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Provost Banavar to hire $85K PR flack & speechwriter

Last updated on 03/30/2018

UO is charging Daily Emerald student reporters $113 for public records that they then won’t produce. But when it comes to PR bullshit, there’s no budget constraint. From http://careers.uoregon.edu/cw/en-us/job/522019/director-of-communications-office-of-the-provost:

Job no: 522019
Work type: Officer of Administration
Location: Eugene, OR
Categories: Communications/Public Relations/Marketing, Executive/Management/Director, Journalism/Communication, Planning/Project Management, Public Policy and Planning

Department: University Communications
Appointment Type and Duration: Regular, Ongoing
Salary: $80,000 – $90,000 per year
Compensation Band: OS-OA09-Fiscal Year 2017-2018
FTE: 1.0

Application Review Begins
April 24, 2018; open until filled

Special Instructions to Applicants
Please submit the following with your online application:

• A resume of your educational and professional work experience.
• A letter of interest detailing how you meet the qualifications and professional competencies for this position.
• Two or three work samples (i.e., written communication, remarks/talking points, digital content) with a description of your contribution to the work.

Department Summary
The department of University Communications is charged with telling the University of Oregon’s (UO) stories to a broad range of audiences and positioning the university to succeed and thrive. The department utilizes and manages a comprehensive suite of communications tools, including public relations, branding, advertising, licensing, digital media, and more for the benefit of the university.

Position Summary
The Director of Communications for the Office of the Provost (“Director”) is responsible for providing proactive communications support and counsel to the Office of the Provost, the provost’s leadership team, and certain individual units reporting within and working closely with the Office of the Provost.

The Director will work closely with the Provost’s Chief of Staff, the Senior Director of Internal and Executive Communications and the University Communications team to ensure strategic, proactive, and cohesive messaging in support of the Provost’s initiatives and priorities, to position the university to succeed and thrive. The Director will provide strategic counsel for and assistance with executive communications for the Senior Vice President and Provost, the university’s chief academic officer. This includes writing speeches and other communications to both internal and external audiences, managing the Provost’s website and digital presence, and utilizing other tools to promote awareness and understanding of academic priorities and initiatives. …

To put this salary in perspective, last year UO was paying assistant professors of journalism $79K:

24 Comments

  1. Dog 03/29/2018

    Someone is needed to communicate metrics, in metric-speak

  2. OMA 03/29/2018

    And for that salary are they coming up with gems like this:
    “… telling the University of Oregon’s (UO) stories to a broad range of audiences and positioning the university…”

    Sweet! I want to tell UO stories and position the University for $90,000 per year.

  3. There is no Dog 03/29/2018

    Primary duty: “tell stories”. Admirably frank.

    Would it be in poor taste to point out that one can barely wedge a tissue between Public Relations and Journalism these days anyway? The six W’s are dead and buried.

  4. Hippo 03/29/2018

    Kellyanne Conway might be out of a job soon, maybe this is up her alley?

  5. honest Uncle Bernie 03/31/2018

    Kinda makes me nostalgic for John Moseley, who did the provost job at half the salary, and somehow did his own flack work.

  6. Dog 03/31/2018

    if you look closely around various parts of campus, you can still see evidence for the Moseley EgoFice

    • honest Uncle Bernie 04/01/2018

      Please elaborate!

      • Dog 04/01/2018

        JTM was the architect of de-centraliztion starting in 1997 – he also had a budget plan and forecast for increasing student enrollment as the principle means to gain additional resources outside of
        meager state support.

        From that point of view, not much has changed.

        • Peter Keyes 04/01/2018

          Except for the pendulum swinging back to centralization?

          • Dog 04/02/2018

            maybe the pendulum is swinging back with a 20 year period.

            The pros and cons of decentralization can be discussed elsewhere by the experts on this forum – I tend to stick to data.

            In the area of IT, decentralization was not very good as each campus decentralized unit hired their own IT staff and this resulted in tremendous redundancy and resource inefficiency, and strongly fostered the culture of territoriality. Largely this IT staff consisted of amateurs who learned on the job how to specifically please their unit. This was reflected all of the time
            in various group meetings with this distributed IT support staff.
            As I was fond of saying many times, 10% of a professional support person is easily equal to 100% of an amateur.

