I think this took 7 minutes to post (yes I am giving a midterm now so I have nothing else to do but post smack)
More to the point
While this is good transparency a table showing all the numbers and transformations would be nice. Its unclear the amount of budget savings that results from this maneuvers and that would be nice to know in the context of the CAS debt. I mean, is this style
or is this substance?
honest Uncle Bernie
02/29/2016
Dean Andrew Marcus is getting a lot of fury and blame for this, from what I hear, but I think it is misdirected. The directive is coming from above, in response to the budget deficit (which also comes largely from above) and the desire to replace NTTF with TTF for AAU purposes. I imagine part of the reason is also the cluster hiring — how can they have a deficit yet be running this extremely expensive cluster operation?
I personally find it repugnant to be sacrificing NTTF who have been doing a good job and carrying much of the teaching load, especially in the lower level courses, while the privileged TTF do their own thing, which is financed mainly by the aforementioned intro courses.
With the number of FTE positions being cut, the savings must be quite substantial, in the multimillion range. Again, I don’t see how Andrew Marcus can be blamed, except possibly for the detailed configuration of whom to cut.
Were the humanities singled out for inordinate cuts? Well, another thing I hear is that some departments were ramping up NTTF while their enrollments were in fact declining — all to reduce the teaching responsibilities of the TTF? If this is true, those departments are largely to blame for what is happening to their NTTF.
All in all, not a pretty picture. (I’m sure what I have said here will displease many people in various positions.) Then there’s the coming tuition increase. A topic for another post another day. But not good.
man
02/29/2016
Does anyone know how many of the positions cut were former humanity grad students from UO? That might be another factor consider in program reallignment (if you count placing students into NTTF slots as a placement, your program needs adjustment).
Regardless, there are real lives affected by this shift. Glad the decisions are being made early enough to help people land on their feet. Wish they were being made even earlier to help people have successful searches (but hopefully signals were sent indicating this possibility).
Pollyanna
03/01/2016
No, they were not notified early enough for the academic job market. No, there were no whispers back in the fall when the academic job market in most humanities fields gets started. No, this was not well done. The university has room for another 9000 students? Well, it won’t have faculty for another 900 students. At the rate this “realignment” is going, the university will be like the typical American city: the core emptied out, and all the population out in the suburbs.
honest Uncle Bernie
03/01/2016
Of course it’s late for most of them for the academic job market. Had the University — it is probably not the fault of Andrew Marcus — President Schill, are you listening? — wanted to do this humanely, or at least fairly, they would have delayed the terminations for a year, giving the affected people a full academic year (or better yet, this Spring and Summer and all next year) to look for new employment.
awesome0
03/01/2016
Had it happened in the fall, the union contract would have been certified. Its open question of whether or not the union leadership knew this implicitly could have happened and wanted their contract signed…..
uomattersPost author | 03/01/2016
The union contracts have given UO’s NTTF’s many job protections they never had before – but not tenure. *Everyone* knew, explicitly, that people without tenure could face contract renewal. Not exactly a conspiracy!
A better question would be why JH let the professional schools like AAA get away with poaching CAS students with those AAD 250 251 252 guts with un-proctored online exams.
Dog
03/01/2016
net 40 lost
that’s problem 3M out of the total CAS budget of > 100 million
Anon
02/29/2016
None of this is Andrew’s fault, but he takes responsibility for the decisions anyway. Good man.
uomattersPost author | 02/29/2016
But maybe we’d be better off with a Dean who would challenge the Provost, rather than tug the forelock. And maybe Marcus will do that when he’s no longer interim.
XDH
03/01/2016
He did challenge the president and provost two years ago:
Clearly his pleas went nowhere and now we have a lot of good people out of jobs.
Louise Bishop
03/01/2016
The Jan 22 memo lists five, not six, administrative positions to be eliminated:
“The five job positions that I am eliminating from the dean’s office central administration are the:
• Associate Dean for Finance and Administration
• Advisor for Undergraduate Initiatives
• Director of Operations
• Business Analyst
• Records and Information Coordinator”
What is, or was, the sixth?
answer
03/01/2016
an assistant in development.
joe
03/02/2016
My understand is the Assoc Dean for Fin & Admin was retiring anyway (or retired early). The Rec. & Info Coordinator was classified and laid off. The other three are employed in other capacities at UO.
Hippo
03/01/2016
Looks like Marcus spent more time on his memo to the TTF than to the NTTF losing their jobs, who received a form letter telling them they were getting kicked out. Nice work.
I’m writing a news story for The Register-Guard about the contract non-renewals. I’m hoping to speak with someone who got the letter.
If you’re willing, please call 541-338-2376.
