Another of John Bonine’s many good works:
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FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2015 PUBLIC MEETING, FORD ALUMNI CENTER, GIUSTINA BALLROOM 8:00 – Board members meet with faculty. Faculty Trustee Susan Gary (Law) gives her talking points and etiquette tips here. I met with two board members and about 10 faculty. It was a very interesting meeting. Confidence inspiring really.…
Scott Coltrane really doesn’t want anyone to know. Still no response to this request to UO’s public records office: Date: February 27, 2015 at 4:59:49 PM PST Subject: Public Records request, Miller Nash invoices for Jane Doe lawsuit against UO and Dana Altman To: Lisa Thornton <[email protected]> Cc: Gregory Rikhoff <[email protected]>, doug…
That’s the NCAA’s unwritten rule. Seem’s like they’ve now extended it to women. InsideHigherEd has the data, here.
Board Secretary Angela Wilhelms has managed to arrange the room to keep the board and the UO community even farther apart than last time. Portable barriers are ready, in case the crowd gets restless: The live-blog of Wednesday’s committee meetings is here. News reports: Scott Greenstone in the Emerald on Kurt…
Good turnout, good decisions. Now we just have to get President Coltrane to implement them. Senate Meeting Agenda – March 4, 2015 – Watch Live, 2014-2015, Agendas 3:00 pm 1. Call to Order 3:00 pm 2. Approval of Minutes January 21, 2015 3:05 pm 3. State of the University 3.1 Remarks by Interim President Coltrane…
3/4/2014: It appears the Chair of the Finance and Facilities Committee has called in two Conflict Resolution Center “Neutral Observers” to monitor the part of the meeting on proposed tuition increases. Seems a bit excessive?
I’m adding a little live-blogging to the annotated agendas for the BOT’s spring meetings below. Committee meetings today, full BOT meetings Th and Friday. Don’t forget the Senate meets at 3PM today.
Usual disclaimer: My impression of what people said, meant to say, or should have said. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes. The stuff below is very unorganized, sorry.
You can google $115K Duck Advocate Tobin Clinger’s report on Monday’s Campus Conversation in “Around the 0”, but the report from UO student reporter Daniel Bieker in the Daily Emerald, here, is better: A member of the University of Oregon’s Senate Task Force Addressing Sexual Violence, [Carly] Smith, expressed her concern with…
United Academics General Membership Meeting – March 3, 2015 – 5:00-7:00pm – Gerlinger Lounge. An occasionally reliable source says there will be free beer.
3/2/2015 update: No word on whether or not BOT Secretary Angela Wilhelm will tear down that wall of PR flack tables separating the Trustees from the university community during this Thursday and Friday’s meetings, but it’s a good sign that 20 months into their term in office, the Board is willing to meet with faculty. I’m on the list, so Wilhelm’s assistant Amanda Hatch can’t have been screening people too carefully:
MEMORANDUM
March 3, 2015
TO: Individuals Attending Faculty/Trustee Discussions
FROM: Susan Gary, Faculty Trustee
RE: Thoughts on the March 6 Discussions
Thank you for your willingness and interest in participating in the discussions with UO trustees this
Friday, March 6, at 8:00 AM. These conversations will give the trustees a great opportunity to learn
more about the faculty – what we do, our strengths and the challenges we face. I thought it would be
helpful to provide some ideas about conversation topics, although these are not restrictive. You should
feel free to discuss any issues of concern to you, and the trustees may have questions they want to ask.
The conversations will evolve, as conversations do.
Our initial target size was 10 faculty members and three trustees per group. Given the number of
people who expressed interest, we can accommodate everyone if we increase the group size to 11, so
that is what we have decided to do. I think 11 should be fine; if you would prefer to wait until June (we
plan to have more discussions then), please let Amanda Hatch know and we can save your information.
The trustees will want to hear from everyone, so please be courteous with respect to time so that
everyone can have a chance to speak. It’s a conversation, so multiple short comments will likely be
better than one long comment per person.
Here are suggested topics for discussion that I brainstormed. I use “faculty” to include both TTF and
NTTF because most topics apply to both, although sometimes in different ways.
Faculty classifications.
– What do the classifications of faculty as TTF and NTTF – mean? (and NTRF and Library faculty if
someone can speak to those categories)
– What roles do different faculty members play?
–
– What is the promotion process like for TTF and NTTF?
Teaching.
– What contributes to teaching excellence?
– How much work goes into preparing a class?
– How do teachers keep their classes fresh?
– How does the Teaching Effectiveness Program work with faculty to improve teaching? (Have you
taken advantage of TEP and what has been the benefit?)
– How does research contribute to teaching?
– What are classroom conditions like – technology, class size, and configuration of classrooms?
– How do negative factors hinder teaching excellence – increases in class size, increased teaching
load?
Service.
– What kind of University and unit service do faculty do?
– What is the service work load and what types of service work do faculty do (admissions,
scholarships, curriculum, hiring, promotion and tenure, etc.)
– How does the level of service required affect teaching and scholarship?
Mentoring.
– How do faculty mentor students?
