Last updated on 12/11/2013
12/10/2013 update: All in all, this meeting was a refreshing effort by Scott Coltrane and Brad Shelton to tell the faculty a little about what’s going on at UO and get some feedback about where to go w.r.t. future priorities. About 30 faculty risked frostbite and ostracism by the administration to show up and ask some skeptical questions.
The presentation on enrollment patterns was well done, and led to a good discussion about tradeoffs. No big surprises: UO students are well below our comparators in SATs and in graduation rates.
The information about faculty output and research, on the other hand, was pretty amateurish. We got the same basic story discussed in my November analysis of Coltrane’s benchmarking report, here. UO’s faculty is extremely productive when it comes to graduating undergraduates – twice the number of the other AAU publics. Not so much and falling when it comes to PhDs. There was no effort to control for med school / engineering school effects. Shelton and Coltrane got called out on this many times, and asked how they expected us to meaningfully contribute to discussion about academic priorities without good data. UO has these data, but for whatever reason they decided not to show them to the faculty. After the complaints, they promised to do so at a future meeting. This response was also a welcome improvement in transparency.
The most disappointing part to me, and judging by the questions, also to others, was the near total absence of financial data. It’s hard to talk about priorities when you don’t know the constraints. Shelton insisted that the only reliable data was that UO’s budget, per undergraduate, is about half the AAU average. The meeting concluded with a discussion of whether or not we could stay in the AAU, and whether or not we should try, given the opportunity cost.
As it happens, Johnson Hall has been much more forthcoming with the new UO Board than it ever has been with the faculty, and I’ve been able to get the documents from the first Board meeting. I haven’t had time to look them over yet, but the comments are open:
- 01 Overview.pdf
- 02 Diversity.pdf
- 03 Academic.pdf
- 04 Faculty and Staff.pdf
- 05 Research.pdf
- 06 Students.pdf
- 07 Finance.pdf
- 08 Athletics.pdf
- 09 University Advancement.pdf
- 10 Benchmarking.pdf
- Admissions viewbook 2014 resident.pdf
- Letter from the President.pdf
- Notice of Meeting 11 11 13_0.pdf
- Notice of Meeting 102413.pdf
- Orientation Meeting Agenda 102913.pdf
- Orientation Meeting Agenda 111113_0.pdf
- Powering the State’s Economy 2013.pdf
- UO OEM Annual Report 2012.pdf
- UO Snapshot 2013 FINAL 02-05-13 rev 10-15-13.pdf
12/2/2013: Coltrane on benchmarking and priorities
Dear Campus Community,
As the President described in remarks to the Senate at its last meeting, I invite you to participate in a series of academic planning discussions about the future of the University of Oregon, beginning Tuesday, December 10. Each topic in the series will be addressed at two meetings offering the same material. The first discussion will address “Benchmarks and Metrics.” I recently released a benchmarking report http://provost.uoregon.edu/content/academic-planning that provided a snapshot of the UO in relation to our peers across a number of relevant metrics. This report will help us evaluate our relative standing as a research university and to measure progress toward achieving our primary goals of promoting excellence, access, and financial stability.
As we establish priorities for future academic planning and investments in the university, your input and insight about which issues and measures are the most important is critical. Each discussion will include a short presentation and will be structured to allow ample time for questions, comments and dialog. If you’d like to provide questions in advance, please do so here: https://oregon.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_cTpEfahY185G2IR
Background materials for the sessions will be posted at: http://provost.uoregon.edu/content/academic-planning
Each topic will be addressed twice to accommodate as many schedules as possible. All discussions will be held in Gerlinger Lounge (no RSVP needed):
December 10, 12:00 – 1:30 pm Topic: Benchmarks and Metrics
January 14, 9:00 – 10:30 am Topic: Benchmarks and Metrics
January 30, 3:00 – 4:30 pm Topic: Setting Priorities
February 14, 8:30 – 10:00 am Topic: Setting Priorities
February 28, 8:30 – 10:00 am Topic: Implementation Strategies
March 18, 1:00 – 2:30 pm Topic: Implementation Strategies
This is an exciting time at the University of Oregon as we plan for our future. I look forward to your participation in this process.
