not – depends on benefits)

    f) Can I easy my AY underpayment by generating sufficient summer salary (this is a big deal that’s left out of all salary comparisons)

    So, yes, we are all statisically underpaid in comparison to our Market Peers. Will collectively faculty complaints ever change this in the hick state of Oregon. NO.

    Focus your energy on things that we can control (like salary compression) – higher ed will never be value in Oregon and the only way we ever make the statisical correction to “normal” salaries is when the State gives us sufficient money to do this. This did not happen in my past lifetime and its not gonna happen in the present one either.

  35. Anonymous 06/04/2009

    Following up on this last comment with an observation relevant to faculty salaries.

    This “Research” University is actually quite deficient (compared to the size of its faculty)
    in internal summer research award money. The curernt scope of the Summer Awards program is about an order of magnitude smaller than it needs to be and thus can only serve a handful of faculty. Improving the size of this pot can only do good things in terms of both faculty *annual* funding and faculty morale.

  36. Anonymous 06/04/2009

    Frohnmayer’s comments about faculty members in Alex Tomchak Scott’s article are, to put it mildly, vicious in tone. Perhaps even worse, they demonstrate the extent to which he interjects his own views and raw power into what should be faculty governance. If I’m recalling the Charter correctly, the president is just another member of the faculty.

    In addition, empirical data are needed to assess his claim that there are only “a couple [of people] who don’t like my leadership style.” Have others tried to fill out the recent UO marketing survey and been tosssed out and/or had other strange things happen when you express negative views. Several people have told me of this experience.

    If anyone knows the source of funding for this marketing survey or how to get the data it would be interesting.

  37. Anonymous 06/04/2009

    Yes I filled out the marketing survey and consistently marked in such a way to show the perception of the University we were supposed to have, based on the very leading questions of the survey, hardly ever meshed with reality.

    It was a strange, but at least entertaining, exercise. In theory, your supposed to be anonymous in surveys like this.

  38. uomatters 06/04/2009

    I started this survey thinking maybe that Provost Bean had actually decided to get some honest input about faculty concerns. I gave up after two pages of bullshit leading questions.

  39. Anonymous 06/05/2009

    CAS Dean Scott Coltrane actually has been asking CAS heads to answer to a brief questionaire about what they think the biggest problems facing their departments are.

    Jim Bean has never bothered to do anything similar. Too busy working on his career…

  40. uomatters 06/05/2009

    A reader writes regarding the $90K UMRP post:

    Regarding your 6/5 post on the effectiveness of UMRP, you seem to want to make the claim that the professor in question left because he no longer had access to the extra funds. While salary inequity is always an issue when someone talented leaves UO for another better paying institution (like UT Austin), the primary reason this faculty member left was because UO was unwilling to offer his partner a reasonable position on campus, something the other institution was happy to do.

    This blog has the potential to be very productive, but if you don’t want to be known as just the crazy xxx prof who hates Frohnmeyer, it’s important to recognize that issues of retention, etc. are complex and to do your due diligence when making such claims.

    We’ve added an explanatory note to the post.

  41. Anonymous 06/06/2009

    I’d like to expand the “if you don’t want to be known as…” sentiment.
    If we (whoever we are) don’t want to be known as a whiners board, then we should hold off on ad hominem comments like “[Bean is] Too busy working on his career…” Especially when there are two gaping holes in the gripe which led to this ad-hominem whine.

    1) The provost does not have department heads has his direct reports; if he did, he would have way too many direct reports. In any organization, the kind of detailed “what are you facing” survey is best done at a level where the person administering the survey can actually manage to address these concern – that’s why we have an organization tree like every other business with hundreds of employees. I’d actually be worried if the provost were trying to get involved at this level of detail; let the deans do it and then synthesize at the next level up.

    2) What the provost should be doing among other things is figuring out how to improve our revenue situation, and I’ve liked what I’ve seen so far. His plan seems to be A) adding students (and faculty to teach them) B) increasing the percentage of out-of-state students and C) gaining more autonomy in our ability to set tuitions so we can increase them. This sounds good to me, of course with the proviso that the devil is in the details and we’d need to watch issues such as faculty-student ratios, space issues, access of poorer students, etc.

    So, is he “Too busy working on his career” or actually doing is job? So far, I’d say the latter.

  42. Anonymous 06/06/2009

    It’s too early to tell about the provost. He seems to be on board with the overpaid administrator syndrome at Oregon. On the other hand, he has had to work under Frohnmayer. What will it be like with the new president?

    As regards revenue, the thing to focus on is not mainly total revenue, but how it is apportioned. For academic purposes, especially the money actually available to run departments? (“Instruction” in the world of academic accounting standards.) Or for ever-growing administrative and professional “services” — Diversity, Sustainability, Student Life, the list goes on and on.

    This is the kind of stuff the UO senate and its budget committee should be focused on; instead they seem to concentrate on internecine warfare — the recent senate VP election a wonderful case in point — obsessing about the admittedly obscene athletic program situation — and by the way, supporting expanded diversity and sustainability-type initiatives, without any thought to the costs to the academic program.

    Perhaps the new president himself will refocus priorities on academics. I won’t be holding my breath, though.

  43. uomatters 06/06/2009

    Bean has been Provost for a year now, and people have a hard time pointing out any real accomplishments. This is not good. Frohnmayer is the obvious excuse – clearly Bean is not allowed to publicly say anything that contradicts DF, or casts doubt on any of his decisions or policies.

    But what we do know about Bean is damning. He still hasn’t told the faculty the truth about administrative expenses and salaries. At the Senate meeting he even massaged the numbers to leave out $20,000 of his own pay. His claims that Bend makes money are laughable.

    When he repeats these things so earnestly, publicly, and frequently, he makes it clear that he has no respect for the faculty or for the truth about what is happening at UO. When he gets challenged about this stuff he gets defensive, angry, and then just repeats his lies. None of this generates a lot of confidence about his leadership skills.

    But he’s the Provost, not the President. At least he’s good with numbers? Apparently not – the craziest part of the Furlough meeting was when he said that UO’s adminstrative expenses where 38% of peers and then said this was “almost unbelievable.” Actually, it was totally unbelievable – as in made up. Yet Bean believed it, and was (and still is) using it to justify hiring still more administrators. The Provost should at least have a handle on the truth about something this central, before deciding to spend money on his fellow administrators, rather than on the instructional side!

  44. Anonymous 06/07/2009

    Brief Woof:

    In the above, this

    “A) adding students (and faculty to teach them”

    is crucial.

    Some of us believe that such a strategy is counter to Academic Integrity and Scholarship in the sense that we are now creating even larger classes and its unclear *what* kind of faculty are actually gonna be hired. See my earlier comment about the data fact that the number of faculty over the last 15 years here is constant.
    We add instructors and adjuncts to deal with increased enrollment.

    I want to see three things from the new administration.

    1. A committment to improving and expanding graduate education so that we become a Carnegie I Research institution again (which qualifies us for certain kinds of grants).

    2. A committment to fostering real interdisicplinarity in undergraduate degree programs so we can move away from legacy based curricula.

    3. A consistent voice that the academic mission of UO is paramount to its secondary missions.

    Let’s see where we stand on these 3 issues one year from now.

  45. Anonymous 06/07/2009

    uomatters — you are right about the need to focus on instructional rather than administrative (and other professional) expenses. This is where what I said about faculty governance comes in:

    “This is the kind of stuff the UO senate and its budget committee should be focused on”.

    Absent leadership from the president and provost, and given their apparent propensity to follow exactly the wrong priorities, the impetus has to come from the faculty. However, the successive senate presidents are too meek, or too unfocused, or just plain too transient to keep their eye on the ball for more than a year or two at a time, usually less. Ditto with their “budget committee”.

    Look at what happened to the move to raise faculty salaries to competitive levels. All that happened was that the administrators got it into their heads to go on a complete pigout, as uomatters has so aptly demonstrated.

    It would be pretty easy to dig up the real numbers to counter Bean’s claims. About as easy as prying out an elephant’s wisdom teeth. But it could be done. Maybe Tublitz could get it done if he ever gets past his problems with Frohnmayer, Gilkey, and Phil Knight.

  46. uomatters 06/07/2009

    At the moment we are trying to get copies of Frohnmayer’s retirement contract and Lariviere’s contract. OUS is trying very hard to keep both secret as long as they can.

