Tuesday 6/4/2013, 8-12 AM, Room 122 Knight Library, open to the public and reporters, free coffee and donuts.
Live-Blog disclaimer: My opinion of what people said or were thinking but were too polite to say. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes. Check out Luebke’s facebook blog too, here.
Latest Fact Check:
Your Guarantee of Truthiness: All UO Matters bargaining posts fact-checked by Randy Geller, HLGR and their lobbyist and public relations consultant, (and former Frohnmayer aide) Marla Rae. My post from Session XXIII came through squeaky clean.
Synopsis:
- Moffitt finds another 0.5% for the faculty.
Prologue:
The administration is expected to present their counter-counter-counter-counter on raises. Last month the union and the administration were about $7M apart – 15% versus 10%. After bringing in another $29M in tuition revenue this year, Jamie Moffitt is still piling on reserves to prepare for tornadoes. The OUS F&A committee just voted to recommend UO raise tuition ~6% next year, which should bring another $15M(?) or so. Plenty in the academic budget to cover top JH priorities such as the new cop car fleet, Portland subsidies and administrative sabbaticals, the $350K presidential sky-box suite at Autzen, and potential bowl-game junkets (or NCAA penalties). Come by and see if there are any leftovers for the faculty!
 Doug Blandy
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 Sharon Rudnick
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 Tim Gleason
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Rudnick starts w/ strike, lockout, Art 36:
Union wants a clause allowing faculty w/ strongly held ethical views to not do work of strikers, say if SEIU goes out. Cecil: Of course you’d pay the scabs? Rudnick: Of course. Mauer: You’re suggesting faculty might even have to participate in hiring scabs? Rudnick: We prefer to call them “replacement workers.” Mauer: What would admins do? Rudnick: I imagine it would be all hands on deck. We might even require Bean to teach! Just kidding. Cecil: And if faculty don’t agree they’d be subject to discipline? Discipline? Gleason looks up from his ipad, smiling. Davidson: If this went to arbitration they’d ask if you agreed that an ethical refusal to cross a picket line was reasonable. Rudnick: It’s not reasonable.
Drugs and Alcohol:
Rudnick: We are willing to let faculty have a beer with students after a seminar. It’s even OK if you spill it and smell like beer. But you can’t display and articulable effect on performance. “Dave was giggling. You know what I mean.” If you do, we can test you. Mauer: Suppose the test is positive? Rudnick: Then you take it from there. Cecil: What’s the problem you are trying to address? Rudnick: Several times a year we get reports of faculty acting like they’re under the influence around students or in their office. Bramhall: So, positive test could lead to LOP, referral to EAP. Rudnick: We could say you can’t go back to the classroom, have to work in JH as an administrator. Gleason: Lots of employees, it’s a given that some have substance abuse problems. Cecil: It would have been helpful if you’d started with that, instead of crafting language and providing examples aimed at dinner drinks and wasting 5 months of our time. Rudnick: Point taken, but billable hours are not wasted time.
Economic proposals:
Original admin proposal was 5%, union counter was 18%
Admin’s previous counter:
2013: 1.5% ATB, retro to 1/1/2013.
2014: 1.5% ATB, 2% Merit, No equity.
2015: 1.5% ATB, 3.5% Merit, No equity.
No money for floors, but a committee to set them?
No change in promotion raises.
Union’s most recent –
2013: 1.5% ATB, retro to 9/16/2012.
2014: 3% ATB, 2% Merit, 2.5% Equity.
2015: 1.5% ATB, 3.5% Merit, 1% Equity.
2014: 3% of current NTTF salary in a pool for floors.
10% raises for promotions.
2013: 1.5% ATB, retro to 1/1/2013, only on base salary.
2014: 1.5% ATB, 2% Merit, No Equity.
2015: 1.5% ATB, 3.5% Merit, No Equity.
2014: 1% of current NTTF salary in a pool for floors.
6% raises for NTTF promotions, 8% for TTF. Close to current practice.
Back and forth on merit, review policies.
Mauer: Where did you get the money for floors? Rudnick: Oh, I don’t know. Mauer: You found extra money? Rudnick: You are not getting the leftovers! I don’t know why you people keep saying that. It’s a matter of shifting costs and budgeting, and we are not going to tell the faculty how we do it!
Mauer: We need to understand how you found this money, so we can help you find some more money.
Blandy: There will be cuts in other areas, to be determined in a secret ELT meeting.