– Undergraduates? What kind of mentoring do undergrads need? What are the
challenges/rewards of mentoring undergrads?
– Graduate students? What is the relationship between an advisor and a
candidate? How does advising a grad student work?
– How do faculty help students think about career options?
Research.
– What is the role of research for a TTF?
– What is the grant writing process like?
– What is the publication process like?
Masters or Ph.D.
– What synergies exist among the research, teaching and service obligations of faculty members?
– (Note: There is a lot to say about research, but this is an area the trustees have already had
some exposure to, so it may be good to focus on other topics.)
Unit structure.
– How do TTF and NTTF interact within units?
– How do units govern themselves?
University Senate.
– What role does the Senate play? What role should the Senate play?
– Do faculty feel engaged with the Senate?
Online education.
This probably deserves a separate discussion when issues can be discussed more thoroughly – there is a
lot of work needed to develop a strategy – but someone may have particular insights to share.
2/25/2015 update: Ron Bramhall (Business) and faculty union VP for NTTFs, persuades the BOT’s sole Faculty Trustee, Susan Gary (Law), to invite NTTFs to meetings with Board members:
Mary Koss, PhD, was coeditor of a two-book series for the American Psychological Association, Violence Against Women and Children (2011). Her first national study on acquaintance rape was published in 1987, and she developed the most frequently used survey to measure unwanted sexual experiences. Her current projects include developing risk…
What did they do to earn it? I don’t know, let’s find out: Subject: public records request, AON Hewitt consulting Date: March 3, 2015 at 12:34:55 AM PST To: Lisa Thornton <[email protected]> Cc: Jamie Moffitt <[email protected]>, Gregory Rikhoff <[email protected]> Dear Ms Thornton: This is a public records request for any…
3/2/2015: Campus Conversation” on rape response, 4PM today, Alumni Center.
I couldn’t make this, but the word from others is that this was a massive fail, with Coltrane getting called out repeatedly by the students for his lack of progress and efforts to pass off the blame.
2/27/2015: How much is the athletic budget contributing towards Miller Nash’s legal fees for defending basketball coach Dana Altman? Anything? I don’t know. Let’s find out:
On Friday Feb 27, 2015
Dear Ms Thornton –
This is a public records request for documents showing how much UO is paying the Miller Nash attorneys who are defending UO and Dana Altman against the lawsuit from the survivor of the alleged basketball gang rape.
Specifically, I am requesting documents showing how much has been spent so far, and how much of that has been paid for by general academic funds, athletic department funds, and other sources such as insurance, UO Foundation money, etc.
I ask for a fee waiver on the basis of public interest.
2/26/2015, 4:20PM: UO drops counter-claim, but still blames survivor for “damage to a good man’s reputation”, and claims *she* is discouraging rape reporting.
This is a first for Johnson Hall: admitting a mistake. It took “Sven Praoc” and 2100 petition signers to get them to do the right thing.
No news on when Coltrane will apologize for his prejudicial allegation of an “unlawful release” of UO Presidential Archives. Baby steps.
Josephine Woolington has the story in the RG, here. It appears Coltrane got some lousy legal advice, either from UO attorneys Doug Park and Sam Hill, or UO’s hired Miller Nash attorneys, Michelle Smigel http://www.millernash.com/michelle-smigel/ and Michael Porter http://www.millernash.com/michael-porter/:
Coltrane, however, criticized the online petition that characterized the UO as having filed a lawsuit against the victim, as opposed to responding to a lawsuit. He said he was advised by attorneys that it’s routine to counter a suit.
“Their suit would have us pay legal fees, and I was told it’s typical when you respond” to also file a counterclaim, he said.
… The UO’s updated response, however, still contends that Jane Doe’s attorneys “filed a lawsuit with unfounded allegations that damage a good man’s (Altman’s) reputation in an attempt to curry favor and gain traction in the media and create pressure for a public university to pay a hefty sum to (Jane Doe) even though it has done nothing wrong.”
The university argues that Jane Doe’s allegations threaten not only the UO and Altman, “but all sexual assault survivors in Oregon’s campus community.
“The publication of false allegations about Oregon’s handling of a report of an alleged sexual assault creates a very real risk that other survivors will wrongly be discouraged from reporting sexual assault and sexual harassment to Oregon,” which conflicts with the goal of a federal civil rights law, known as Title IX, the response said.
Say what? UO’s revised and sanitized response to the lawsuit is less intimidating to victims who might consider exercising their civil rights than was the previous version, though no less offensive:
Full docket w/ old and new language here, thanks to recapthelaw.org
An Op-Ed in the Chronicle of Higher Education, here: Raped on Campus? Don’t Trust Your College to Do the Right Thing By Katie Rose Guest Pryal In January, a rape survivor sued the University of Oregon for mishandling her sexual-assault case. Through the campus judicial process, the university found the…
Scott Jaschik in InsideHigherEd: The median base salary for senior leaders at colleges and universities has gone up 2.4 percent in 2014-15, the same as the year before. [2.5% for public universities.] At UO we don’t yet have full data for this year, but top Johnson Hall salaries increased by…