    If Bean hasn’t come clean about the administrative expense issues by then, on July 1 we will start pressing Lariviere to release the data. Might as well find out right away whether he is going to deal honestly with the faculty’s concerns,

  47. Anonymous 06/08/2009

    Jim Bean’s letter about faculty salaries is absurd. That UO is at the bottom of the AAU heap has been known to the Administration since at least 1999. Just read the old “white paper” on faculty salaries and the many reports and revisions. All old Jim needed to do was ask Frances Dyke, if he really didn’t know about this (which I find literally unbelievable).

    Another thing about President L. My vague recollection is that the University of Kansas is right down there near the bottom of the AAU list, along with Missouri and of course the good old UofO. Is this still true and if so is he unaware of it? If things have changed there, what did he do as provost to straighten things out?

    This could either be interesting or just more of the same old bull from the Administration. We’ll see.

  48. Anonymous 06/08/2009

    I have to laugh at the suggestion that Tublitz is the right person to lead the senate to address budgeting issues. At the end of the day, his agenda is to use identify areas which can garner attention and outrage – some rightly and some not – so he can wield some power on campus and get his name in the papers. If he really cared about faculty governance, he would not aid and abet the time-wasting non-academic agenda of Frank Stahl, nor would he have breached senate protocol by staging his little coup. Such theatrics distract from serious issues such as budget transparency – it will be easier for the administration to ignore information requests from a Tublitz-led senate.

  49. Anonymous 06/08/2009

    yes, I must agree
    what ever credibility the UO senate had before this fiasco (and it was low) has gotten even lower.

  50. Anonymous 06/08/2009

    The Dog Barks Again:

    (why doesn’t cut and paste work here more easily?)

    http://oira.unc.edu/faculty-salaries-at-research-and-aau-universities.html

    Gives a full report as of 2008-2009.

    Notes:

    Missouri ranks 74th on this list of 92
    Oregon State ranks 91st

    The University of Oregon no longer qualifies as
    a Very High Research Activity Univesity because we have not paid attention to our grad enrollment and just let this slide.

    From previous data its clear that the UO is
    obviously between 74 and 91 on this list.

    Note that the University of Kansas is number 61
    here.

  51. Anonymous 06/08/2009

    I disagree with the previous comments on Tublitz. Sure he has an ego and likes hearing himself talk – don’t all us professors? I’d say he’s been on the wrong side of some debates – like expanding the senate to include staff. But anyone who takes a serious look at UO’s current shape has to believe that the faculty can no longer go along with the administration like sheep, and Tublitz will not do that.

  52. Anonymous 06/08/2009

    Okay fine, the UO Senate starts to act like non-sheep. That’s gonna inspire me? That’s gonna
    change our direction? So yes, the Senate can start issuing bolder proclamations but how is it in a position to actually implement new policy other than by indirect suggestion?

  53. uomatters 06/08/2009

    Discussions are still in the planning stages, but clearly a military wing will be needed. SPQR.

  54. Anonymous 06/09/2009

    The choice is: develop a significantly better and more extensive working relationship with the administration, or take some extraordinary action to force them out. Maybe with Frohnmayer leaving we can focus more on the former and less on delusions of the latter.

  55. Anonymous 06/09/2009

    Actually, we were kidding about the legions. But at this point in the broken relationship between admin and faculty it is their turn to make a serious and costly signal of their desire for improvement. Instead we’ve got Bean still telling the SBC that he still believes his 38% number. This is so far from honest dialogue it’s …

  56. Anonymous 06/09/2009

    In regards to salary data, we need to see so much more than at the link if we want to have any shot at understanding beyond a vague “we need more money.” First, total compensation with benefits (I do think the contributions we get to retirement are relatively good) needs to be included. Secondly, both raw numbers and cost-of-living adjusted numbers should be listed (there are classic outliers such as UCSB which make sense once one does cost-of-living adjustments). Third, comparisons need to be finer than just asst/assoc/professor, especially at the professor level where it depends on whether you have more senior full professors or more recently promoted ones. Fourth of course is some break-down by school or better yet department.

    Finally, and this might be out of our reach but who knows what the AAU has, is some understanding of correlation between salaries (adjusted in various ways) and various measures/rankings of department quality. Such correlation should be compared to correlation with other factors (probably limited in accuracy of measurement) such as perceived level of support, number of graduate students, teaching load, etc.

    Looking at this list, it is clear that pay isn’t everything – WashU in StL is 14th but they aren’t even close to that in my field. Looking at state politics and the current economic situation, we aren’t having across-the-board 10% raises soon. So while we should rightly ask for those raises, we should also understand what works for attracting talent for departments – both on campus and elsewhere – who have done so without necessarily the most cash. That’s our job, and it is especially the provost’s job. Let’s see the full picture.

  57. Anonymous 06/09/2009

    You were kidding, but there are plenty of loose cannons who have dreams of some kind of campus revolution.

  58. uomatters 06/09/2009

    Good points. All this is the job of the IR people. They know what’s going on – but no one in administration wants to hear what they have to say. At this point we really just have to wait to see what Lariviere does. The alternative is to go union, which is looking better and better.

  59. Anonymous 06/09/2009

    Most of the “fine tuning” of the data that “Anonymous” calls for has been done, to some extent, by the UO senate and its budget committee. e.g. total compensation rather than salary. Cost of living comparisons between UO and its comparators. Considerations of relative length of service. Breakdown by department.

    Take a look at that old “white paper” and its sequels, all available with some hunting at the UO senate website.

    The overall picture doesn’t change much when you do the fine tuning: UO faculty are grossly underpaid compared to those we would like to think of as our competition. Compensation helps make up the gap, but far from completely. Cost of living in Eugene is probably a bit on the high side. etc etc

    uomatters — what are “IR people”?

  60. Anonymous 06/09/2009

    Ah, the selected “Big Ideas” just got posted.

    Typical.

    The selected things have almost nothing to do with our academic infrastructure and they all look like marketing gimmicks to me so that the UO can say they are investing in green. Greenwashing is more like it.

    While many of the Big Ideas might have been difficult to implement, at least some of them had to do with improving our core academic progams, infrastructure, and quality.

    Those were ignored.

    I am particularly displeased that the Library proposal to scale up undergraduate research was not chosen. These seems like a no brainer at the
    Research University.

    In any even, once again, we are pilot project obsessed but will do nothing to address our current academic deficienies. For instance, one common thread to many proposals was the need to improve General Education.

    While I guess all you need to do is to make it Green …

  61. uomatters 06/09/2009

    Here’s the email from Bean announcing the “Big Ideas”

    Colleagues:

    The Big Ideas evaluation committee has been working diligently. They did a thorough analysis of each proposal submitted and have recommended selections to us. We agree with their recommendations and have been meeting with these groups to inform them of the next steps. The five Big Ideas in the first phase of phased focus are:

    Sustainable Cities: How do you plan, build and retrofit cities in sustainable ways targeting the intersection of green buildings, communities, business and policies.

    The Americas in a Globalized World: Diversity and internationalization as keys to rethinking the past, present, and future of the hemisphere’s populations, cultures, and economies.

    Global Oregon: How do we rework liberal education to form not just good citizens, but good citizens of the world?

    Human Health & Performance: How do we maintain health and enhance performance in the modern world.

    Green Product Design: Integrating materials, product design and business models to supply the world with sustainable products.

    Each of these groups will work with us during the summer to develop their organization.

    We thank all the Big Idea authors for the time and thought that went into their proposals. There were many worthy proposals. We will continue to work with these groups to gain funding and prepare for further promotions to Big Ideas. We will be sending all authors comments from the Evaluation Committee.

    Provost Bean

  62. Anonymous 06/09/2009

    I can just envision the Newscast/Press Release:

    UO Committed to Becoming Greener (and I assume
    they are not referring to the ever accumulating
    mold in our ancient classrooms …)

  63. Anonymous 06/09/2009

    The “Trite Ideas” mostly playing on the diversity, green, sustainability fads, not real academic or intellectual pursuits. Mostly marketing, as already noted.

    It fits right in with UO — and not just the breathless Nike sports marketing.

    Take a look at the sciences at UO. This used to be an area of real strength. Now it’s been hijacked by a few people, largely in one department, who have grabbed a good deal of pork barrel funding for themselves, and jumped on to the “green” and “sustainability” fluff that’s sweeping the nation’s campuses.

    Well, at least maybe diversity has crested, but there’s not much to a lot of the science stuff that UO money is going for.

    Meanwhile, I hear from colleagues in the sciences that real science is languishing. There’s a direct connection — the pork and overhead money being directed at the fads, whatever discretionary money there is going down the drain.

