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Updated w/ pres search news. UO Board of Trustees, Friday Dec 12th meeting live-blog

Highlight of the day’s meetings: Page down for the live-blog of the Presidential Factors Committee meeting. They are setting up a reasonably open evaluation process for UO presidents starting next month, and setting pay for a new President.

Ginevra Ralph is chair, she runs a tight meeting. She was very cognizant of the need for transparency and the problems with paying a president more than our comparators when staff, OA, and faculty salaries are below comparators.

VPFA Jamie Moffitt really didn’t want to talk about that data. I assume she’s just being modest, since she’s making out pretty well. So here it is, from UO’s own IR website and other easily obtained public sources:

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And a snapshot from last year, showing salaries for faculty and some specific central admins at UO versus comparator data:

 The reports from the Wednesday’s committee meetings are here, and from Thursday’s meeting are here.

12/12/2014: The 8AM full board meeting is not off to a good start, given the quotes from Board Chair Chuck Lillis in today’s RG story about UO’s new Sports Product program. They make the University of Oregon Board of Trustees look ridiculous. And a board in their position cannot afford to look any more ridiculous:

… Lillis, however, wasn’t prepared to let the subject of efficiency drop. His friend, retired UO business professor Roger Best, worked at General Electric when Lillis was an executive there, he said.

“He was a world class business school professor,” Lillis said. “In the ’80s he routinely turned down $10,000-a-day as a consultant. He was the executive of a big British firm when he lived in Eugene and he commuted on the Concorde. He has started two businesses and sold them both — and is a very large donor to the university,” Lillis said.

That certainly is an interesting definition of a world class business school professor.

If the university is not going to trust someone like that, Lillis said, who will it trust. “We have this, like, superstar. …

… Barbara Altmann, vice provost for academic affairs, said the various committees gauge the soundness and coherence of proposed programs and ensure that the proposers have a stable line up of courses to guarantee quality for students who pay a lot, especially for business graduate degrees.

8:00 am (other times approx.) RECONVENE PUBLIC MEETING, FORD ALUMNI CENTER, GIUSTINA BALLROOM

Usual live-blog disclaimer: This is my opinion of what people said, meant, or should have said, nothing is a quote unless in quotes.

Notice  |  Agenda  |  Minutes

8.    Overview of Research Funding  
Vice President for Research and Innovation Brad Shelton will give an overview of the University
of Oregon’s funded research programs.

I missed most of it seems pretty similar to last year’s. Shelton is interim VPR, appointed after Espy left for a university that she thought had a better football team. Whoops.

Shelton doesn’t have the research background that would be normal for this job (short vita, no NSF grants) and he’s rather amazingly overpaid. He gives a reasonably informative talk though, and given his control over our limited research funding, no one on the faculty can afford to look cross-wise at him, unless you’ve got a pipeline to that sports product money.

Shelton ends his talk with a note of approval for the changes that Espy made in UO’s research office, and a word of thanks to Mussolini for getting those trains to run on time.

Did a pinch of Diane Dietz’s integrity rub off on Tobin Klinger?

12/11/2014 update: One of the few funny parts of Thursday’s Board meeting was seeing UO public relations flack and $115K Duck advocate Tobin Klinger sitting in the press section, just one table over from Register Guard reporter Diane Dietz. Back in July Klinger sent this rant about Dietz to the RG editors, who promptly, and I’m…

UO Board of Trustees, Th Dec 11th meeting live-blog

Short version: It was good.

The board listened to the faculty and the students today. More than that, it felt like they heard us. They even responded. They took the administration’s policy-grab motion off the table, until the Senate has had a chance to fix it and restore some semblance of shared governance. Yesterday’s committee meetings were also very positive. It felt like we’ve got the board that we’d hoped we would get, when we supported the legislation to get UO out of OUS.

Here’s hoping Scott Coltrane and Frances Bronet heard us too, because UO is not going to make progress until someone performs a few Johnson Hall defenestrations.

