Martinez’s (Diversity VP) 2nd $150K job

Update 5/31/2009:

Greg Bolt has an article in the RG on overcomittment problems at UO. Diversity VP Charles Martinez comes in for special attention. Martinez’s off campus job is at the Oregon Social Learning Center. By running his NIDA grants through OSLC he has been able to do an end-run of the normal overcommitment rules. Here are the contracts showing Martinez’s 3/4 time UO position (pages 1-6) and his 3/4 time OSLC position (pages 7-12). The most recent report, through September 2008, has him working an average of 25 hours a week for OSLC, so he’s billing 19.5 months per year. At one point it was up to 21. His current pay, including a strange “administrative supplement” is now about $150K from UO, plus another $85K from his OSLC grants.

In fairness to Provost Bean he inherited Martinez from Provost Moseley, who had to hire a diversity VP on the quick, after he lost a discrimination lawsuit. So quick that UO didn’t even do an affirmative action compliant search, even a year later, when they converted him from interim to regular. No AA search for the VP for Diversity!?

While Martinez refuses to answer questions, Provost Bean says he’s doing a heckuva job, and it’s fine for him to ignore the usual 1 in 7 day rule on outside work, not run his grants through UO, and have two jobs. As usual with Greg’s articles, you wish he would follow up on his questions, as in: “Really, Provost Bean – you think it is appropriate for one of your VPs to have a 25 hour per week job on the side? Would you offer the same deal to a professor?”

Update from 5/13/2009 Senate meeting:

The meeting also had the Diversity Progress report by VP Charles Martinez. Charles’s speech was straight up bureaucratic double-speak. As has become traditional, Charles brought a large contingent of UO Diversity Committee people with him for protection, announced their presence and had them stand before speaking, and took so long to say nothing that there was no time for questions about that nothingness. But at least this year he took time off from his OSLC job to show up for the meeting, and we appreciate that gesture – so thanks Charles we really appreciate the (literally!) 1137 pages of “Diversity Action Plans” your office has processed. An awesome achievement, on paper.

Notably, Martinez did not mention the UMRP once. We will have more on why later. The other rumor is that his office will be reorganized and Charles will be replaced in fall, because of his second job and because people are beginning to wonder exactly what his office does, besides spend $1 million plus per year. The press release will read something like “Mission Accomplished”. We expect (hope?) that President Lariviere will insist on an open hiring process – it’s a little embarrassing having a Diversity VP who was hired without an Affirmative Action compliant search!