    UO will undoubtedly show a big drop in the latest National Research Council rankings due out soon. Frohnmayer et al will find plenty of ways to rationalize this, and with some truth, but it’s also largely a matter of dull and often perverse leadership at UO.

    June 9, 2009 2:12 PM

  64. Anonymous 06/09/2009

    I am also disappointed that scaling up research as part of our undergraduate curriculum was not chosen. I thought it was a shoe-in. Plus, with the Library’s take, it would have been a pretty unique approach spanning both humanities and sciences and very timely. We are now awash in information, so the value of university as repository is much different than in the past (though still of course crucial in any sense). Our value is more in generating, evaluating, navigating and synthesizing – and our undergraduate curriculum should reflect this.

    Who was on the committee choosing ideas, anyways?

  65. Anonymous 06/09/2009

    Equally startlingly is there is no selection of anyting to do with Web 2.0 and other technologies. Geez – what is going on here. This will become part of our future whether we like it not – isn’t it best to learn how to leverage it in an academically sensible way

  66. Anonymous 06/10/2009

    In praise of UOMATTERS

    Don’tlet this go to your head.

    Ever since I pointed out this blog I have received a wide variety of faculty reactions. They typically fall in to the following 4 categories.

    1. The maintainers of the Blog are hate-mongers sesrving their own agenda

    2. By academic definition, everything that is in a blog is bullshit

    3. Oh joy, this is my opportunity to dump anonymous dirt on someone or some topic

    4. Finally, an open form where some real feelings, opinions and data can be expressed in regards to the current state of the UO.

    Number 4 matters and in all my time here at the UO, no such forum has been present before – and don’t tell me the UO senate is the right forum for this.

    Numbers 1-3 go along with territory of trying to make number 4 possible.

    So thanks for making number 4 possible and don’t let those in the 1-3 camp discourage you or others from sticking to number 4 as the mission.

  67. uomatters 06/10/2009

    President Frohnmayer, thanks for these kind words. We appreciate your support, and please keep those tips about Moseley-Bend and Martinez coming!

    (In reply to the comment above.)

  68. Anonymous 06/11/2009

    Okay, I’ve had it. It is amazing to read faculty members talk about sustainability as ‘fluff.’ Oh, I forgot, they’re into the 19th century model of academia — ivory towers divorced from any problems out there! They probably would have said that about computers, felt-tip pens, and those of us who don’t where academic robes to class very day. This blog has gone beyond irrelevance !

  69. uomatters 06/11/2009

    OK, I’m not aiming for irrelevance. how about making a serious argument that UO should spend, say, 5 million per year on sustainability programs rather than on raising faculty salaries and increasing grad students numbers? If you want I’ll post it in the main part of the blog.

  70. Anonymous 06/11/2009

    Sustainability is worse than fluff. It is not an academic discipline, rather it’s a collection of fashionable (in some circles) political and social dispositions. The UO sustainability website explicitly says that the Office of Sustainability was established (in part) “to provide an official stance on such an important issue”. This is pure advocacy and propaganda — not scholarly and research activity. It is doubtful whether the University should be engaged in this kind of social and political advocacy at all (any more than it should be advocating for the War on Terror, or against embryonic stem cell research, or myriad political causes). It is certainly not worth $5 million per year (or whatever the current or future budget may be).

    “Sustainability” should certainly not dominate the so-called “Big Ideas” that the University is going to promote for its intellectual future. Nor should it be making big incursions into the University’s science programs. But that is exactly what is happening, largely with good-sized inputs of pork barrel money from the state and federal governments, arranged through lobbying of politicians by UO officials and faculty.

    The University should not be spending significant amounts of money on these kinds of enterprises. If it does, and the faculty acquiesces, then they have nobody to blame but themselves if their salaries are at the bottom of the heap, and if the overall academic reputation of the University continues to plummet.

    There is only so much money at UO, heaven knows. The University cannot afford to squander it on social crusades masking as academic programs, like Sustainability and Diversity.

  71. Anonymous 06/11/2009

    But sustainability is defined by the selected programs is fluff. Sustainability itself is not.

    Here are some concrete things the UO could to do invest in real sustainabiltiy.

    1. Start offering more classes and programs in actual energy literacy and other forms of “sustainability” so the concept goes beyond the buzz word phrase.

    2. Change the academic calendar to close the campus in January to lower our heating needs.

    3. Seriously invest in the building of our own energy generating facilities (wind turbines in the Coburg Hills would work).

    4. Build an energy efficient classroom building!

    5. Offer more asychronous learning opportunties to lower the amount of time spent in a heated or cooled classroom.

    These are investments that will last the next 50 years. The current “Fluff Idea” funding results in brochures and marketing PR.

    What’s an academic robe?

  72. Anonymous 06/11/2009

    woof woof
    the dog types again

    I think the characterization of “easy” as an explanation for our low faculty salaries and the blame on the president is a bit misguided and overstated.

    Let’s take a longer historical perspective.

    In the 1980s faculty salaries at the UO were exceptionally low for starting assistant professors. At that time, Eugene was a cheap place to live. Much of one’s salary 20 years after the fact is determined by your starting salary.

    In 1990 measure 5 hit. The university or OSSHE (now OUS) was not prepared for this. Lots got frozen. Most long time faculty members here probably don’t remember the period from May 1993 to September 1995 – your salary was frozen then.

    (since then we have been through similar binennium freezes).

    These freezes are really beyond the control of the President.

    Hence, starting in 1993 there has been no such thing as consistent annual raises for faculty pay. Raises have come in fits and stars.

    In the year 2000 there was a serious attempt at correct this and many faculty got raises in the range of 8 – 12% then.

    Additionaly, for many many years, rasises associated with promotion and tenure were pitiful and laughable (this was since corected a few years ago). When I got promoted to full professor way back in the mid 90’s I was given a whopping $1800 increase in pay. That was insulting – I tried to give it back.

    So to sum up:

    1. We are state employees and therefore subject to these intermittent biennium freezes.

    2. I would say up until the late 1990’s starting pay for Assistant Professors was poor. Now I think that has been corrected and I think most faculty that have been hired since 2000 have a decent academic salary (of course, this has created an unaddressed salary compression problem).

    These two things combine to produce general low salaries for those of us that have been here for more than 15 years.

    However, I also strongly agree with the sentiment that various “pet projects” have gotten in the way of improved salaries and that the President has not cared about the overall academic mission of the University for sometime.

  73. Anonymous 06/12/2009

    Ideas 2-4 of your 12:35 p.m. June 11 poster are Exhibit A of why the University should get off the sustainability bandwagon.

    Especially — lining the Coburg Hills with wind turbines! This sounds like a way to spend millions of dollars on a money losing project that would generate endless controversy. It would never get built, certainly not in a place as acrimonious as Eugene. If by some miracle it ever did get built, it would be both an eyesore and a money pit for generations!

  74. Anonymous 06/12/2009

    The “upgrade of facutly offices” was a low agenda item of Brady when she first got here. This was her attempt at “connecting” with the faculty.

    Its not at all clear that there was any real intent that the upgrade money was to be targetted towards faculty offices.

    Its also unclear if this $3M is real money or COPS money (I suspect some of it is the latter) and COPS money is paid back (although sometimes other funds are raided to pay this back)

  75. Anonymous 06/12/2009

    What’s COPS money?

  76. Anonymous 06/12/2009

    I think COPS stands for certificate of participation funds

    these are loans made by the state to various
    state agencies (including campus’s) that usually are needed for short term infrastructure projects or in some cases they are emergency funds.

    I believe there is a 3 year payback time for these funds.

    In the past, on the UO campus, COPS money has been used to help address the fact that we have no classroom equipment media budget.

    Upgrade of faculty offices would certainly qualify for COPS monies.

  77. uomatters 06/12/2009

    We’ve been getting a lot of comments on technical issues regarding windmills and such. We will set up another discussion page for green issues before long, meanwhile please hold those.

  78. Anonymous 06/12/2009

    Is this going to become a union site? I hope not. I can tell you, a lot of us faculty are not happy with how things have gone with the administration, but if it comes to a choice between them and a union, we’ll be with the administration.

  79. Anonymous 06/13/2009

    You want boondoggles? Try finding out how much is being spent on “diversity” and “sustainability”. A few years ago, they admitted to $4million+ for diversity. That was before the new, expanded diversity program got going. Who knows how much they’re spending now? Same for “sustainability”.

  80. Anonymous 06/13/2009

    Watching for boondoggles is important, but it’s not a substitute for keeping your eye on the big picture.