Respectfully,
Scott Coltrane
Interim Provost
Nothing on Coltrane’s website about who is working on this. No contact with the Senate. This is shared governance?
I agree – while the public release of the benchmarking data was a good step forward is there any accountability for these benchmarks and for failures to improve, even if we had a strategic direction? It would be nice if the Provost themselves published a list of priorities designed on improving benchmarks. Then a process could get started.
This faculty input window-dressing is actually a good thing. Any plan will be a joke, as usual. Moffitt won’t give up any financial info, and Shelton won’t explain what’s gone wrong with his precious budget model. The faculty will never have any real input into decisions, except what they can bargain via the union.
Union? If we really value shared governance we will have lobbyists and legislation ready to go for the next legislative session, and hundreds of students and faculty showing up every day until share governance is law passed and signed by Kitz. You can give up the single token faculty vote on the board for the republicans. Actually, if the union really represents us they will pony up some funds and organizational ground work. Otherwise, July 1 all traces of shared governance will be axed by MG just before he and most of the upper management are shown the door (think Wyoming). PSU should join in as well though MG says the UO is the flagship AAU, yada, yada, all the power, including casa kits is within 20 miles of Portland, where everyone is just drooling at all that new debt the state can take on. Play nice and maybe the little schools we screwed over will help before they close, become the Main Campus Portland Engineering Technology, Law and business…, er, I mean branch campus of either UO, OSU or PSU.
I’m all in on the union, but remember Gottfredson gave the administrators a much better deal than the union got for faculty – $250K for Bean, and Gleason another $200K.
Why would we not try to stay in the AAU?
Are they suggesting they can either pay us more or stay in the AAU?
I missed this meeting but will try to attend the same meeting
in the January time frame. It, however, strikes me as quite possible that there is no one at the UO that truly understands and can communicate the integrated UO situation and its constraints. Nominally this should be job of Moffet+Coltrane but
I seriously believe that everyone chooses to remain in the dark, which, of course, is why we can’t implement shit for change.
Athletics: they are still claiming they are self sufficient?
Research: classic Espy, content free.
Finance: they are swimming in cash
Faculty and staff: lots of new OAs and staff, a few new TTF
still reading
We should stop pretending and abandon the AAU. To do otherwise is embarrassing. That said, Gottfredson will continue calling the UO one of the best in the world, so who cares.
I guess the question is if we are going to leave the AAU (which maybe makes sense as we don’t have a medical or engineering school), then what is our strategic plan. We have a bunch of cash, the ability to run up some debt, and now board that’s supposed to help with fundraising.
The athletics department knows exactly what their next priorities are.
We have no idea. And yet we are surprised that they seem to have a the fast track to donors?
We need a provost to get their act together (Scott lets hope this could be you), and set reasonable yet ambitious goals and priorities to work towards. Can I suggest destroying PLC being at the top of this list?
I used to not care if we’re in or out of the AAU. For the past few years, though, I have become convinced that the administration doesn’t really understand research as well as it should, or doesn’t have a good plan for how to sustain and encourage high-quality research. (The union certainly doesn’t understand research.) Anyway, given this, it’s good to have some external target, like AAU membership, that provides some sort of benchmark for what “research universities” should be doing.
I also think that there’s a lot of wonderful and vibrant research going on at UO, more so than at several of the other AAU schools, but that’s a separate reason to stay in.
there may well be wonderful and vibrant research going on at the UO but that research is not producing PHDs or attracting Federal Funding at the rate which is required in today’s reality.
As an AAU research University, the UO has simply underperformed for the past decade with respect to even the lower quartile of that comparator group.