Economists show up with donuts. Yum.
Cecil: Equity and compression? Rudnick: We can’t deal with equity and compression in this first contract. We are completely abandoning the Lariviere plan. We have spent the money he had budgeted for getting you to the AAU peers on other stuff. Sorry. We are willing to accept that people with more seniority will get paid less than new faculty. Mauer: We accept individual merit differences. Our issue is the structural problem – UO’s compression problems are systemic.
Rudnick: We agree that our faculty should get paid at AAU peer levels, but UO does not have those resources, and we’ve pissed away what we do have on other stuff. You cannot ignore that fact. Of course, we can pay comparable salaries to administrators.
Cecil: So you are saying that UO’s long held goal of getting faculty salaries to peers is unreasonable? Rudnick: Yes. We don’t have the resources. Blandy: The president is committed to getting new resources, just as Dave Frohnmayer was when the 2000 Senate White paper cam out. So, wait another 13 years.
Cecil: So, catching up with comparators is no longer “Job #1”? If it is, where is your proposal? Gleason: We have to make tradeoffs. It’s quite simple. We are not going to let the faculty help set UO budgeting priorities! Rudnick: Some people just got 30% equity increases!
Green: Your spin is that you are emphasizing merit, not equity. Problem is that your merit proposal is minuscule. 5.5% will be the first merit raise since 2007. So, about 0.75 % a year for merit. We are dead last in the AAU and after this we will still be.
Davidson: We are doing fine keeping up with AAU comparators when it comes to athletics and administrative salaries. Rudnick to Blandy: You want to respond? Blandy: No.
Rudnick: We got another $29M in tuition last year, and are looking at $15M for future years. We are not going to give you any more money! But you can move these merit and ATB raise numbers around, we don’t care about that. (Wait, didn’t she just say the admin wanted to put money into merit?)
Mauer: My understanding is that you are saying that without new revenue UO cannot address the equity gap with comparators? Rudnick: No, I am not saying that! (Then she pretty much says exactly that.) You are being really unfair! Mauer: You say you are open to addressing external equity, but not willing to put any money on the table.
Cecil: Explain retention raise section – just a license for the provost to give raises whenever he wants. Why not spell out a policy? Rudnick: ? Cecil, Mauer: Why not say something about having a credible outside offer? Rudnick: What about preemptive raises? Cecil: Sure – our proposal gives the provost power to set almost any reasonable policy – what’s wrong with having it written down? Rudnick: Noted.
Art 32 sabbaticals, admin counter:
Our VP for Portland’s sabbatical deal? 60% of her $201,667 administrative salary, and from what I can tell she’s getting that for the full FY, not just 9 months. Presumably Doug Blandy and Jim Bean signed off on this?
Rudnick: We did a little research and most AAU’s give 50% for a year and 100% for a semester. So we agree to pay 100% for one quarter (up from 85% currently.) Not retroactive. We spent a lot of money on Jim Bean’s sabbatical and can’t go higher.
Art 24, Leaves:
Rudnick: We still haven’t figured out track changes in Word, sorry.
Changing the subject for a moment, I got curious about what Randy Geller is doing to monitor Sharon Rudnick’s billing, which is probably up to $420K or so by now. NYT piece on the prevalence of bill-padding here, PR request here:
Dear Ms Thornton –
This is a public records request to the University of Oregon for any documents showing
a) who in the UO General Counsel’s office is responsible for monitoring invoices and billings by the HLGR firm, regarding the faculty unionization drive and contract negotiations, and
b) any audits done by the UO General Counsel’s office, and any documents showing questions about rates, expenses, work effort, time-keeping or other similar issues, and their resolution, for invoices submitted for this work by HLGR.
This request covers the period from 9/1/2011 to the present.
I ask for a fee waiver on the grounds of public interest, as demonstrated by the substantial public funds involved and by the fact that this matter is relevant to Oregon HB 3342, regarding the use of state funds to hire outside attorneys and consultants during union organizing drives, introduced by Rep. Michael Dembrow in the legislature this year.
Long back and forth about leaves, Green is on it. Gleason gets confused, Rudnick straightens him out.
11:00. I gotta go, check out Luebke’s facebook blog, here.
So the admins countered with NTTF floors and lower salary increases at promotion (wasn’t it 8 % previously??). Does promotion include a contract renewal (asst. prof has contract reviewed after 3 years).