    To wit: where is the central discretionary budget of the University going? How are the priorities changing over time? (By “central discretionary” I mean the budget available to run the core functions of the University; that excludes earmarked areas like research, dorms, athletics, public service, etc. I DON’T mean to include just central administration; “central discretionary” includes standard academic accounting categories i.e. Instruction, Academic Support, Administration, Physical Plant, etc. etc.

    Where do you get this info? The University is required to record and report the data on this stuff. However, what’s available on the UO website — as opposed to not-very-deep-down in the budget office — is far from transparent. Example: the website lumps the all-important “Instruction” category (basically, the money in Department budgets) with Research and Public Service. So it’s impossible to track Instruction itself and how it’s share of the budget is doing. Perhaps that’s the whole point of making the information unavailable.

    My guess: track the relative share going to Instruction, Administration, “Academic Support”, Student Services, you’ll find that Instruction has declined over long enough time frames. That would explain why there’s never enough for competitive faculty salaries. Why there are more and more adjuncts. Break down “Academic Support” in enough detail and you’ll see why the library can’t afford to buy as many books as it used to. Etc etc.

    The scandalous top administrative salaries are part of this, too, it’s all part of the budget. It’s just that looking at it this way shows the overall effect, the crowding out of academic priorities, in the most basic and crassest way possible, in the budget, the bottom line.

    This stuff is boring as hell to most people, but without it, fighting the Administration is like a dogfight over a bunch of bones, at best everyone just ends up licking their wounds without coming to any agreement or even understanding. But if you faculty people are serious, get out the green eyeshades, get some spine and focus in the senate, and keep your eyes on the ball, to mix as many metaphors as I can think of.

    How do I know about this stuff? From conversations over the years with a couple of sharp people from the UO senate budget committee. Hey, where are you guys?

  81. Anonymous 06/13/2009

    The Portland Programs: While I don’t think this counts as a boondoogle yet – it would be nice to have firm figures published on the total instructional cost of the programs, the tuition revenue that is brought in and some indication of expected program growth.

  82. Anonymous 06/14/2009

    Re faculty salaries: I can categorically say that UO has the money to raise the salaries to competitive levels, and make UO more competitive academically in other ways. All it takes is the will, plus some focus and smarts — the latter at the level, say, of the famous Math 111. (Perhaps senate president Gilkey could elaborate on the last point.)

    Let me just talk about faculty salaries:

    About 10 years ago there was a plan to bring faculty salaries up to where they should be, i.e. high enough to compete with mid-level AAU public universities. It got stalled out, partly because of state-imposed salary freezes for a couple of years, but mainly because Frohnmayer lost interest, or became actively opposed — what difference does it make? — and because the faculty senate lost focus and the will to make a fight of it.

    A poster elsewhere makes a good point about watching the budget to keep priorities on track. Another, comlementary piece of it is the “tabloid” exposure of various boondoggles, such as this website is doing pretty well at.

    As I say, the money is there. $10 million dollars really is about what is needed. The discretionary budget of UO is something like $300 million, + or -. Reallocate $2 million a year for 5 years and you’ll be there. That’s less than 1% per year.

    Hell, raise $250 million over 5 years in endowment money specifically earmarked for educational purposes (faculty salaries), and there wouldn’t have to be any reallocation.

    It ain’t rocket science, and it ain’t like doing the Normandy invasion.

    But it requires better than what UO has had in the way of leadership the last decade.

    It’s too bad, Frohnmayer did a great job for about 5 years, then something happened. It all seemed to start around the time of the Phil Knight fiasco. Maybe that was the turning point.

  83. Anonymous 06/14/2009

    I guess I am not understanding some basic math here with these numbers regarding faculty salaries and the like. So, let’s look at the data from the table at or.aft.org that was previously mentioned.

    Here we see that the weighted average of all ranks at the UO is 80K and that for compensation its 112K

    This means the average OPE is 40% (which is one of the problems).

    As a previous poster noted and as retrievable
    from the IR website – the approximate number of Prof/Assoc Prof/Assitant Prof is 650

    So

    a) faculty salaries are 52 Million dollars
    b) salaries + comp is 73 million (I am rounding)

    We are 20 K on average behind our “peers”

    To make this up would require and immediate

    13 Million extra for salaries

    18 Million for salary + benefits

    So my math suggests that, for us to ramp up
    to our average peers immediately, at the same
    OPE rate

    increasing the faculty salary + ope budget by
    18 million dollars and then keeping it there.

    In in a rosy world of 5% annual increases then
    that means adding an extra 1M a year each year
    to the faculty salary+ope budget.

    I have no idea if this is a trivial amount of money or a formidable amount of money within the UO budget allocation system.

    I am, however, pretty sure the state is not suddenly going to give the UO 20 Million for
    salary parity.

  84. Anonymous 06/14/2009

    opps small mistake in the above
    the extra 1M a year figure is wrong
    as I taxed the increment not the total

    So

    1. Reaching the average of our peers at the same OPE rate means increasing the Prof/Assoc Prof/Ass. Prof from the current 73M to 91M

    2. Subsequent annual 5% raises therefore require an addition 4.5-5 Million per year

    sorry not to have made this clearer in the first post.

  85. Anonymous 06/14/2009

    Re the previous poster’s puzzlement: it’s not mainly your math, it’s your data. I wouldn’t trust the aft stuff. Better to look at the senate budget committee reports.

    Hard to find, and this website doesn’t seem to allow pastes. So go to the UO website, find university senate under A-Z (used to be the UO senate was linked directly on the UO homepage, but no more). Find the budget committee link, go to reports. They don’t seem to have kept up, the last apparently is 2007-2008, but it’s recent enough.

    You’ll find the salaries are very low, total compensation is higher but still below par. Total compensation is somewhat misleading now due to the contortions of pers.

    But you’ll find salaries, averaged over ranks, are about 85% of par, total compensation is 95%. Probably can make real compensation 90%.

    So let’s round off and say that salaries need to be raised 10% to bring real compensation up to par. $10 million should do it and probably then some.

    I would never expect the state to finance this. But the University already has the money to do it over several years, without upsetting the applecart much. It’s a matter of setting the goal and following through.

  86. Anonymous 06/16/2009

    I liked the woofer’s historical perspective above – in particular explaining the wage compression problem we’re facing. And I agree that we could at least make a big step (say half of the 10% increase we need) by trimming some administrative and other fat. I have my doubts about our “focus in the Senate” though. While all these troubles have been facing us, the senate has taken up issues such as the WRC, Iraq, setting up procedures so that we could make motions about Iraq in the future, diversity… Even when we were dealing with something as serious as the arena, we had good numbers from our subcommittee and the athletic department but then some absurd cooked-up numbers on parking as well as a motion explicitly designed to tell Phil Knight that we didn’t want his Legacy Fund gift under the terms agreed. The materials the senate has produced on salaries has been first-rate, but it has been drowned out in a wash of ****.

    Membership in the Senate and on committees has plummeted over the past few years. There are a number of factors, but I think that many capable faculty look on their “left” and “right” and see agendas – by certain colleagues and by administrators respectively – which have little to do with academic excellence and more to do with wielding power and pleasing external audiences. The recent coup in the senate makes this dynamic even more clear.

  87. Anonymous 06/17/2009

    Am sympathetic to the 2:08 June 16 post. I don’t think I’m the woofer but I’ve posted here on these matters. I’m probably one of the people who has “dropped out”.

    I agree about the dynamic in the senate. So, any ideas on how to get out of the present mode?

  88. Anonymous 06/18/2009

    A key question about the reorganization is how much will it expand or contract the administrative bureaucracy, along with administrative budgets.

    The VP for Advancement will now become two VP’s, if I read correctly. Each, I’m sure, with their own separate staffs.

    It’s hard to imagine that this will not constitute an increase in Administration. At the expense of what?

    It sounds like Charles Martinez (Diversity) will have a higher profile than ever. So, I doubt that Diversity will absorb the costs.

    Library Acquisitions, perhaps?

    Faculty salaries?

    Tenure-track faculty lines?

    I hope our UO senate will be right on top of this.

    If not, I guess we’ll have to rely on uomatters!

  89. Anonymous 06/19/2009

    Okay everyone is taking shots at an overbloated adminstration in this forum so why not offer some constructive criticism on how the current array of administrators and responsibilities can be made more efficient or can be trimmed.

    Maybe we actually need all of these administrative
    positions to make our campus run in the smooth manner than it does.

  90. Anonymous 06/20/2009

    There have been some constructive suggestions offered here.

    Don’t proliferate the number of administrative positions (as by making two VP’s out of one, as is apparently happening in the latest reorganization). Somehow the campus managed to run with fewer administrators in the past.