The Board meeting resumes Friday at 8AM with the first item being a presentation from Interim VP for Research Brad Shelton. I expect to live-blog it too.

12/11/2014 Live-blog. Usual disclaimer: my opinion of what people said, meant, or should have said, unless in quotes:

Show up Th at 8AM! UO Board and committee meeting agendas and links for Wed-Fri

12/10/14 PM update:

I encourage faculty to show up at the full Board meeting, 8 AM Thursday, to support the guest speakers supporting faculty governance. I’ll do my best to live-blog it.

12/10/2014: Some erratic live-blog reports below, in the committee agendas. It’s rough, I’ll try and clean it up later.

Highlights from the 12/10/2014 committee meetings:

– Helena Schlegel has been confirmed by the state Senate as new UO student Board Trustee.

– UO’s financial position is still strong, independent auditor gives “clean audit”.

– ASUO and Lamar Wise get the board to amend tuition and fee setting policy.

– Board abandons the Triplett / Park scheme to supersede the UO Constitution and faculty governance – at least for now.

– Board Chair Chuck Lillis presents draft plan for how the board can take pro-active steps help improve UO’s academic excellence- including improvements in administrative efficiency, fundraising, etc.

– Board moves forward on the Sports Product MS program. As much as it pains me to say it, this program probably makes sense for UO. Of course Jim Bean, our former provost and new $250K Sports Product program head, skipped the meeting. Having heard Bean talk many times, I can say that this was probably also a good idea. Two minutes of Bean would have killed its chances forever.

12/9/2014: Some highlights from the committee meeting agendas for Wednesday, and the Board meetings for Thursday-Friday:

– In the committees, starting 10AM Wednesday: A new Duck sports marketing deal, audited financial statements, Jim Bean’s sports product design sinecure, and Coltrane’s presentation on how he’s replacing Senate committees with his own “Administrative Advisory Groups”.

– In the full Board meeting, starting 8AM Thursday: Public comment on the Lillis motion to replace the UO Constitution and the UO Senate’s role in faculty governance with top-down control by the UO Board and its UO President, followed by a vote by the board. Update: The faculty has now been promised that this motion is off the agenda.

The committee meetings are all in room 403 of the Ford Center, and the full Board meeting is in the first floor ballroom. The list of UO Board Trustees is here. It will be interesting to see if Chuck Triplett uses the support staff tables to form a defensive wall between the university community and the board members, as last time.

The “Agenda” links below go to the docket material. However these dockets are not completely trustworthy. At the last meeting Board Secretary Angela Wilhelms did not post the most interesting parts of the dockets, e.g. Chuck Lillis’s power grab on presidential hiring authority. Even the board members didn’t get that until just before they were forced to vote. This secrecy led to confusion and embarrassment for the UO Board, as noted in this InsideHigherEd report by Ry Rivard.

This time I notice that the audited financial statements and the auditor’s report are not posted. The docket says they’ll be distributed at the meeting as hard copies, so no one has a chance to read them in advance and ask tough questions. I’m no CPA, but an auditor might say that this sort of lack of transparency “raises a potential matter of concern”.

GTF strike ends in 9th day. GPA boilers relit. Educative production and admins bowl-game junket plans resume immediately. LCNI predicts neural activity to reach normal levels by noon.

12/10/2014: The Emergency Senate meeting is on, for 3PM Today, 115 Lawrence.

UO Board committee meetings start at 10AM today, here.

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Updated pretty often. Days 1-4 here, Days 5-6 here. Also read the UAUO website here, UAUO Facebook page, here, GTFF website here, GTFF Facebook here. Not to mention Tobin Klinger and the UO PR flacks on their $500K “Around the 0” blog, if you can find it on google.

Dec 9 updates:

Gottfredson / Berdahl rape review panel releases nicely formatted report

12/9/2014 update:

In case you’re confused, there are two reports out now. The first is from the UO Senate Task Force, led by Carol Stabile and Randy Sullivan, and including Jennifer Freyd, Cheyney Ryan, and the US Attorney for Oregon Amanda Marshall. Their recommendations were presented to the Senate in October, here. The Senate is doing its best to implement them.