So tuition increases for this year generating recurring an additional 15 million. There will also be tuition increase next year, which will generate another 15-16 million.
Boom 30 million in recurring by next year!!
Its available Sharon, I found it!!!
Question for the union negotiators, if you can’t generate a raise which is bigger than the admins initial 10 percent offer (which they have NOT budged on one bit) + 1.25 percent for dues, why should we vote to certify the union?
Just to be clear, have already certified the union. Maybe you mean “why should we vote to approve the contract?”
I don’t know maybe the 40 some other articles that affect your working conditions justfy dues.
Aren’t affecting my working conditions as far as I can see…is my class size getting smaller, is my office getting bigger, is my computer getting faster, is my research account getting larger, is my per diem increasing when I travel??
If not those 40 or so other articles??
The union has already extracted major concessions on the BAC limit for writing papers, and on academic freedom and child porn.
AwesomeO, did you not just notice movement on sabbatical leave, 100% for one term (not ideal, but hell, that is worth the dues right there)!
Is it?
A 15 percent increase in salary for one quarter, but you have to pay an additional 1.25 percent in dues for 6 years (18 quarters) to get the full quarter off?
Me thinks that math doesn’t work out so well in favor it being worth it.
It only takes a 1.25% increase ONE TIME to pay for dues in perpetuity. Sabbatical alone is not enough, but sure would not get it without a union.
Sure. My point is that if admin baseline raise offer is 10 percent absent the union, why should we vote to approve a contract that gives 10 percent, while also requiring 1.25 percent in dues (effectively reducing our raises to 8.75 percent).
I don’t understand how the admin’s baseline offer is 10%. It seems like their “baseline” was 0% until the union drive.
Admins original offer was about 6.5, see top of blog post. The 10. % is there last counter.
Original admin offer was 5 percent for one year only. In counter that added in another 5 percent raise for one more year. Amount per year hasn’t changed.
The Admin’s original proposal includes 1.5% retroactive until Jan. 2013. You get 5% only if you include the retroactive portion in the 2013-14 year. If you want comps, look what they offered non bargaining unit faculty or OAs (3.5%) – that is their original proposal. The Admin countered OUR union proposal with 10% for 2 years, already 1.5%/year higher than their proposal for OAs and non-bargaining unit faculty. But, let’s be very clear: you only need to gain 1.25% one time and your dues are paid for… for good. Given what the Admin has paid themselves, with deans, provosts, and presidents earning private CEO salaries, putting them in the top quarter of our public AAU comparators, I know we will not settle for 10. The Admin’s continued embarrassing refusal to do right for faculty will eventually sting them. The question is how hard do they want us to mobilize in early fall term for a just and comprehensive salary agreement? My guess is that we can stir the pot quite seriously if they stay “stuck.”
You guys keep messing with two years and three as it suits your argument.
Everyone is including the 1.5 retro proposal in their total rates.
True you only pay the 1.25 percent once. But what would raises have been without the union, probably the admins first offer 10 percent over three years.
Why do I say three years. Because in the fall, the admins got 3.5 percent for one year, they’ll get the same next year, and the year after that. So come fall of 2014 when all of the raises have gone into effect, and the admins will have gotten 10.5 percent.
The union needs to do 1.25 better than 10.5 as that is the standard raises they are giving out to people outside the union IMHO. Otherwise, what’s the point? 40 working conditions I don’t give a shit about won’t cut it. I’m all for mobilizing and not settling for 10 percent. I think you actually drove my point home. The union needs to better than 10 to merit my dues. Or they can have half my dues when I get half of my raises, and the other half after I get the other half.
As a side note, could we please stop abusing the math of raises spread out over time. It is not very meaningful to talk about the sum of year-by-year percentages over time. As an example, a “10%” raise spread out over three years will yield very different sums of money to you depending on how it’s broken down year by year.
If your base salary right now is (say) $1000 then after three years you will have the following cumulative pay
[10%,0%,0%] -> year1 = $1100, year2 = $1100, year3 = $1100, cumulative = $3300.
[3%,3%,4%] -> year1 = $1030, year2 = $1060.9, year3 = 1103.34, cumulative = $3194.24
[0%,0%,10%] -> year1 = $1000, year2 = $1000, year3 = $1100, cumulative = $3100
I know that this may seem like a fine point, but it can add up to a significant difference. If you’d prefer not to think of the math, at very least remember this: frontloaded raises are much more valuable than backloaded ones.