    Don’t pay top administrators bloated salaries (as indicated by market comparators), especially when the University has failed to bring faculty salaries up to market standards.

    Most of all, watch the budget and the share going to Administration, Instruction, etc. and how this is changing over time.

  91. Anonymous 06/20/2009

    Okay I refine the issue

    constructive suggestions that can be actually
    implemented.

  92. Anonymous 06/21/2009

    Everything mentioned above is simple to do if the people in charge want to.

    If not — probably not — a good push from the faculty is needed. There’s the rub.

  93. Anonymous 06/21/2009

    It seems like the roots of the problem at UO are the lack of investigative journalists. UO policy can only spiral as far out of control as it has when editors and journalists get free tickets to a game. All future and ongoing “gifts” to the UO should be reviewed by a independent panel that the faculty senate puts in place. The faculty senate should also compile a report with updated information on the safety of all UO buildings (including dorms and athletic dept. buildings).
    By now, the backlog in deferred maintenance at UO must be approaching 200 million dollars. There is a 30 to 40 million dollar indoor track project coming so it would be better to get the list of needed repairs out sooner than later.

  94. Anonymous 06/26/2009

    I am pretty ignorant about the proposed changes in the medical benefits, but it’s clear that there is a problem with continuing with Regence (Blue Cross). My recollection is that they are raising their rates again next year, by 14.7%.

    That simply can’t go on year after year. Or if it does, it has to limit the funds available for faculty (and other staff) salaries. Remember salaries?

    Total compensation (salary + benefits) is basically a given worker costs UO.

    If medical costs keep exploding, as with Regence, it has to come out of something else — basically, salary increases.

  95. Anonymous 06/26/2009

    And the “advancement” office apparently gets split in two, with 1 VP —> 2 VP jobs. Not good.

  96. Anonymous 06/27/2009

    Will “advocacy for diversity” become a requirement for tenure and promotion? Look here:

    Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Richard Lariviere

    “The community of KU reveres individual worth and dignity, and believes that advocacy for diversity and inclusion is a major responsibility entrusted to all campus community members.”

  97. open up 06/27/2009

    Personally, I wouldn’t mind if he started by requiring senior administrators go through the same Affirmative Action action process we use for professors – but from his “intent to reorganize” notice it’s clear he’s not going to bother – so I assume it’s the usual PC cant.

  98. Anonymous 06/30/2009

    The question of Regence vs. Providence for PEBB is of course more of a state-level question rather than one that we can do anything about at the UO or even OUS level. The good news is that it almost always makes sense to self-insure if you have a large enough pool, and I haven’t heard anyone question whether the UO state employee pool is large enough. Because the state is taking on risk, we should save money. It is doubtful this will do much to the rate at which costs are rising. Those costs are driven by a number of things (better care; expensive new hospitals; end-of-life care; medicare reimbursing at lower (comparative) rates; more uninsured whose costs get passed along to the insured; “defensive medicine” leading to unnecessary tests and procedures; other perverse care incentives) which insurance has little-to-no control over. Maybe the state can negotiate with providers better than Regence could, but that’s doubtful since Regence has been by far the biggest player in the state for a long time. The funny part – more of amusement rather than directly relevant to uomatters – is that this switch happened not too long after the CEO of Regence campaigned for Kulongoski’s opponent in the governor’s race. Politicians prize loyalty first, competence (usually a distant) second…

  99. Anonymous 06/30/2009

    As for splitting of advancement, even though in principal I agree that our administration costs should shrink and not grow, there are two reasons I am actually for this. First, the money side of advancement has had far too much control over our communications – try getting something changed on our web page for example and you’ll see what I’m talking about. If this split results in academic concerns playing a greater role in our communications, then that is probably already worth it. Secondly, of course anytime you hire in development there is the argument that such a person can more than pay for themselves with their fundraising. One can only take that argument so far, of course, but I would need to better understand our development office to have an opinion.

  100. Anonymous 06/30/2009

    To the previous Anonymous, who favors the split of the VP for Advancement into two VPs — Advancement and University Relations — I would ask: How much will this cost? Say, $300K/year (after all the add-ons)? Then from where will this be procured? Faculty salaries? Library acquisitions? Maintenance?

    Perhaps it will be procured from cuts elsewehre in central Administration — VP Dyke’s office, perhaps? — but somehow I doubt it.

    But this highlights the importance of the point made elsewhere here, that it’s important to keep a focus on the proportions of the budget going to the various large aggregates — i.e. Administration vs. Instruction, and so forth.

  101. Anonymous 07/01/2009

    and what’s wrong with the UO home page – isn’t it an accurate representation of what our priorities are and what we wish to showcase?

  102. Anonymous 07/02/2009

    Hey UO Matters … hope you took a break from watchdog activities to enjoy some sun and ice cream yesterday afternoon. Got to admit the new Prez has made a nice start by making the rounds.

  103. Anonymous 07/02/2009

    style over substance does not impress us
    and neither does standing in line for 35 minutes
    waiting for ice cream

  104. Anonymous 07/03/2009

    I have to admit, he has a nice smile and looks good with his natty hat. He’s from Iowa, worked at Kansas? Maybe a nice honest guy for a change.

    He says he wants to deal, soon, with the faculty salary problem. We’ll see. Does he have the number smarts to figure out how to pay for it? Does he know how badly funded UO is? Or is he going to end up slack-jawed like Linda Brady when he wakes up to reality? As former Dean at Texas and provost at Kansas, he would seem to have the mental mojo to understand budgets.

    If not, we’ll have to rely on Frances to give him the prompts.

    End of comment!

  105. Anonymous 07/06/2009

    UO Matters has blog; the new Prez has a blog; UO Matters has text galore; the new Prez has text and YouTube video … running score:

    UO Matters: 2; New Prez: 3

    … and FWIW, grumpiness over a willingness to take a moment of enjoyment to celebrate a campus transition does NOT impress!

  106. Anonymous 07/07/2009

    Ah, come on. Dave is going to figure out how to get more money for Oregon higher education. After all, he’s done a great job of that at UO, right?

    Wait a minute, doesn’t the current provost complain that UO has the lowest state subsidy per student of any campus in OUS?

    Is there something wrong with this picture?

  107. Anonymous 07/07/2009

    yes but the new Prez blog has no comments section
    so its a one way street which, in my scoring,
    is minus 2 points.

    And here is some YouTube UO activity as well:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJLyHVDa-kQ

    And now a comment to the mysterious UOmatters

    can’t you use a different comments template
    that allows for a cut an paste?

  108. Anonymous 07/08/2009

    Re the Golden Parachute: This is absolutely necessary to keep this man’s vast talent working for the good UO. He needs a secretary and a GTF — what if he wants to write his memoirs, like Henry Kissinger, Al Gore, or Sarah Palin? And we need him teaching at UO. Do we want OSU or PSU to hire him away? Don’t you know, he could be an adjunct somewhere else, if UO is too chintzy. If you want quality, you have to pay for it. Can’t you guys see this?

  109. Anonymous 07/09/2009

    while the previous post is likely in jest – one can never be sure. What one can be sure of is that, while Frohnmayer is an accomplished Orator, this is not the same as effective teaching, but on the other hand, this is the UO and the UO doesn’t know what effective teaching is anyway – they value style over substance – because substance, creates tension, requires effort and ultimately is devalued.

  110. Anonymous 07/09/2009

    From UOMatters: I know people don’t lke the way the comments on this blog work – very primitive. Sorry, we’ll try to find time to work on our template.

  111. Anonymous 07/11/2009

    When you all get your marching orders you may end up nostalgic for the days when Martinez was just an expensive drone. I looked up an earlier post, found it, a quote from our supreme dear leader I mean pres when he was KU Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Richard Lariviere. The cultural competency plan returning with a swell hat?

    “The community of KU reveres individual worth and dignity, and believes that advocacy for diversity and inclusion is a major responsibility entrusted to all campus community members.”

  112. Anonymous 07/11/2009

    I don’t agree with the comment above. If you want to try and read tea leaves, Lariviere’s use of the phrase “individual worth and dignity” is in direct opposition to the usual diversitycrat talk about people as being primarily defined by their membership in racial and ethnic groups.

    In any case, I think we should give Lariviere a chance to clean up the diversity mess that he inherited from Moseley and Frohnmayer. So far he hasn’t laid on the “diversity is quality” bullshit at least.

  113. Anonymous 07/11/2009

    The best I can say is that he speaks with a somewhat forked tongue. “advocacy for diversity a major responsibility entrusted to all campus community members” very creepy sounding.