Thank you,
Diane Dietz, reporter, The Register-Guard
anonymous
03/01/2016
Ah, Diane, a lot of people don’t trust you.
uomattersPost author | 03/01/2016
Yeah, people like Mike Gottfredson and Randy Geller don’t trust Diane Dietz.
The RG used to worship the UO administration, and for years wouldn’t publish anything critical. Years in which UO got worse and worse.
UO is lucky that the RG has started asking tough questions about UO.
Anonymous
03/01/2016
There are going to be cuts across the board including the least paid classified staff. The people that do the work must go to make the school better. Not a good time to be a university employee. Ya know, some of us are working just to pay rent and student loans.
joe
03/02/2016
I’m sure they’ll be hiring more associate/vice/assistant provosts/deans/etc with esquire after their names for tidy sums.
Anonymous
03/01/2016
CAS is just the beginning. There will be more layoffs all across campus. Stay tuned.
charlie
03/01/2016
Yup, uni’s futures are going to resemble what’s going on with LSU/IL unis rather than the ones depicted in commercials during football season…..
uomattersPost author | 03/01/2016
The faculty wanted UO to stay in the AAU. The board hired Schill to keep UO in the AAU. This is what it takes to stay in the AAU.
UO went through LSU’s pain 20 years ago.
Schill has been very clear that the money saved will be redirected to hiring new tenure track faculty.
charlie
03/01/2016
It doesn’t matter what the FS/JH wants, it will all come down to what the debt credit agencies decide. THEY are downgrading those states unis and precipitating the crisis. The legislature and admins are simply tagging along. The same will be true of any uni, including the U of Owe…
So, tell me, what’s been going on with admits at U of Owe over the last few years?
honest Uncle Bernie
03/01/2016
The faculty wanted UO to stay in the AAU, I want it to. But not at the expense of treating the NTTF like this. At least give them a goddam year’s notice? If a couple million dollars for one year is going to make that much difference in our “standing” maybe it’s too far gone already.
If the board cares so damn much about the AAU, how about they come up with at least some of the dough? Would a couple of million to treat the NTTF decently really kill them? UO was able to come up with tens of millions for an unnecessary expansion of the EMU (and very pedestrian, even ugly visually, I might add) Couldn’t something better have been done for the NTTF?
And I haven’t even gotten to the part about the tuition increases ….
uomattersPost author | 03/01/2016
Next you’re going to suggest Coltrane should have cut back on the $2.4M he pays for the Jock Box tutoring.
You’re running for Senate right? We may need you next year.
anon
03/01/2016
This. Every department on campus has been asked to prepare proposed cuts that range from 1% up to 6%. There will be lots of people out of a job before this is over.
Sara Mattison
03/02/2016
NBC 16 is going to talk to Andrew Marcus Wednesday morning. We would like to talk to a faculty member(s) who received the letter. This would be an on-camera interview. Thank you.
You can reach me at 541-214-9165
Dr. Funkenstein
03/02/2016
I am one of the faculty you’re seeking, but meeting with you in this way would be extraordinarily risky for anyone who might hope to continue to work at this University in some capacity in the future. That’s the plain truth of the matter.
uomattersPost author | 03/02/2016
Why are you interviewing Marcus? Provost Coltrane is the guy whose decisions led to this. Ask Coltrane how many jobs the $2.4M he spends on the athlete-only Jock Box tutoring would save.
Or interview VPAA Doug Blandy. He’s the one who set up the gut AAD 250 online classes that suck up all the humanities students who want an easy A. Online exams with no proctoring!
Or interview Law Dean Michael Moffitt. He’s the guy who’s getting $10M to prop up the law school with tuition discounts. Guess who got him the money?
Sara Mattison
03/02/2016
Provost Coltrane and President Schill not available for an interview today. I tried reaching out to them since yesterday.
uomattersPost author | 03/02/2016
Try VPAA Doug Blandy:
Name Doug Blandy
Title: Sr Vice Prov for Acad Aff
Department: Provost and Academic Affairs
Title2: Professor
Department2: Arts and Administration
Office Address: 206 Johnson Hall
1258 University Of Oregon
Eugene OR 97403-1258
Office Phone: (541) 346-3029
Employee Email: [email protected]
Name Michael L Moffitt
Title: Dean of Law/Philip H Knight Ch
Department: Law SchoolFacebook PageTwitter Feed
Title2: Professor
Department2: Law SchoolFacebook PageTwitter Feed
Office Address: 105E Knight Law Center
1221 University Of Oregon
Eugene OR 97403-1221
Office Phone: (541) 346-3836
Employee Email: [email protected]
Where was the union in these cuts? The non-actions of Dreiling and his union lieutenants confirm pre-union-election concerns that the union is less than useless when it comes to supporting university academic quality and protecting teaching jobs. We have a punchless Union, an irrelevant Senate, a visionless Administration and an out-of-touch Board of Trustees with an imperious chair. Any wonder the University is in free-fall? When will one of these groups actually do something to improve our university?
uomattersPost author | 03/02/2016
Are you so unengaged that you haven’t even read the CBA?