Today the UO administration posted the report of the  “Presidential Review Panel” that former UO President Mike Gottfredson, his athletic director Rob Mullens, and his VP for Student Life Robin Holmes personally selected to review their handling of the March basketball rape allegations, and give advice on reforms. They refused to do the former, but their report on the later is  now posted here.

I’ll be honest, I bailed at the point where Berdahl and the other panelists couldn’t even bring themselves to say Jennifer Freyd’s name, when talking about their euphemistic “campus climate” surveys. OK, I’m being unfair to the people who put in hard work on this panel, including Michigan’s Ted Spencer, who probably didn’t even get to collect his $10K honorarium, after the UM ethics office found out he’d tried to hide it.

Seriously though, it looks like there’s some good stuff in here about UO’s athletic and fraternity problems, and some sanitized but troubling history on the UO administration’s previous desultory efforts to address sexual assaults. I’ll give a redacted University of Nike coffee cup to anyone who can make it all the way through and provide a succinct annotated analysis, with a comparison to the Senate report’s recommendations.

Josephine Woolington is giving it a first crack in the RG, here:

Some professors questioned whether three current UO administrators could select members who would truly be independent of the university. Some also criticized the UO for paying each member $10,000, plus covering travel and lodging costs. UO spokeswoman Jennifer Winters said Wilcox and Shuman did not accept the money. The UO could not immediately say how much the panel has cost the university.

And she’s got a classic weasel word quote from the Gottfredson panel’s chair:

“I think what we found is that there’s a lot of pieces of good work being done throughout the university on both prevention and response, but (employees) are not always talking to each other, and there’s not a coordinated effort that makes the best use of resources,” said the group’s chairwoman, Mary Deits, a former Oregon Court of Appeals judge.

9/16/2014: KATU interview with the Honorable David Schuman confirms that the Gottfredson/Berdahl rape review panel won’t look into how Gottfredson handled the rape allegations.

Senate task force takes swift action to revoke Blandy/Altman/Baskin strike grading diktats:

12/7/2014: Senate Task Force on Academic Integrity takes swift action to revoke Blandy/Altmann/Baskin strike grading diktats: Now wouldn’t it have been better to involve the Senate from the start, instead of trying to do this in secret? After months of confusing flip-flops from the UO administration, the Senate voted unanimously on Wednesday…

More redactions. Baskin takes grading authority from faculty. GTFF strike blog, days 5-6.

Updated pretty often. Days 1-4 here. Also read the UAUO Facebook page, here. 12/7/2014: – Senate’s Academic Integrity Task Force takes swift action to revoke Blandy/Altman/Baskin strike grading diktats, here. – UO redacts HLGR invoices for GTFF work: When you make a public records request to the Oregon Attorney General for…

Tobacco lawyer and oil company lobbyist Dave Frohnmayer quoted in the NYT

Here, in a story about state AG’s selling out to energy companies, in exchange for campaign contributions: “When you use a public office, pretty shamelessly, to vouch for a private party with substantial financial interest without the disclosure of the true authorship, that is a dangerous practice,” said David B.…

UO General Counsel stops pleading the Fifth on Dearinger resume

12/6/2014 update: Page down for the long history of UO’s attempts to hide the names and resumes of the people working in its General Counsel’s office. The GC’s website has been “pleading the Fifth” on who works there, and their qualifications, ever since Randy Geller appointed Melinda Grier as General Counsel Emerita:

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I’ve now managed to obtain a current listing of General Counsel attorneys:

Douglas Park: Acting General Counsel, [email protected]
Park was appointed Interim GC after President Gottfredson’s mysterious firing of Randy Geller, in the midst of the basketball rape allegations cover-up. After many requests and a petition to the District Attorney, Park finally posted his resume, here.