    Maybe he hasn’t yet laid on the div/qual BS, but the RG (3/11/09) did report the following:

    “Lariviere also spoke about his support for diversity and sustainability, two topics that often generate the most support and the most demands from students. He called sustainability the same kind of transformative issue that civil rights was when he was an undergraduate.”

    Sustainability really going to be like the civil rights movement? With Freedom Rides, mass marches, urban riots, perhaps?

    Please, let this be a misreading of the tea leaves.

  114. uomatters 07/11/2009

    Sustainability is equivalent to the Civil Rights movement? That’s just nutty.

  115. Anonymous 07/11/2009

    Today is Saturday. There is a great letter in the Register Guard about how Frohnmayer should stop ripping off the people of Oregon today.

  116. Anonymous 07/11/2009

    You guys keep jabbing at the administrative salaries, and this is probably justified, but what about the exorbitant packages that the unionized staff get? I’ll bet that their salaries and benefits are way above market, especially in Lane County — like public workers in Oregon in general. (The OUS faculty being one of the few notable exceptions).

    You might think it’s petty to dump on the working stiffs in the union. But who’s paying for them? The taxpayers and students, or whoever pays the tuition. Why should the unionized public workers be treated as a special class?

  117. Anonymous 07/13/2009

    It is highly likely that the NCAA will be moving
    the date for the national championships back
    to the previous week as a result of streamling
    the regional quals. I don’t believe the decision
    for the UO to reverse itself has anything to do
    with athletics vs academics, but everything to
    do with logistics.

    It is physically impossible, in the downbeat town of Eugene, to accomodate out of town
    visitors for both graduation and a national championship in the same weekend.

  118. Anonymous 07/13/2009

    Continuing

    in September 2008 there was a restructring
    of the Ncaa Track Regional System that at
    least ESPN covered.

    Since I can’t seem to cut and paste here
    try Googling on

    New NCAA Track Regional System

    note: while this system is in place for 2010 –
    at this time, its not completely clear if the
    national championships will be moved back a week
    but I suspect this will happen

  119. Anonymous 07/13/2009

    If Dan Lawton wanted to talk to conservative professors, he could have found some — not in the departments he mentions, to be sure — but among the faculty who bravely, and very publicly, fought against the draconian UO “Diversity” plan. I don’t know how long he has been a student, but that was only three years ago, it ended at the end of spring term 2006. A little research on his part — is he supposed to be a competent journalist someday? — would have been very informative.

    Furthermore, the claims about journalism “professors” in the CSM piece sound a little fishy to me. He says they were sharing an office. Are there real tenure-track professors in journalism who don’t have their own offices?

    Aside from this, they are unnamed. Perhaps the story is completely on the level, but how is anyone to know?

  120. Anonymous 07/13/2009

    The dog barks on this one

    I have lots of dog friends of many shapes and sizes. Some of my friends are conservative on some issues and not on others. Most all my friends appear to be thinking dogs. I do not ask nor care what their party affiliation is.

    this conservative vs liberal bias is completely off base. At the UO (and most other places), proessors are Biased in that they teach their own point of view on the subject. while some of this is natural, in my experience, its over done on this campus to the point of presenting actual dis-information on some subject (global climate change is the best example as sometimes utter crap is being told to our students).

    So to me, bow wow, it iss not a question of liberal or conservative bias in the classroom, it is the question of personal bias and the inability to keep an open mind and listen to alternative viewpoints as articulated in class or in other texts/resources.

  121. uomatters 07/13/2009

    I sort of agree with the dog. It’s not controversial to say an open mind is good. But groupthink sets in pretty easily and I’m not sure we even know when it happens. We need the crazies on both sides to keep challenging us in the middle.

    In any case, my read on Lawton’s piece is that he is claiming some faculty minds at UO are not that open, and that this is most true in the disciplines where it’s most relevant, social sciences and journalism.

  122. Anonymous 07/13/2009

    I have to disagree with the dog, in large part. It’s not as if there’s an equal or even reasonably balanced split between left and right in the UO faculty. The student claims 2 Republicans out of 111 registered faculty in the departments that would tend to be the most politically relevant! How can this possibly be intellectually or educationally healthy? How can UO expect the plurality or majority of Americans who call themselves conservative or moderate to support, deep down, such a situation?

    Somebody mentioned the diversity controversy a few years back. I seem to remember that somebody — Bill Harbaugh? — did a survey of the entire UO faculty, and found a disparity between registration in parties of the left vs. parties of the right, of something approaching 20-1. I don’t know how this comes about, but it’s astonishing! It certainly influences the atmosphere on campus. I’ve heard lots of complaints from students. Hard to evaluate, but when I look at the public programs offered at UO, the bias is stark.

    Example: right now at the UO website, a proud announcement about a program sponsored by the UO optics center, the diversity offices, the whole costly apparatus, for pre-college students. Fine — except it’s limited to girls! (Or maybe I am supposed to say women.) Sounds a lot like the racially segregated programs UO was running a couple of years back, until somebody blew the whistle on them with outside litigators.

    Imagine if somebody tried to run a program at UO limited to males only, if someone pointed out that boys are performing horribly in our feminist-dominated education systems, and this needs to be remedied for the good of society. (A not unreasonable position, actually.) They would be, figuratively speaking, torn limb from limb, if not lynched by the campus thought police.

    So much for open minds, diversity, and a range of viewpoints.

  123. Anonymous 07/13/2009

    Interesting, two emails relevant to posts came across just a few minutes ago.

    One an announcement from Coltrane’s office about a female-only internship in DC.

    The other about Brad Shelton’s appointment as Vice Provost. I don’t think he is any fan of Frances Dyke. It will be interesting to see how those two get along.

  124. Anonymous 07/14/2009

    I doubt that Dyke has any fans among the faculty and, while there clearly is need for extra competence in Dyke’s office, its not at all clear that such competence needs to come from a 1/2 time faculty person. Brad is a capable person, but this position just may be death and I may or may not be the dog, depends on the bark.

  125. Anonymous 07/14/2009

    who is uomatters?

  126. Anonymous 07/14/2009

    A point about Brad Shelton’s appointment — is this a further example of administrative bloat? i.e. 3/4 (according to the papers, not 1/2) of a full professor converted into a new (I believe) vice-provost?

  127. Anonymous 07/14/2009

    Re: UO faculty political views, etc.

    Given that a significant and vocal faction of Republicans have been openly hostile to public funding of the arts, to funding of state universities such as our own, to the teaching of evolution as it should be taught, to funding of basic science… it is perfectly rational to have some large discrepancy in affiliation. You may dislike much of the Democratic platform, but if you are a faculty member then professional self-interest is a big handicap in their favor. If the person who says that “I don’t know how this [discrepancy] comes about…” just thought about self-interest for half a second, and the closely related question about how the major political parties address whether the public sector is worthwhile (and a public university is very much part of the public sector), this would become very clear. Republicans didn’t used to have a base which was so openly hostile to all forms of government – except the military – but now that they do they are guaranteed to have given up the votes of most public employees, especially faculty.

  128. Alex Tomchak Scott 07/14/2009

    For the record, the professor Dan was talking about is an adjunct (whose name Dan doesn’t include in his column, but does include on his blog, danlawton.com) who does indeed share his office with other adjuncts and at least one associate professor.

  129. Anonymous 07/14/2009

    When I said “I don’t know how this [discrepancy] comes about…” I was giving the University the benefit of the doubt i.e. not assuming it is due to blatant politicization and ideological discrimination.

    However, your post makes me think that I am being far too credulous and generous to the academics.

    You mention the naturalness of “some large discrepancy” in political affiliation. I wouldn’t necessarily disagree — a discrepancy of 2-1 or even 3-1 might not bother me so much. But 109-2 in the socially relevant fields of scholarship? Should one perhaps wonder if the relevant term is “scholarship”? And approaching 20-1 for the whole university? It is hard not to wonder if there is not some ideological screening mechanism at work. I’ll tell you, a racial discrepancy of that magnitude 109-2 or 20-1 — would attract instant suspicion. So too would a gender discrepancy, just ask your friends in the physics and math departments.

    Is there any other major institition in society, outside perhaps of the mass media (with their graduates from aforementioned departments), with anything even approaching such a disproportion? I would like to know of any. OK, perhaps major symphony orchestras. But certainly not the churches (including the supposedly “conservative” ones); not the boardrooms of Fortune 500 corporations; not the officer corps of the military.