            Indeed, once upon a time in a meeting I made Jamie Moffet laugh (never observed this before or after) when I said that the only thing centralized at the UO was parking …

            • Peter Keyes 04/02/2018

              I didn’t note its significance at the time, but we can see the beginning of centralization around 25 years ago, when the EMU used its maple bars to impose its hegemony on the Lawrence Hall coffee bar, which used to serve homemade pastries and fresh drip coffee.

              • uomatters Post author | 04/02/2018

                Consider yourself on notice, Professor Keyes and other America Firsters. This blog will not tolerate discriminatory slurs against the Canadian people or their agricultural products.

            • honest Uncle Bernie 04/02/2018

              Hey, maple doesn’t mean Canadian. A lot of Vermonters, even New Yorkers could set you straight on that. If UOM wants to help Quebec lord it over New England, you’re asking for trouble.

        • honest Uncle Bernie 04/02/2018

          Good or not, I don’t see how this stuff is indicative of John Moseley’s “EgoFice.” He worked hard for UO, and as I said, at a fraction of the current price (even taking into account ordinary inflation). He certainly had an ego, but as far as building monuments to himself, I sure don’t see anything. In a way, he was pretty selfless. I haven’t seen anyone since who was better in the provost office, certainly not the current occupant. He seems to have bungled a couple of things, and I certainly don’t think his centralization is going to come to much good. (Granted, the push for centralization may be coming from Schill, not Banavar, it is impossible for me to know.)

          I thought the decentralization was a good thing, on the whole. The switch to more private funding, especially ramping up out of state enrollment with high tuition, was a good move, and about the only one possible under the circumstances. There was no way the state was going to stop its cutbacks to higher education, especially the shortchanging of UO to subsidize the other campuses, especially OSU. Back when Moseley embarked on this plan, UO had recently closed programs, and there was pretty constant speculation about closing more. In any case, UO is far better off financially than it was back then. All a result of the strategies that Moseley originated, with encouragement from Dave Frohnmayer.

          • Dog 04/02/2018

            I don’t know, under JTM we established for better or worse,
            UO campuses in Portland and Bend – I think those are monuments.

            Going to Deans council meetings under JTM also mostly revealed the bad cultural side of decentralization – everyone had territory to fight for now.

            Whatever, blogs are really excellent as forums for revisionist history

            • honest Uncle Bernie 04/02/2018

              I had forgotten about the Bend and Portland campuses. UO is gone from Bend now, right? I think UO never had a chance there, but Moseley and Frohnmayer thought UO at least had to put up a fight. Portland? I know very little about that. Is UO making or losing money? I dunno …..

            • Dog 04/02/2018

              By most accounts UO -portland is a loss leader, perhaps slightly less now than in the past.

            • Dog 04/03/2018

              Gee where are all those defenders of UO PDX that used to come out of the woodwork when the rationality of this was actually once discussed. And although this predates the journalistic brilliance of UO matters – there still is an untold story about how
              the UO acquired the White Stag Building and why they choose to
              go there, the highest crime density in all of downtown PDX

  7. Canard 03/31/2018

    I guess after that disaster of a letter the provost sent to the architecture department, they decided they needed someone around who knows how to communicate.

  8. Susan B. 04/04/2018

    I’m pretty sure the most egregious case of gender discrimination with respect to tenure happened on JM’s watch. And I don’t mean just at UO, I mean in the country. Oh well, that doesn’t matter—just women’s issues, right boys?

      • Dog 04/05/2018

        don’t forget about the Jean Stockard situation under JM and I think Susan B maybe talking about Lisa Arkin. These things all really happened, and yet are forgotten by most.

        • OMA 04/05/2018

          True, all I remember is that it seemed like the Provost who is supposed to be the chief academic literally ran almost all aspects of the university, while DF the glad-hander in chief, attended dinner parties and football games replete with brie, peaches, donors, and chardonnay. And although this caricature may just be the sepia haze of history, I find it sad now that this is pretty much the norm in higher ed now; where the president is not the chief administrator but merely the car salesman to the donors; and the provost rather than the champion of academics valiantly fighting for the faculty and the now forgotten half of shared governance has been relegated to an grossly overpaid fast food worker who wraps the burgers, shoves them in the bag and usually over salts the fries.

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