Samantha Hill: Associate General Counsel, [email protected]
The General Counsel’s office refuses to release Ms Hill’s resume, arguing that it is exempt from disclosure by claiming she is a faculty member. She has never taught a class at UO. Doug Park went so far as to accuse me of sexual harassment and stalking, because I made a public records request for her resume.

Melissa Matella: Assistant General Counsel, [email protected]
The General Counsel’s office refuses to release Ms Hill’s resume, also arguing that it is exempt from disclosure because she is faculty. She has also never taught a class at UO.

Bryan Dearinger: Assistant General Counsel, [email protected]
He is the newest hire. The GC’s office released Mr. Dearinger’s resume, here, 3 days after I requested it. It’s an impressive one.

Salaries:

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6/17/2014 update: Doug Park tells UOM to file petition with DA to see attorney resumes. So I did.

Randy Geller’s retirement is effective 6/30. Presumably one of UO’s associate or assistant GC’s will take his place as Interim UO GC, and as Interim GC for the UO Trustees. Awesome responsibility. I’d sort of like to know the qualifications of these people. So I asked to see the resumes and the cover letters they’d sent in when applying to work at UO. Associate GC Doug Park rejected my public records request, telling me to appeal it to the DA if I wanted too. I wrote back that a simpler solution would be for him to post some basic info on the GC’s website. He wouldn’t. So, I took his advice, and here’s the appeal:

Lillis calls Coltrane back for 3-day loss. Is “X” grade flip-flop about football players eligibility?

Updated way too often:

12/5/2014:

6:11 PM: Lillis calls Coltrane back for 3-day loss on plans for Saturday mediation:

No more talks til Tuesday. The Board of Trustees meetings start Wednesday, and presumably they’re trying to put on a strong offensive show for their most important fan, Phil Knight:

On FridayDec 5, 2014, at 6:11 PM, President’s Office <[email protected]> wrote:

Campus Community,

I’m disappointed to report that we have ended another day of mediation with the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation without agreement. We had hope of bringing this issue to a close prior to finals week, but our next mediation is now scheduled for Tuesday.

[blah, Go Ducks, blah, blah]

Thank you for your continued work and understanding. Scott Coltrane, Interim President

– 5:00 PM. The GTFF website reports no deal yet, mediation will restart tomorrow:

Both parties agreed it’s important for the teams to collaborate in whatever ways might be possible without having mixed and conflicting messages ending up public and having to mend fences in the morning. The teams agreed to confidentiality for this round of mediation. We are still working through things at the moment and where ever we end up, we’ll be taking that to our Executive Council for discussion and for our stewards to take out to our members.

I’m still waiting for Hubin to release the latest data on how many billable hours Coltrane is paying Frohnmayer and Geller’s HLGR law firm for their successful efforts to drag this strike out past the last day for undergrads to get GTF help for finals week.

– I put in a PR request into Dave Hubin’s office for the latest legal and consulting billings on Monday. My guess is he’ll delay these until the GTFF bargaining ends, just as IR is hiding the latest info on raises for JH admins. But bargaining for the faculty contract starts in January, and will be helpful for showing the self-serving priorities of the JH administration:

12/4/2014:

– Scott Coltrane is so worried about revealing excessive athletic donations during the GTFF strike that Dave Hubin is redacting even the most basic information as “trade secrets”. Camilla Mortenson has the story in the Eugene Weekly, here:

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Under President Lariviere, UO would release all the records, including the detailed gift contracts, e.g. Phil Knight’s for the athlete-only Jock Box.

10:00 PM: Admins panic over JH sit-in, call cops on the undergrads. UOPD officers were called in today to evict undergraduate GTFF sympathizers from Johnson Hall, according to this Kaylee Tornay report in the ODE. The police refused, on the sensible grounds that the students weren’t breaking any laws. But the administration seems to be threatening student conduct code discipline, if I get the story right. Since UO’s Academic Freedom and Free Speech policies cover students, any such efforts would be pure intimidation, or panic, on the administration’s part:

The University supports free speech with vigor, including the right of presenters to offer opinion, the right of the audience to hear what is presented, and the right of protesters to engage with speakers in order to challenge ideas, so long as the protest does not disrupt or stifle the free exchange of ideas.