To “40 working conditions I don’t give a shit about won’t cut it.” That’s a really shortsighted and limited position. You’d fit right in at Johnson Hall. I’m glad the union is bargaining for all 1800 unit members and not just you.
What I asked for is a reason to vote to improve this contract. Frankly, I care if its in my best interests. I asked if those 40 working conditions would affect me. The only “win” in working conditions for TTF is 100 pay for a quarter sabatical.
And in exchange we now have definitive stances that we have to pass drug tests, alcohol tests, and that only one family member can benefit from reduced tuition at a time. That’s actually a big loss for me as I have three kids 5 and under.
So I’m asking for reasons to support it, and you accuse me of being a Johnson Hall crony because I am interested in my working conditions/salary and don’t see big improvements coming through the negotiations?
In regards to Johnson Hall, pretty sure I couldn’t pass the drug/brown nosing test :-)
Awesome0.
The Johnson Hall accusation was out of line on my part. And yes your interests are important but to fail to see how your interests align with those of the rest of the unit is, frankly, an immature response.
And, regardless of what is in the contract, the administration has always had the legal right to ask you to submit to drug/alcohol testing. The bargaining team has managed to put some boundaries on that you would not have had. I think you are missing some fine details of what has already been gained that could impact you.
The tuition waiver discussion is far from over.
As for voting to approve this contract. This contract has not been presented to you for vote – it’s not anywhere near over so patience is in order. It’s a negotiation.
I’m not holding my breath. The sabbatical being brought up to market is nice, but let’s please not be so ga ga over one small marginal improvement that we let admins (or the union) off the hook for the many other margins where we lag behind… more now than last year, more next year than this, etc.
If most AAUs give 100% for one semester, which is half the academic year, then how about 90% for a two-quarter sabbatical?
Rudnick says that the amount of money is fixed but can be apportioned differently. In that case, I vote for 3.5% ATB/0% merit in 2014 and 5% ATB/0% merit in 2015. Otherwise, we’ll never make up ground vis-a-vis our comparators.
That would interfere with admin’s ability to veto merit pay increases, i.e., to suppress the total institutional cost of salary increases.
Don’t understand this point here. Seems like this discussion only affects the variance of salaries and not the mean.
The portraits are creeping me out. Make ’em stop!
Admins winning. Union losing my support. Better do something real, and quickly, or I’m doubting whether you justify my dues. Tax me, and then not let me strike? What did you expect to happen with these admins?
I tend to agree. I’m starting to regret my union support. If the admins weren’t so devilish, I’d be over it altogether.
The Union should do our Pres a favor and take this to arbitration or fact-finding or whatever. This process is a humiliation to MG and to us. He’s lost control, and we can’t afford to lose another Pres. At this point winning a few more % at the table would be a pyrrhic victory for the faculty. You don’t like this guy, see who the board picks next! And this blog should take it down a notch, you’ve made your point.
Maybe I’m out of wack here, but my recollection is that the Admin didn’t intend to give raises at all until the union wrote them a letter in Sept asking for an ATB raise. Then when they did propose a raise, they presented a really lousy proposal, and I don’t think there was anything at all for 2015. The union got them to consider 2015 raises — so you can be tired and mad at the union all you want. Please send them a check for the extra $ you’ll be getting.
Obviously you are not one of the people who are affected by the low Sabbatical pay, but many TTF are. They can’t afford to take any time for sabbatical. That’s bad for the university (less research done) and bad for the students and bad for people’s careers. The union got a 100% for one quarter…and included other figures in the negotiation. Don’t know whether they’ll keep going on that or not…will have to wait and see.
It’s a NEGOTIATION. You will not get everything you personally want, but the union is trying to get more for everyone and so far they seem to have done a pretty good job.
It’s hard to know what raises we would have received if the union had not entered the picture. Once they did, it gave the administration cover to say that they’re holding off on raises until contract negotiations.
Is the proposed union constitution posted somewhere? Is there anything in it about criteria for being in or out of the bargaining unit? It’s outrageous that this still isn’t clear, and it’s causing problems in my department. Before the chain of replies that say “it’s the union’s fault that the guidelines don’t exist” and “it’s the admin’s fault that the guidelines don’t exist” start, let me say I don’t care whose fault it is. Having a department that’s (maybe) half split between TTFs in the unit and half not is bad enough, and not knowing how we got here is even worse. What exactly are we supposed to tell new faculty?
