Update: I emailed Jim Bean, asking for a list of people on the president’s Transition Team, and got a helpful response:
Not determined yet. Will review suggestions from retreat and mix in Mike G.’s preferences. Jim
While his message below says:
This input will be provided to the Transition Team, many of whom were in attendance.
So I guess things are very much up in the air. I think that’s good news.
7/27/2012: Someone must have told our Provost he needed to work on communication skills if he wanted to keep his job. The form is there, but not the content:
Office of the Senior Vice President and ProvostMessage for July 27, 2012
Colleagues:
The Tuesday, July 24th Leadership Retreat was extremely well attended, with a total of 77 faculty, staff, student, alumni association and UO foundation leaders working together to forge priorities for the coming year.
At the top of the agenda was the transition plan for new UO President Michael R. Gottfredson. While we are still collating input from attendees, a prevailing priority identified is for him to quickly immerse himself in UO culture and become known around campus. This input will be provided to the Transition Team, many of whom were in attendance.
Next, we looked at the different priorities for the Provost’s office. Participants developed and voted on several topics and agreed that we must give focused consideration to dealing with infrastructure issues related to the larger student body. I am now working with the Senate to send out a campus-wide survey when everyone returns in the fall.
Wrapping up Tuesday’s morning session was a presentation by Kimberly Espy on new models for supported research and the role of research in key AAU measurements.
Next week, I will discuss highlights of the afternoon session, which included academic priorities for the development campaign, as well as technologically enhanced education.
Regards,Jim
Contrast this with the solid, useful information CAS Dean Scott Coltrane sends out to his troops – complete with actual numbers. Respect.
Did we need a retreat of 77 people to identify these “priorities”? Geez, when are we going to see some bold, creative thinking of substance around here?
If President Gottfredson’s Transition Team is going to tell him that 77 members of the UO leadership met and concluded that his first priority should be to “quickly immerse himself in UO culture and become known around campus”, that’s just plain embarrassing. It won’t be long before he’s thinking that Peter the Anteater was a pretty darn good mascot after all.
Dog says
yeah furthermore us faculty are already “dealing with infrastructure issues related to the larger student body” – its called saturation and zero flexibility. However,
I am really quite sure that a survey will fix it ….
Wait: Gottfredson didn’t show for this little leadership retreat?
Call me crazy, but … isn’t a Transition Team supposed to be in place during the ‘Transition’? For instance, after presidential elections, the Transition Team is created in November and assists the President-elect until Inauguration Day in January (at which time some team members become staff, cabinet etc.).
I would have hoped that UOs presidential ‘Transition’ would already be underway, given the late date, but there’s not much time for that now. Oh well *sigh* I guess things are just different here…
Bean’s not a bad guy, but what’s the point of him lying about the transition team? Strange stuff, I don’t understand what’s going on. I guess we’ll learn soon enough.
Is Bean lying or does he have a summer intern at his disposal for word salad updates?
Oh wait. Did I say updates? Make that ‘Beangrams’. Much more accurate.
Is it true that the recent “leadership retreat” discussed adding women’s beach volleyball as a sport, now that questions have been raised about whether competitive cheerleading constitutes a real sport?
Hey, beach volleyball is an olympic sport unlike baseball, softball or golf.
I wonder how much time it takes Provost Bean to draft and send uninformative broadcast messages. He just sent another uninspired message to faculty and staff to update on the leadership retreat and their nebulous outcomes.