– 7:45 PM: The RG reports no settlement tonight. Mediation will resume at 11AM tomorrow. Many undergrads will have no final help or lab sessions before finals begin Monday – if there are finals. Faculty will be left to deal with the chaos. Meanwhile the newly established Senate Task Force on Academic Integrity has been working on an legitimate alternative to Doug Blandy and Barbara Altmann’s “Wizard of Oz” grading scheme. And fwiw, here’s official JH strike communique #253:

Date: December 4, 2014 at 7:58:19 PM PST
From: “President’s Office” <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
Subject: Mediation continues tomorrow

Dear Campus Community,

After a long day of mediation with the university and the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation sharing confidential proposals, talks have concluded for the evening.

While I hope for a swift resolution, I’m proud of our bargaining team for staying at the table to work to find a solution and we look ahead to another mediation session tomorrow.

While we continue bargaining, we remain fully prepared to meet the needs of our students going into finals week. A team of volunteers is ready to proctor exams and continuity plans are in place to ensure grades are submitted in a timely fashion.

Both parties have agreed to keep details of today’s exchange confidential, but despite the lack of resolution to date, the university remains committed to the collective bargaining process.

We appreciate the respectful discourse that has surrounded this challenging issue and the thousands of faculty, staff and graduate students who have remained focused on carrying out our mission. They have continued to work tirelessly to ensure that we continue to meet the needs of our students.

For complete information on academic continuity planning and negotiations, please visit http://provost.uoregon.edu/gtff-negotiation.

Sincerely, Scott Coltrane, Interim President

UO Alumna donates $10K to the GTFF strike fund. Heartfelt letter of support and link to the donate button, here.

1:00 AM: Was “X” grade flip-flop about football players eligibility?
The original “confidential” Academic Continuity Plan recommended that faculty consider assigning “X” grades until the GTFF strike was over, final work could be graded and legitimate grades could be assigned

A few weeks later, the admin’s changed their mind, and we got this message:

Academic Continuity Planning Update 11/25/14:

Colleagues,

Thank you for your ongoing engagement during the preparations for the upcoming GTFF strike. Below you will find additional information about grading options, pre-strike polling, changes to Blackboard, and attendance tracking.

Sincerely, Barbara Altmann, Doug Blandy, Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs

X Grades

As stated in the November 21, 2014, message, university leaders believed earlier that X grades might be a viable solution; however, upon further investigation with the registrar and financial aid staff, it was determined that X grades would be viewed as non-passing grades for financial aid purposes. Depending on each individual student’s situation, the X grade may imperil that individual’s financial aid. …

During the Senate debate Wed, John Bonine (Law) quoted wording from UO’s own financial aid website that conflicted with the administration’s statement above. So what’s really going on with this X flip, and the discipline that CAS Dean Marcus now threatening for those that use the X?.

The NCAA football championships. It turns out that the X does not meet the “satisfactorily completed” standard the NCAA requires for athletes to play in the post-season football championship game. UO’s last regularly scheduled exam is Dec 12. The NCAA then gives UO 14 days to certify that post-season athletes have satisfactorily completed their (minimal) academic requirement of 6 credits for the fall quarter. No satisfactory grade, no play.

This does not affect the Dec 5th PAC-12 Championship, but it does matter for the Jan 1 Football Championship playoffs and, should it come to that, the championship game on Jan 12th.

Here’s NCAA Bylaw 14.1.10.2:

To be eligible to compete in a postseason event (e.g., conference tournament, bowl game, National Invitation Tournament, NCAA championship) that occurs between regular terms (including summer) a student-athlete, in his or her final season of competition in the applicable sport, shall have satisfactorily completed six-semester or six-quarter hours of academic credit the preceding regular academic term of full-time enrollment (see Bylaw 14.4.3.1). An institution shall have 14 business days (regardless of the date in which grades are posted or submitted) after the date of the last scheduled examination listed in the institution’s official calendar for the term that is ending to certify completion of the six-semester or six-quarter hours of academic credit. (Emphasis added).

