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President Mike Schill’s welcomed welcome message to the faculty

I’ll post a poll, but my sense is that this “welcome message” from our new president is very much welcomed by the faculty, particularly after all the good work Schill has done over the summer to address UO’s problems. Emphasis added:

Dear Faculty,

I am very excited about beginning my first academic year as your president. Over the past two months I have been overwhelmed by the warmth that many of you have shown me. Thank you! I have also been extraordinarily impressed by the desire among virtually everyone I have met for quick and decisive actions to propel our university forward. I believe the time is right to do this. We have a new governance structure, an extraordinary Board of Trustees, and are making good progress with our wildly ambitious $2 billion fundraising campaign. In this note, I would like to share with you my preliminary thoughts about how I can join with you to build our university.

The University of Oregon is an excellent educational and research institution, full of deeply passionate and dedicated faculty, students, and staff. Yet, in my view, it can become so much better. I would like to focus my efforts (and your’s) on building our fundamentals. More specifically, I would like to begin immediately working on the following three objectives:

  1. Building our tenure-related faculty and promoting academic research.
  2. Ensuring affordability and access for our students.
  3. Delivering a rich, excellent educational experience for our students.

Our university has significant strengths in each and every school; in the humanities and the sciences, in journalism, and business, in law and education, to name just a few. Nevertheless, with a few exceptions, we lack sufficient eminence and intensity. Too few of our programs are recognized as national leaders. Certainly part of this is that we have too few tenured, tenure-track, and research faculty. Our non-tenure track faculty colleagues are, and will continue to be, important and valued members of our community, but we are simply out of balance. Therefore, I am committed to growing the tenure-related faculty by between 80 and 100 scholars over the next five years.

With the support of faculty across campus, Provost Coltrane and I have already begun to make progress in this effort. We have authorized the hiring of new faculty through our cluster hiring initiative and are working with deans and departments throughout the university to identify opportunities for appointments outside the clusters that will enhance our teaching and research excellence as well as our diversity. Finally, we are consulting with faculty members in the sciences to identify a set of philanthropic investments that will ensure that we recapture our place among the great universities of this nation in discovery and invention.

Affordability and access are important parts of our mission as Oregon’s flagship public university. As a first generation college graduate myself, I feel in my bones the importance of our role as an engine of economic opportunity for the citizens of our state. As we make investments in the quality of our university we will strive to keep tuition increases moderate and to continue growing philanthropic donations for scholarships. But equally importantly, we need to take steps to reduce the cost of education by increasing the proportion of our students who graduate in four years. A four year graduation rate of 49 percent and a six year rate of 69 percent are utterly unacceptable. Simply put, a small increase in tuition pales in comparison to the added cost of taking an additional year or more to graduate. I am looking forward to working with the provost and all of the vice presidents and deans to increase our four year graduation rate through enhanced academic advising and curricular reform.

My third objective is to enhance the experience of our students while they are with us. Increasing the richness and intensity of our academic program is part of the story. Actions like expanding the size of the Clark Honors College, getting students to write and participate in research, and ensuring that students who are not thriving do not fall between the cracks are part of this set of initiatives. But part of the education a great residential university provides to its students takes place outside of the classroom. Whether on the athletic fields, in the dining halls, or in co-curricular activities, our students learn important lessons about leadership and what it means to be citizens in an increasingly diverse global environment. We must work hard to make sure both our academic and our non-academic programs are excellent and work in tandem to produce the next generation of leaders for the state, nation, and world.

As I promised at the outset, I want to keep things clear and to the point. If we can get these fundamentals right we will succeed in growing and enhancing UO’s reputation as world-class university. But we can only achieve these objectives if we work together in an atmosphere of civility and partnership. I invite you to join me in this endeavor. I cannot succeed without the support of you, my fellow faculty members. And even more importantly, our university cannot succeed without you.

Warm regards,

Michael H. Schill
President and Professor of Law

13 Comments

  1. Dr. Funkenstein 09/24/2015

    You might feel differently if you were one of the non-tenured faculty he wishes to identify as the cause of UO’s failure to achieve “eminence” in various fields, his gratuitous comment about their value to the UO notwithstanding. He can’t have it both ways. Speaking as one of those barbarians at the gate, I can say that I work just as hard as my tenured colleagues and resent the constant implication that I have lesser value solely due to my tenure status.

    • uomatters Post author | 09/24/2015

      I think this is a bit harsh.

      On top of Schill’s acknowledgement of the NTTF’s good work in this letter, he agreed with the faculty union on a union contract that is a pretty solid deal for the NTTF’s. And he’s not saying anything about getting rid of anyone, just about raising new money for TTF lines.

      • Dr. Funkenstein 09/24/2015

        Where do you think the money’s going to come from for those new lines?

        • uomatters Post author | 09/24/2015

          Donors.

          • New Year Cat 09/25/2015

            One hopes.

        • just different 09/24/2015

          Most of it can’t come from NTTF lines because the numbers don’t add up: a TT line costs about twice as much as an NTTF and covers only half or less as much teaching load. Good NTTFs are just too cost-effective to get rid of. On the other hand, it also means they probably won’t get hired into TT lines.

          • uomatters Post author | 09/24/2015

            Spot on.

    • just different 09/24/2015

      I read Schill’s statement as a commitment to stem the tide of adjunctification rather than as a criticism of the quality of UO’s NTTFs. Even if NTTFs get a comparatively good deal, there is no denying that increasing the number of TT lines is a good thing. The ongoing trend of replacing TT lines with adjuncts has done a lot of damage to the academy, especially in the humanities.

    • Toby Jug 09/24/2015

      Any chance the new TTF searches will favor current NTTFs? Probably not, but one can hope…

  2. thedude 09/24/2015

    I like the vision. Fixing graduation rates just through advising…..I think more of it is due to focus on partying above academics. But maybe I’m wrong.

  3. In the bleachers 09/24/2015

    All of our goals will be better supported when we are able to populate the freshman classes with students who have more maturity than many of those who are currently driving at high speeds on quiet streets in the residential neighborhoods around campus and flipping off residents who ask them to kindly slow down. It would also be nice if incoming students could receive some coaching about not throwing their live cigarette butts out the car windows (or dropping them while walking around). Fire season isn’t over. Perhaps bicycle cops and campus police could make it a priority to enforce laws against littering.

    • New Year Cat 09/25/2015

      And if they could learn that not everyone enjoys being woken by their thumping bass or soup-up engines night after night between midnight and 5 a.m. that too would be a positive sign. Don’t we have a noise ordinance?

      • just different 09/25/2015

        Yes. What Eugene doesn’t have is enforcement.

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