Sun Tzu
03/02/2016
Very Trumpesque of you UOM. The CBA is clearly good for the horribly paid and treated NTTF but it is useless for TTF. And it obviously did zilch for the NTTF whom are not being renewed. From this vantage point, all the pre-union-election promises of improving academic quality have not come to pass. Name me three academic improvements since the union came into being? How about two? One? Ask your TTF colleagues or your students: Is our university better off now that we have a union? The answer might surprise you union leaders…
Dog
03/02/2016
In this context, let me offer my own view of what would constitute actual improvement – and these are in no particular order
1. Serious attention and investment paid to increasing graduate enrollment in interesting and relevant new programs. This would keep us in the AAU
2. Significant reduction in the current ridiculous ratio of TTF to undergrad students. Yes, I understand this is now on the radar and Shill seems aware and responding (but at a low rate).
3. A real undergraduate research program with real facilities and infrastructure and incentive for faculty
4. A budget model that invests in scholarship and scholarly ideas instead of counting beans in a ZERO SUM game.
5. An actual researach computing infrastructure
6. better parking ….
Dog
03/02/2016
UOmatters seems to have excised one of my retorts to Tzu the general so that my list is out of context.
To be clear, I am NOT saying that any of this has yet happened at the you nor that the UNION would make it so.
Its just that I am tired of the vagueness that plagues this forum. The generic comment that “things have not improved at the UO” requires a) an exposition of the “things” and b) a rubric for
measuring improvement.
nice work UO matters
I think this took 7 minutes to post (yes I am giving a midterm now so I have nothing else to do but post smack)
More to the point
While this is good transparency a table showing all the numbers and transformations would be nice. Its unclear the amount of budget savings that results from this maneuvers and that would be nice to know in the context of the CAS debt. I mean, is this style
or is this substance?
Dean Andrew Marcus is getting a lot of fury and blame for this, from what I hear, but I think it is misdirected. The directive is coming from above, in response to the budget deficit (which also comes largely from above) and the desire to replace NTTF with TTF for AAU purposes. I imagine part of the reason is also the cluster hiring — how can they have a deficit yet be running this extremely expensive cluster operation?
I personally find it repugnant to be sacrificing NTTF who have been doing a good job and carrying much of the teaching load, especially in the lower level courses, while the privileged TTF do their own thing, which is financed mainly by the aforementioned intro courses.
With the number of FTE positions being cut, the savings must be quite substantial, in the multimillion range. Again, I don’t see how Andrew Marcus can be blamed, except possibly for the detailed configuration of whom to cut.
Were the humanities singled out for inordinate cuts? Well, another thing I hear is that some departments were ramping up NTTF while their enrollments were in fact declining — all to reduce the teaching responsibilities of the TTF? If this is true, those departments are largely to blame for what is happening to their NTTF.
All in all, not a pretty picture. (I’m sure what I have said here will displease many people in various positions.) Then there’s the coming tuition increase. A topic for another post another day. But not good.
Does anyone know how many of the positions cut were former humanity grad students from UO? That might be another factor consider in program reallignment (if you count placing students into NTTF slots as a placement, your program needs adjustment).
Regardless, there are real lives affected by this shift. Glad the decisions are being made early enough to help people land on their feet. Wish they were being made even earlier to help people have successful searches (but hopefully signals were sent indicating this possibility).
No, they were not notified early enough for the academic job market. No, there were no whispers back in the fall when the academic job market in most humanities fields gets started. No, this was not well done. The university has room for another 9000 students? Well, it won’t have faculty for another 900 students. At the rate this “realignment” is going, the university will be like the typical American city: the core emptied out, and all the population out in the suburbs.
Of course it’s late for most of them for the academic job market. Had the University — it is probably not the fault of Andrew Marcus — President Schill, are you listening? — wanted to do this humanely, or at least fairly, they would have delayed the terminations for a year, giving the affected people a full academic year (or better yet, this Spring and Summer and all next year) to look for new employment.
Had it happened in the fall, the union contract would have been certified. Its open question of whether or not the union leadership knew this implicitly could have happened and wanted their contract signed…..
The union contracts have given UO’s NTTF’s many job protections they never had before – but not tenure. *Everyone* knew, explicitly, that people without tenure could face contract renewal. Not exactly a conspiracy!
A better question would be why JH let the professional schools like AAA get away with poaching CAS students with those AAD 250 251 252 guts with un-proctored online exams.
net 40 lost
that’s problem 3M out of the total CAS budget of > 100 million
None of this is Andrew’s fault, but he takes responsibility for the decisions anyway. Good man.
