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Jim Bean to retire as UO Provost?

10/27/2012: That’s the rumor down at the faculty club. No details yet. An honorable outcome, particularly if it’s quick and cheap.

Update: A reader points out that Lariviere gave Bean a 3 year contract renewal in May 2011, which Berdahl reapproved after the sabbatical – i.e. until July 2014. This doesn’t prevent Gottfredson from hiring a new Provost, it just makes it a bit more expensive.

26 Comments

  1. Awesome0 10/28/2012

    If tradition keep up, I believe he is do one large raise first, right?

  2. Anonymous 10/28/2012

    would explain the lack of recent Beangrams

  3. Anonymous 10/28/2012

    Please let it be so. If true, the tough question is whether MG is due any credit for this. Nothing else in his short history suggests that we should. (MG… anything you can offer as evidence that you had something to do with this?)

    • Anonymous 10/28/2012

      Should “we” give credit to MG? You’re taking your comments way too seriously.

    • Anonymous 10/29/2012

      The collective ‘we,’ dumbass.

  4. Anonymous 10/28/2012

    pick quick or cheap. it won’t be both, unless Gottfredson is tougher than he seems.

  5. Anonymous 10/28/2012

    Quick will cost the rest of this year’s contract plus 3*(322140*1.06/2)=$512,202.60.

    Call it $750,000, assuming he’s out by Jan 1.

  6. Anonymous 10/28/2012

    Where is the faculty club?

    • Anonymous 10/28/2012

      The first rule of the Faculty Club is you do not talk about where the Faculty Club is.

    • Anonymous 10/28/2012

      So is the faculty club a state of mind? Oh, I guess you can’t talk about this.

    • Anonymous 10/28/2012

      Just click your ruby slippers together, and there you’ll be…

    • Anonymous 10/28/2012

      In typical UO fashion, the faculty club here consists of individuals drinking at home on Saturday night and posting anonymously on a blog.

    • UO Matters 10/28/2012

      Some prefer to think of it as the logical consequence of our Provost’s visionary shift to online education.

  7. Anonymous 10/28/2012

    If Bean goes (at any price), I’m happy to give Gottfredson all the credit, with or without evidence. It would make such a difference to the quality of our university, that I wouldn’t really care who did it.

  8. Anonymous 10/28/2012

    So who would take his place? We need an inside candidate, because one of the top two needs to know the institution. I can think of a couple people, but they’re either not ready or needed where they already are.

    • Anonymous 10/28/2012

      We just need an inside interim Provost for 6 -9 months. The interim doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist – Bean’s proved that. UOM may hate her for athletics but Moffitt has proved to be a competent VPFA and she already has her head around the budget issues. Same with what’s his name, the budget model math guy. The other VP’s have problems but mostly aren’t disasters. Gottfredson was a provost himself for years at many different schools, he knows the ropes. So there’s lots of backup. CAS is well run, same with most of the other colleges. Pick anyone from outside JH – some successful dept head, dean, or associate dean – let them serve as interim caretaker during the search, and it will all be fine.

    • Anonymous 10/28/2012

      It’s important to select an interim provost from outside JH. How about Renee Irvin (associate dean at A&AA)?

  9. Awesome0 10/28/2012

    Bring back Larry Singell and promote him up to provost. He’s kinda an inside/outside candidate in one. He understands the Johnson U of O issues better than most, and he has spent a couple of years outside the u of O seeing how a competitor is expanding while dealing with limited budgets.

  10. Anonymous 10/28/2012

    Be careful what you wish for. At UO the next Provost may well make “The Beamer” look better then he is. On the one hand its hard to imagine someone worse, but on the other hand there is the brief history of MG’s performance to date and the long history of selecting poor internal and external candidates for the top jobs in JH.

  11. Anonymous 10/28/2012

    Witness the decrying of Linton, and now the trouble with Espy… But I still think Jim has to go.

  12. Anonymous 10/28/2012

    It’s hard to believe that Gottfredson had nothing to do with this development. But if he is a classy guy, which all indications from Irvine suggest that he is, then we will get no hint that Bean’s retirement is anything other than voluntary. And can we give Gottfredson at least a small benefit of the doubt for awhile? The guy stepped down from his job at Irvine. If you figure that August was largely taken up with moving and getting to know the basic players in the state, then the guy has really been on the job 8-9 weeks (since early September). I would have liked to have seen a little more informal outreach to faculty in his early weeks on campus, but the readiness of some posters on this blog to write him off so quickly represents a pretty depressing commentary on the state of our community.

    • Emily Post 10/28/2012

      I’ve never understood why it’s more important to be polite and considerate to Jim Bean than to the UO Faculty. My advice to President Gottfredson is to make it clear that his review of the faculty’s legitimate concerns influenced this decision, as they will influence future decisions.

    • Anonymous 10/28/2012

      I suppose I am old fashioned, but there is something to be said for a time when when treating each other with decency was a high priority — something the real Emily Post valued, even when following that course meant losing an opportunity to score a point. If one views Bean as an evil guy, then I suppose some kind of public comeuppance might be in order. But short of that (and I would argue that last year’s administrative raises do not qualify as evil, even if they were ill advised), then allowing someone to leave a position with a certain amount of dignity is not a bad thing. In the current age of mudslinging and the vilification of political opponents, such an approach may be outdated, but I wouldn’t be surprised (or sorry) if Gottfredson wanted to find a dignified way to ease Beam out of the picture.

    • Anonymous 10/28/2012

      I agree with both Anon and Ms. Post. Tarring and feathering Gottfredson for imputed actions or for inaction while he’s still getting the lay of the land is pretty crass and doesn’t speak well of us as a faculty. However, I think it’s ultimately more destructive than constructive to always paper over administrative incompetence, suggest administrators never make mistakes or receive poor evaluations, and let them both save face and earn golden parachutes.

    • Dear Abby 10/28/2012

      Dear Abby

      A few years ago my boyfriend left me for a job in North Carolina, and a friend fixed me up with a date with this guy he knew in sales. Well, pretty soon he’d moved in with me – I don’t remember him really asking me if it was OK or not, it just sort of happened. Honestly, he wasn’t the greatest, but my parents kept telling me I probably couldn’t do better, and he did help pay the rent on the trailer.

      Then last year one night after a few beers he announced that he was quitting his job, and that he expected me to pay the rent and living expenses. I didn’t want any trouble, so I kept quiet, got a second job on weekends on top of the cooking and cleaning. Well, a year later this guy is still around, still lying on the couch, playing some sort of online college video game. It’s all he can talk about. My girlfriends tell me I’m smart and good-looking, and they know some guys who think the same.

      What should I do?

  13. Anonymous 10/29/2012

    Larry Singell? I think that would be a mistake. The Peter Principle and all….

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