I can’t find the constitution at
http://uauoregon.org/our-constitution-upcoming-meeting-ratification-vote-information
This is buried in comments, I guess, but hopefully someone competent will read it.
If you’ve not found it yet Wombat, a pdf of the Constitution and Bylaws can be found at:
http://uauoregon.org/files/2013/06/UA_Constitution_Bylaws20130604.pdf
For what its worth, my understanding of the criteria for being in or out hinges on whether or not someone has supervisory authority (think hire and fire power) over another member of the bargaining unit.
Dear Bill,
Since I am signing my name to this, I hope you will not mind if I use yours.
Recently a colleague alerted me to your comment on my salary and sabbatical. I am not sure whether you are criticizing the salary as exorbitant, or only the fact that an administrator was granted a sabbatical. I presume both, since otherwise there would be no reason for quoting my salary explicitly.
Let’s look at the salary first, and let’s compare numbers. As of 2012, your 9-month salary was $118,165. On a 12-month basis, it would be $157,553. You were promoted to full professor in 2008; I was promoted to full in 1998, a full ten years before you. Before this promotion, I served as EALL department head for four years; beginning in 2002, I served as Associate Dean of Humanities in CAS, Dean of CAS, and Vice Provost for Portland Programs. In addition, I have signed up for the tenure-reduction program, which gave me an automatic 6% raise. Given all that, are you willing to argue that my salary, at 28% above yours, is unreasonable? If I am overpaid, then so are you.
As for the sabbatical, the pertinent rules are statutory, as you know very well: Oregon Administrative Rules, Chapter 580, Division 21 (http://www.sou.edu/provost/OAR%20Sabbatical%20Leave.pdf). There is no question that I was eligible. So the only remaining question is whether I could justify the sabbatical based on my scholarly accomplishments and plans, or whether it is just another perk given to an administrator, as you imply.
Let me sum it up: over my career and despite working continuously as an administrator since 2002 (with the exception of an earlier sabbatical at the Stanford Humanities Center, 2005-6), I have published three single-authored books (two with Stanford UP and one with Duke UP), co-edited two books, translated a novel from Chinese into English, and published some 30 peer-reviewed articles or book chapters, with two presently pending review. To support my current sabbatical, I won two competitive grants, one from the American Council for Learned Societies for work in China last fall, and one from the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore, where I currently work. About 75% of my next manuscript—a monograph on the Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou—is now complete.
There are many people on campus who are more accomplished scholars and researchers than I am. However, I think that my research productivity compares very well with that of most of my colleagues, despite my serving in a string of demanding administrative positions for many years. I am rather surprised that you, someone who goes to great lengths to criticize the university administration, does not appreciate the fact that a number of people (I am by no means the only one) manage to remain productive researchers and serve their institution in an administrative capacity at the same time. I am afraid that your misguided and misleading comments will discourage some of our colleagues from trying to do the same, to the detriment of the university.
With this very pedestrian explanation behind me—facts that you, in your zeal to condemn administrators, deemed insignificant—I must question why you find it odd that my sabbatical was approved, and ask why you imply that administrators should never have sabbaticals. Could you explain?
I appreciate well-argued, well-contextualized points with convincingly-interpreted data or narrative evidence. By mentioning my salary and my sabbatical without any other explanation, you implied that there is something wrong with both, and yet you did not hold yourself to any standard of evidence. In universities, we train our students to adopt professional standards of discourse, not insinuation, sarcasm, chest-beating, and ranting. Having perused your blog, I am pleased to see that some of your readers call you on unsupported claims and criticism, or more likely, simply ignore them.
Thanks very much.
Wendy Larson
Vice Provost for Portland Programs
Professor, East Asian Languages and Literatures
Dear Prof. Larson,
Thank you for this detailed justification of your salary and sabbatical benefits. I do wonder why you choose to compare your base salary with Bill’s, rather than your colleagues in EALL. We all know that salaries vary enormously by field–with our economist friends generally receiving better remuneration that others of us in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Vastly more important though is the question of what’s going on in Portland. The Portland Programs, of which you are Vice Provost, seems to many of us to be a vast money sinkhole. If you could provide a similar detailed justification of its budget and accomplishments, we UOMatters readers would be grateful.