12/3/2014:

– New RG report from Diane Dietz here, with many interviews with undergrads. She gives Coltrane enough rope to say a few things he’s probably already regretting, but the undergrad quotes are what make it well worth reading. And in other news, SANIPAC apparently told UO today that its drivers (Teamsters Local #206), will honor the GTFF picket lines and stop picking up UO’s garbage. Game over.

– “Coltrane lauds “respectful discourse” as Marcus calls in dissident Dept Heads for discipline.” New massmail from Interim President Coltrane lauds the Senate and GTFF for “respectful discourse” – his definition seems a little different from the one UO’s English composition instructors use – as rumors fly that department heads who refuse to cooperate with the “voluntary grading suggestions” in the now public Johnson Hall “Academic Continuity Plan” are being called in by Interim CAS Dean Andrew Marcus, and told they will face discipline. Respectful discipline, I’m sure.

The UO Senate isn’t going to let this happen easily. They voted unanimously today to use their authority over academic matters to create a Senate “Academic Integrity Task Force” to rewrite Coltrane’s ACP, ASAP.

At the same time he’s on the respect thing, Coltrane is claiming the strike is not causing much disruption, and telling instructors that “staff volunteers” (some rumored to be UOPD) will be checking up on classes again tomorrow.

The good news? The GTFF president has flown to DC to meet with Pete DeFazio, Governor Kitzhaber (who controls UO Board appointments) is ramping up the pressure on Coltrane and the Board to end this nonsense strait-away, and the state mediator is going to give it another try Thursday:

Date: December 3, 2014 at 6:31:03 PM PST
From: “President’s Office” <[email protected]> Reply-To: [email protected]
Subject: Mediation resumes tomorrow

Students and colleagues,

As we mark the second day of striking by the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation, I am pleased to report the discourse has continued to be respectful. We are optimistic that this trend will continue tomorrow across campus, and at the bargaining table. We are also confident that we will continue to meet the needs of our students during this difficult time.

Contract negotiations can be emotionally charged events, and ours is no exception. One thing that has been demonstrated is the passion that we all share for education of our students. I want to thank all who have worked to ensure that we continue to meet the needs of our students.

Dozens of UO employees have volunteered as course monitors to each GTF-led class, to ensure all students are given an explanation of the situation, should the GTF instructor not be present. Over the past two days, course monitors have reported that only 22 percent of scheduled courses resulted in students arriving to find no instructor. On Thursday and Friday, we are fully prepared with volunteers to carry out this critical duty.

Picketing GTFs are passionately conveying their message and we appreciate the continued respectful discourse that has been witnessed throughout campus today. The university is committed to ensuring that picketing does not disrupt our campus environments.

Tomorrow morning negotiations will resume and the university remains hopeful that an agreement will be reached that meets the needs of all involved. Thank you for your commitment to our university.

Sincerely, Scott Coltrane, Interim President

– GTFF sets up a link to donate to their strike fund, here. “These funds will help offset costs associated with strike supplies, legal costs, or lost wages.”

– The Presidential Skybox at Autzen – mostly paid for with undergrad tuition money – costs more than twice as much as the GTFF sick leave plan:

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– From an email the administration is sending to undergrads in classes cancelled because of striking GTFs:

“Until further notice, there will be no formal instruction in your class. The classroom will still be available at the usual time, and you are welcome to use it for study groups or work sessions. We encourage you to keep up with your syllabus to the best of your ability: read the book on your own, try the homework problems if there are any, and if not pick out some representative problems from the textbook.”

– InsideHigherEd has a long story on the strike, UO’s academic standards, and Coltrane’s research, from Kaitlin Mulhere, with many interesting quotes. The admin’s hired spin doctors aren’t getting much play, compared to the GTFF leaders and their faculty and undergrad allies. Read it all, here.