    By the way, if you can find an example of any Republican in the Oregon Legislature who has been “openly hostile … to funding of state universities such as our own”, please let us know. My experience over 30 years is that if anything, Oregon Republicans have been more supportive of higher education than have the Democrats.

    Perhaps the Republicans should reconsider?

  130. Anonymous 07/14/2009

    This website is getting interesting!

    Interesting that the person — faculty member? — who defends the party registration discrepancy does so exclusively on the basis of facutly self-interest. Very telling!

    What about the interests of the students and taxpayers and donors who actually provide for the salaries (in return for honest labor)? Do those interests not count for anything?

    Or is the claim that only liberal/left voices are worth hearing?

    Is this what is meant by “diversity” at UO?

  131. Anonymous 07/14/2009

    To the Anonymous scold about UO’s bias — notice that the Anonymous who tried to explain away your points — with the most shopworn cliches — didn’t even bother to address your complaint about female-only programs sponsored by UO.

    Isn’t this blatant “sexism” of the crudest type? It completely confirms all the worst suspicions about the University.

    And a lot of the faculty types seem to think that the only problem at UO is the salaries, and athletics.

    I bet if you joined a bunch of unemployed loggers for a drink, they’d set you straight!

  132. Anonymous 07/14/2009

    Exactly what “exorbitant packages that the unionized staff get” are you referring to? Because I want one.

    I am a mid-career professional in a classified administrative position on campus, in the middle of the salary range for my classification. A cursory search shows that a person entering a comparable position at Ohio State would make a minimum of 10% more than I do currently, in a city with a cost of living that is 18% lower than that of Eugene. In Lawrence, I would start out making about 13% less than my current UO salary, but in a city where the cost of living is 17% lower. I’d still come out ahead, but then I wouldn’t get the privilege of working for y’all.

  133. Anonymous 07/15/2009

    I am the person – a faculty member in the sciences, actually – who “defended” the discrepancy. Actually, I was explaining it as natural, at least at some levels significantly greater than what the first person who posted on this would seem to be comfortable with.

    As to your specific question, I am on the e-mailing list of Oregon Representative Dennis Richardson who yes has been openly hostile to increasing any part of the state budget, including for higher ed, supposedly until we get our PERS etc mess cleaned up. You could say that is justifiably hostile or generally hostile to government not specifically to the OUS, but it is openly hostile nonetheless. Do you think faculty should work under a pay freeze until our PERS liabilities are at some “reasonable level”? Or do you think we can magically get out of PERS obligations (ignoring those inconvenient things called contracts) and then have all sorts of money for higher ed?

    Secondly, I have to laugh at the comment “My experience over 30 years is that if anything, Oregon Republicans have been more supportive of higher education than have the Democrats.” I have less data to go on than you, but in ten years I have seen a strong correlation between Democratic control of the legislature and levels of funding for education, both K-12 and OUS. Perhaps by going back 30 years you include Republicans such as our own president emeritus, but that kind of Republican has been marginalized since the “Gingrich Revolution.”

    The wondering about a screening mechanism is more laughable. As if we have the time or inclination to do that, at least in the sciences where where the ratio seems to be at least 4-1 if not greater. It might sound like a slogan, but it is just about quality of scholarship – that simple – just like pro sports only care about how you play… And if you care, the discrepancy is more about self-interest in a wider sense than just whether Republican cuts to basic science, arts, humanities and higher education – part and parcel of the “starve the beast” philosophy- will mean to our own bottom lines. Faculty members study what they study because they care about it, so politicians who support those areas are naturally favored. Politicians who say “hold on to your wallets, the government is coming to get you” won’t be.

    Your comment on the mass media takes the cake – you’ve ventured into completely unjustified Republican talking points there.

  134. Anonymous 07/15/2009

    To respond to the next commenter in the thread (we could use threads here on this blog) – as for whether “liberal/left voices” are the only ones worth hearing – it depends on what you mean. It is worth having a diversity of voices on questions such as abortion/euthanasia, affirmative action, the history of colonialism, the history of war, the study of gender roles, etc. The question – for people of all stripes – is how good you are at stepping out from your own point of view, as needed for scholarship.

    But there are other kinds of issues which are sometimes framed politically as well. Is evolution left/liberal? Is studying the effects of climate change and/or human land use on biodiversity liberal? Is researching thorough comparisons between our health care system and those of other countries liberal? If your answer is yes, they are liberal, so we should offer an opposing viewpoint (the world was created in seven days; there is no such thing as climate change and man has dominion over the animal world, so we shouldn’t study these kinds of questions; who cares what other countries do – our system must be the best because America is the best) then I would say that in such cases only the liberal viewpoint is worth hearing. There might be two sides to any issue, but in some cases one side is stupid, and doesn’t deserve to be represented at a university.

    Look, I disagree just as strongly with tripe such as the idea that our primary role as a university is to effect social change. But I’ve heard this tired politics of faculty argument way too many times (back in 2005, faculty were supposedly a marginalized minority, one of the last pockets of a dying liberalism). Both the “a university is supposed to bring about social change” and the “universities must be administering ideological litmus tests” points of view are old-school culture warrior fodder. Let’s move on.

  135. Anonymous 07/15/2009

    A brief comment on 12:01 and 12:03 (the same person?) —

    So Dennis Richardson wants the state budget to stay within revenues. Well, that is part of the state constitution. Really terrible!

    I’m not aware that Dennis Richardson has ever called for a faculty “pay freeze”.

    Your comment “I have less data to go on than you” — yes, evidently you do. When the Republicans were competitive in Oregon, K-12 funding was above the national average. Now it’s below, and slipping fast as the Oregon economy falls further behind the rest of the country.

    The second post simply is loaded with the usual leftwing cliches about conservative thinking. It’s embarrassing to see a faculty member displaying such ignorance and arrogance. It’s a splendid example of the how the smug self-satisfaction of the academy has led to its intellectual self-destruction.

    Some people may think that a 109-2 disparity in the socially relevant fields is a result of pure of talent. People used to say the same about segregation. I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t believe it now. But it does show the incompetence of the academy. How can the university say with a straight face that there isn’t something terribly wrong?

  136. Anonymous 07/15/2009

    About the “exorbitant packages”: it’s salary plus benefits, not just salary, relative to the local/state labor market. Medical and especially pension benefits in Oregon are way higher than elsewhere. (True for faculty and professional staff too.) There are studies that show that Oregon public workers generally — not faculty, who are way low — are overcompensated (salaries plus benefits) relative to other states. In a state with below-average per capita income.

    About Columbus and Lawrence: there are reasons why the cost of living is lower in those places. Ever tried to the mountains or oceans?

    There are also reasons why e.g. housing is more expensive in Oregon, a lot of it is deliberate choices made by the electorate. We have to live with it.

    I have nothing against the classified workers getting a good deal, but fact is they are getting well above market, above what the rest of Oregon gets in comparable jobs. WAY above Lane County. Why should the rest of us support it?

  137. Anonymous 07/15/2009

    I’ve been following the Dan Lawton story here and in other places on the web. Fascinating and revealing about UO! Some people who seem focused on defending the absurd seem to forget that if the story he told is true, he was disgracefully abused and harassed by faculty in his own program of study. It reads like the old stories about bigotry.

    This is the issue, not whether the Republicans in the legislature think faculty should be paid more! The faculty should stop thinking of themselves all the time.

    By the way, is anybody going to defend the university’s apparent female-only science program for middle school students that was mentioned?

    I can only imagine what it must be like to be a conservative faculty member in Dan Lawton’s journalism school, to apply for a job or tenure, if this is how students are treated! Just for saying that there should be more diverse voices on the faculty, not actually saying they are conservative or Republican themselves!

    Is this what it has come to at UO, you get called stupid or racist or you get sweared at by FACULTY just because you express the opinion that maybe somebody else has something worth listening to??!!

    Doesn’t the journalism school have a dean or department head? Is there an investigation going on? That person should either disclose that Dan Lawton’s story has no truth to it, or else he should be straightening out the problesm in his journalism school. If he can’t do that, then U of O should find a new person to run that school.

  138. Anonymous 07/15/2009

    A long time ago when us dogs were primitive – we too thought there were two sides to any issue: 1) the correct side and 2) the stupid side. However,
    over time, we came to realize that the stupid side was usually the manifestation of our own biases and instantaneous judgements; therefore, to be more fair, we developed a system of education to prove that the stupid side, was indeed the stupid side. In some cases, we fond that our initial judgement was wrong and the stupid side, in fact, was not all that stupid.