Finally, I believe Bill’s point above is that, so far as he reports, you will be receiving 60% of your administrative salary to pursue your research. I applaud your continuing to research in your field while undertaking the burden of administrative work, but if your sabbatial means you will relinquish administrative duties to pursue research full-time, then 60% of your base salary is surely appropriate.
I look forward to your continued participation on this forum and your provision of well-argued, well-contextualized, well-analyzed information. But surely you must understand that for many of us, the context is precisely a culture of administrative sinecure (Bean’s sabbatical, for instance–both lucractive for him, and unproductive of any research, so far as I understand) and sinking salaries for the rest of us. I have published nearly as many books as you, over a much shorter career in a more-or-less comparable field, but my salary is vastly lower than yours–so much so that 60% is unlivable. That too is context.
Dog on salaries:
Wait? What? Harbaugh has a salary? How is that even possible?
and Harbaugh got promoted? Where the hell is FPC quality control when you exactly need it? This dog must be doing something wrong.
Let me review my accomplishments:
1) I bark at a lot of people
2) once in a while I have bitten someone
3) I have written a manuscript on when to bark and when to bite, especially in economic terms.
4) I chase police cars
5) Police cars chase me.
6) I am minister of the Church of Interdisciplinary Reasoning and Problem
Solving preaching to an audience of zero …
7) My main publications are in uomatters.com
Now, see, that’s 7 things I can list as accomplishments. I will take
a 1% raise on each of the 7 points – oh wait, maybe an additional couple of
percent if I go to Portland and bark (and maybe bite). Yeah, all of that
is worth a 10% raise …
Don’t start with that shit argument, Wendy. Using 12-month equivalents? Are you serious? Your defensiveness gives you up. You yourself must question whether your contributions justify the price tag. (I’ve worked with you, too. I’m sorry to say that my gut also tells me that you’re overpaid.)
Don’t the good administrators know not to start pissing matches with faculty? At least Gottfredson keeps his mouth shut when he has no defense.
Thanks very much.
Please tone it down.
Dog barks.
Everyone’s salary is outrageous in some context based on perception
of contributions, intellectual prowess, ability, impact, etc, etc. We
are all way too judgmental on this issue (which is one of the reasons
that peer review, in my view, is now failing). We seem to measure everything
against our own self-inflated net value to the University or the world. Personal attacks on someone that actually revealed their financial situation does not serve anyone well. Attack the profile, not the person.
And pissing matches take two to participate.
I would have expected that for $201,667, we’d get a little more “administration” and a little less “Zhang Yimou.”
Bill and other posters,
I am happy to respond to reasoned questions as long as you are willing to put your name to your opinions and questions.
Best regards,
Wendy
Thanks Wendy, I’d appreciate it if you could send a copy of any reports made in response to the 2012 summer retreat effort to do something about the UO Portland problems, discussed here: https://uomatters.com/2013/06/how-much-has-uo-pissed-away-in-portland.html
Bill,
I was on sabbatical and did not participate in the summer retreat, and I do not have access to any document that emerged from it. In winter and spring 2012, at my request, the provost convened a task force to evaluate the role of UO Portland in the university. Michael Moffitt chaired the task force, and submitted a report to the provost. I assume you can get a copy of this report from Academic Affairs.
I asked you some questions in my post, and I hope you will respond.
Wendy
Thanks Wendy, you weren’t given a copy of Moffitt’s report, or you are not willing to share it?
Bill,
As you know, the office in charge of commissioning a report is also in charge of disseminating it. However, I doubt that the report is secret. In fact, a summary is on the web: http://provost.uoregon.edu/content/report-portland-work-group
Unfortunately you do not seem to feel it is necessary to respond to my questions. I’m sorry to see that.
Regards,
Wendy
Rereading your post, Wendy, your questions seem rhetorical. Only two sentences end in question marks. The first is essentially “whose is longer?”, and without an arbiter to whip out the tapemeasure, there’d be no point in Bill’s unzipping (metaphorically). The second seems disingenuous, unless you are new to this blog.
Wendy, in case you are wondering I did not write the above comment, which I find quite offensive.
But your answers about Portland costs are quite evasive. This wastes a lot of time, and that’s considerably more offensive than a stupid dick joke. It’s also considerably more damaging to the thin shred of trust which still exists between the faculty and the administration.
So I’ll just make a public records request for the report that you have, and don’t want the faculty to see.
From: Bill Harbaugh
Subject: request for a copy of the Canoe Group report on UO Portland
Date: June 8, 2013 10:54:02 PM PDT
To: Lisa Thornton
Cc: Wendy Larson , Michael Moffitt , Dave Hubin , Gregory Rikhoff , Margaret Paris , Robert Kyr
Dear Ms Thornton:
This is a public records request for a copy of the 331 page Canoe Group consulting report on UO operations in Portland, referred to at http://www.thecanoegroup.com/2029/fine-tuning-internal-alignment-university-of-oregon-in-portland/
I’m ccing VP for Portland Wendy Larson and Law School Dean Michael Moffitt, who worked with the Canoe Group, and should have copies of the report, and should be easily able to forward it.
I ask for a fee waiver on the basis of public interest, which is large given the expense of UO’s operations in Portland and the costs of the consulting contract.
I think the report that we are looking for is the canoe report completed in February 2013. Your link is to the 3 page memo that the Portland working group dashed off in April 2012. Maybe “dashed off” is unfair — they prefaced their memo with the following sentence: Please do not mistake the relative brevity of this report as an indication of the seriousness with which we considered the complex considerations relevant to these issues.
A&AA is running a $1 million deficit this year and has been cutting its Eugene-based programs. Is this related to the $3.5 million sinkhole in Portland? A&AA has a large presence in Portland. If they pull out, who’s going to pay the rent?
Dog: 2013 Canoe Report synopsis
After four high-energy years the University of Oregon’s programming at the White Stag Block in Portland has generated considerable results, as challenges and opportunities have ripened.
Facilitating the work of a 14-member Planning Team, The Canoe Group designed and guided a process of research, discovery and dialogue to produce a Situational Analysis. Over 60 external and internal interviews, a review of institutional planning documents and the collection of unit baseline reports generated an overview of evolving strengths, weaknesses and lessons learned. The 266-page Executive Report and 65-page Summary Report provided UO leadership with a well-documented perspective, increasing alignment and understanding between academic and service units as to the current opportunities of the University of Oregon Portland.
So somebody has the Executive Report, somewhere
Let’s hope its not 266 pages of consultant-speak drivel like the above. But probably it is: cuz that’s what you pay a group like that the big money for.
Wendy states above that the summary of the 2012 summer retreat on the Portland initiative is found at the address she provides. But that is not a summary of the summer retreat; it is the summary of an earlier meeting, that proposed goals for the retreat. Hence, the summary states: “In order to move the institution toward this goal, we recommend that a significant portion of the university’s summer 2012 retreat be dedicated to this topic.” Is this the kind of attention to detail for which she is being paid?
I didn’t know UO paid Bill 157,000 for writing a blog.
The 2012 report by Bronet et all [thanks for posting the link] concludes that a robust UO presence in Portland is essential for the future of UO. It also concludes that UO PDX needs a clear vision articulated at the level of the Provost&President. Why not focus questions more constructively at that level?
It has also been noted that UOM has not met a female administrator that it has liked.
troll
Dog on Portland, not trolls
One of the initial problems with the entire Portland Center is that the UO
never did, to the best of my knowledge, any market research to see what Portland
State programs (particularly for urban professionals) was offering. Portland
State really does have a diverse array of programs, evening programs, etc – but
they are all taught by amateurs for the most part. The UO should have complimented these programs and provided innovative offerings to a new kind
of audience – not the same old programs as if the typical undergrad in PDX is
the same as in Eugene. The various masters programs offered in PDX by AAA
and/or Journalism are also not very innovative or exciting. If UO Portland
were a success, I wouldn’t be writing this – its clearly not and it clearly
could be.
Three cheers for a girl troll!
Come on, it’s not like I’m bowling buddies with Bean and Geller!
For the record, I still think Lorraine Davis has been UO’s best recent JH administrator, and Jamie Moffitt shows promise.
As for being constructive, UO’s had the Canoe consultants report on what to do about Portland for 4-5 months now, and apparently not even the VP for Portland has seen it! What do you call that?
Nice try, UO Matters…’best recent JH administrator’ is a pretty low bar.
Davis should stick to proctoring exams for athletes.
I have to agree with the unusual UOM on-the-record positive comment about Lorraine Davis. She worked hard with and with little appreciation under the circumstances.
To the yammering hounds: do try to see if you can give us a few days respite from knee-jerk insult and innuendo. It does not impress.