    Then we educated the younger dogs in this concept and methodology of proof and balance and then we evolved collectively to become more enligthened dogs.

    Oh yah, we called our system a University.

  139. Anonymous 07/15/2009

    Here I sit in the sci library, reading

    “there is no such thing as climate change and man has dominion over the animal world, so we shouldn’t study these kinds of questions”.

    If this is supposed to represent a view of what constitutes conservative thinking, then the person who wrote it is a complete ignoramus; perhaps it is meant in jest? I hope so, hope it’s not a UO faculty member speaking. Not only the ignorance, but the sheer bizarre crudity of it. If I’m wrong, things are much worse there than anyone has suggested thus far.

  140. Anonymous 07/16/2009

    President Lariviere is undoubedly facing numerous “messes” left by his predecessor, but there is one that he could quickly address and which would go a long way towards developing confidence in his commitment to fairness and equity. This is the upcoming trial in the race discrimination suit filed by former Professor Paula Rogers.

    A lengthy article in the Eugene Weekly described this case a few months ago (see the March 19 issue), and it is now scheduled for trial in late August. The Bureau of Labor and Industries already found in Professor Rogers’ favor, and those in the know suggest that this provides a strong indication that she will prevail in court. However, the University has persisted in fighting tooth and nail, harassing Professor Rogers and her family at every turn. As documented in the EW story, this reaction to those who dare challenge the administration has typified the UO administration throughout Frohnmayer’s tenure.

    President Lariviere (and the University) would be well served if he took an independent look at this case and others that are pending. Given the role that Melinda Grier has played in previous cases, we’d strongly suggest that she not be involved in these reviews (and should, in fact, be high on the list of those to leave the administration). Failure to address these issues will undoubtedly lead to even worse feelings regarding the administration as well as continuing waste of money and resources.

  141. Anonymous 07/17/2009

    Okay, consider this a new topic/thread but one which I think also indicates a weak and inattentive administration.

    For the last 3 years the UO has had a 100% success rate for Tenure and Promotion. I have heard this “defended” as it provides a clear indicator that the UO practices excellent quality control at the hiring point. This is crap. No University is able to do this and its hard to believe, given our low salary situation, that we always find the best people in all of our searches.

    While a 100% success rate is good for the candidates it can’t possible be good for the university in the long wrong and to me, sends a clear message that the university doesn’t really care to be engaged in the tenure process beyond the rubber stamp level.

    In the past, I have questioned the necessity of having the FPC (many other Universities don’t) as it usually does nothing but provide delays and increases the anxiety level of the candidate. I was once firmly told, by the JTM administration, that the FPC provided important checks and balances within the overall system. I never believed that in any operational sense and now its clear that the FPC is just another rubber stamp.

    Finally I will reveal that over this 100% period our department has put forth a few candidates (all of which were, by definition, successful) but some of those candidates consistently scored in the bottom quartile of our overall personnel rankings and their tenure and promotion cases did not receive strong departmental support. And there is no way that our department knows how to hire the best people at the outset – we try to hire good people – most of the time it works out; sometimes it doesn’t – but now, even if it doesn’t work out it doesn’t matter due to the BIG RUBBER STAMP.

  142. Anonymous 07/17/2009

    Not absolutely true that the success rate has been 100%, I know it wasn’t last year.

    But the point is well taken, tenure has become routine at UO. A lot of possible reasons, I won’t speculate here. But once you get into that mode, hard to escape.

    One of the major arguments for tenure is that it gives an opportunity to “cull the herd” — let perfectly decent people go because they just don’t measure up to certain aspirations — thereby improving the overall quality. With virtually certain tenure, however, that rationale disappears. It begins to look like just another form of featherbedding. Not cool when universities, like UO, are increasingly using adjuncts.

    It may be that tenure will come under increasing attack, it already is, as more and more a “peculiar institution”. Aside from helping to ward off the evident creeping mediocrity at UO, tougher tenure standards would make it possible to have a credible argument for continuation of the practice.

  143. Anonymous 07/17/2009

    About the budget: I couldn’t believe that tuition + fees were going up 18.8% in Fall 09 over Fall 08, but a check of the official UO numbers confirms it. So the new increase piggybacks on the Spring 09 increase! The figures on extra revenue assume constant enrollment. UO may be expecting or hoping for increased enrollment, but with the huge tuition increase, they might be in for an unpleasant surprise.

    What an aggressive posture, unemployment in Oregon is out of sight, people all over the country are resisting tuition increases, and UO jacks it up 18.8%. I mean, I know they have to do something to make up for declining state support, which was already plenty stingy, but 18.8%!

    No wonder they were doing aggressive hiring last year. I hope they don’t plan to ask for another “voluntary” pay giveback!

    I hope that they’re watched very carefully for what they do with the extra dough. If they blow it all on more crap, they’ll really be asking for it.

  144. Anonymous 07/18/2009

    Speaking of avaricious – is it maybe just a little bit so to be thinking about big jumps in faculty salaries at the current time?

  145. Frank Stahl 07/21/2009

    re Requirement for Tenure: Since tenure is intended to protect scholars from retribution for pursuing or pronouncing controversial ideas, a requirement for tenure (and for retention of tenure) should include a demonstrated ability and propensity for the public utterance of discomforting positions.

  146. Anonymous 07/21/2009

    I don’t know if Frank Stahl really said that — but one thing Frank might think about — a propensity for making foolish statements is not the same as a propensity for provocative or “discomforting” positions!

  147. Anonymous 07/21/2009

    as previously established above – the requirement for tenure at the UO recently is having a pulse;
    nothing more or less seems to matter.

  148. Anonymous 07/22/2009

    This is outlandish, to say the least. Many colleges and schools on campus work hard to enable faculty to leave at 3 years. So, yes, the tenure rate seems high, but it is data manipulation, to say the least. I wonder what department the last Anonymous is from, or is this more rumor and hearsay??

  149. Anonymous 07/22/2009

    I heard Charles Martinez was up for tenure this year – did he get it?

  150. Anonymous 07/22/2009

    In 2007, the first year of The Brady – the tenure rate was 100% – some of this was the result of
    very late handling of the files and in the 11th hour the administration punted and gave everyone tenure.

    In 2008 not quite everyone got tenure, but the rate was well over 90%

    In 2009 I believe the tenure rate was again 100%

    this is pretty much widely known over most parts of campus and other readers of this forum can surely verify this.

    there are many reasons that I, the dog who types, know most of this (mostly I pay attention) but in 2007 there was a case in our department that in no way deserved tenure and that case was still unresolved by June 13 (by law they have to resolved at the end of spring quarter contract).

    On June 14th the candidate was notified that they had received tenure.

  151. Anonymous 07/22/2009

    I had heard that the tenure rate was very high during the Brady years. I have no data on 2009. However, I’ve heard that the “turnback” rate in CAS for promotion to full professor was very high. But again, I don’t know.

    If we’re going to talk about tenure and promotion rates, we should at least know what we’re talking about. Things like the 3 year dismissal rate mentioned by someone else, and also cases that get withdrawn during the tenure-year process, need to be taken into account.

    On the other hand, there seems to be a lot of union agitating going on at UO. (And what’s with this website referring to “the Union”? There may be a “proposed union”, or “would-be union”, but there certainly isn’t anything that I would call “the Union”, not that I’ve heard about.

    And if UO does get unionized, there will effectively be a 100% tenure rate. The distinction between tenure-track and non-tenure-track will probably blur into indistinction.

  152. Anonymous 10/17/2009

    The new UO budget news is out. The $12 million in new tuition dollars mostly went to fund UO development and the Foundation ($7 million). Do some digging. What hole opened up in the foundation that we had to throw $7 million at them? Appaling. And Francis and Bean remain very tight lipped.

  153. Anonymous 10/17/2009

    The Foundation and Development gave a loan to something or someone or spent some money it needs to keep hidden or secret and it has to be replaced before the Oct 15th deadline for their 990 IRS report.

    I do believe it is time to do some serious digging…This administration may messing with University funds in a manner that is not appropriate and “legal?”. A forenic team of CPA’s should do the trick.

    This institution has survived over a 150 years with very little problems…why are there problems now? Think about it. A letter of concern to the Governor should start something..if not that a collective group of concerned should talk to our Legslative body.

  154. Anonymous 10/21/2009

    Re: Frohnmayer’s 2009-2010 Teaching Schedule . You posted that he is teaching only one class, according to what you could tell. Professor Frohnmayer is also scheduled to teach a Freshman Seminar class winter term, just as he did while he was President. This has been posted on the Freshman Seminar webpage for quite some time.

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