But maybe we’d be better off with a Dean who would challenge the Provost, rather than tug the forelock. And maybe Marcus will do that when he’s no longer interim.
He did challenge the president and provost two years ago:
https://uomatters.com/2016/02/schill-and-marcus-lance-gottfredson-and-coltranes-festering-cas-budget-boil.html
Clearly his pleas went nowhere and now we have a lot of good people out of jobs.
The Jan 22 memo lists five, not six, administrative positions to be eliminated:
“The five job positions that I am eliminating from the dean’s office central administration are the:
• Associate Dean for Finance and Administration
• Advisor for Undergraduate Initiatives
• Director of Operations
• Business Analyst
• Records and Information Coordinator”
What is, or was, the sixth?
an assistant in development.
My understand is the Assoc Dean for Fin & Admin was retiring anyway (or retired early). The Rec. & Info Coordinator was classified and laid off. The other three are employed in other capacities at UO.
Looks like Marcus spent more time on his memo to the TTF than to the NTTF losing their jobs, who received a form letter telling them they were getting kicked out. Nice work.
That’s true. I got one of them.
Hello UOmatters readers,
I’m writing a news story for The Register-Guard about the contract non-renewals. I’m hoping to speak with someone who got the letter.
If you’re willing, please call 541-338-2376.
Thank you,
Diane Dietz, reporter, The Register-Guard
Ah, Diane, a lot of people don’t trust you.
Yeah, people like Mike Gottfredson and Randy Geller don’t trust Diane Dietz.
The RG used to worship the UO administration, and for years wouldn’t publish anything critical. Years in which UO got worse and worse.
UO is lucky that the RG has started asking tough questions about UO.
There are going to be cuts across the board including the least paid classified staff. The people that do the work must go to make the school better. Not a good time to be a university employee. Ya know, some of us are working just to pay rent and student loans.
I’m sure they’ll be hiring more associate/vice/assistant provosts/deans/etc with esquire after their names for tidy sums.
CAS is just the beginning. There will be more layoffs all across campus. Stay tuned.
Yup, uni’s futures are going to resemble what’s going on with LSU/IL unis rather than the ones depicted in commercials during football season…..
The faculty wanted UO to stay in the AAU. The board hired Schill to keep UO in the AAU. This is what it takes to stay in the AAU.
UO went through LSU’s pain 20 years ago.
Schill has been very clear that the money saved will be redirected to hiring new tenure track faculty.
It doesn’t matter what the FS/JH wants, it will all come down to what the debt credit agencies decide. THEY are downgrading those states unis and precipitating the crisis. The legislature and admins are simply tagging along. The same will be true of any uni, including the U of Owe…
Some links please. Sounds interesting.
finance.townhall.com › Columnists › Mike Shedlock
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/02/lsu_uno_moodys...
http://www.nebhe.org/info/pdf/tdbank_breakfast/093011/KimTuby...
specifically pg. 5, 3) Student Demand and Pricing Power.
So, tell me, what’s been going on with admits at U of Owe over the last few years?
The faculty wanted UO to stay in the AAU, I want it to. But not at the expense of treating the NTTF like this. At least give them a goddam year’s notice? If a couple million dollars for one year is going to make that much difference in our “standing” maybe it’s too far gone already.
If the board cares so damn much about the AAU, how about they come up with at least some of the dough? Would a couple of million to treat the NTTF decently really kill them? UO was able to come up with tens of millions for an unnecessary expansion of the EMU (and very pedestrian, even ugly visually, I might add) Couldn’t something better have been done for the NTTF?
And I haven’t even gotten to the part about the tuition increases ….
Next you’re going to suggest Coltrane should have cut back on the $2.4M he pays for the Jock Box tutoring.
You’re running for Senate right? We may need you next year.
This. Every department on campus has been asked to prepare proposed cuts that range from 1% up to 6%. There will be lots of people out of a job before this is over.
NBC 16 is going to talk to Andrew Marcus Wednesday morning. We would like to talk to a faculty member(s) who received the letter. This would be an on-camera interview. Thank you.
You can reach me at 541-214-9165
I am one of the faculty you’re seeking, but meeting with you in this way would be extraordinarily risky for anyone who might hope to continue to work at this University in some capacity in the future. That’s the plain truth of the matter.
Why are you interviewing Marcus? Provost Coltrane is the guy whose decisions led to this. Ask Coltrane how many jobs the $2.4M he spends on the athlete-only Jock Box tutoring would save.
Or interview VPAA Doug Blandy. He’s the one who set up the gut AAD 250 online classes that suck up all the humanities students who want an easy A. Online exams with no proctoring!
Or interview Law Dean Michael Moffitt. He’s the guy who’s getting $10M to prop up the law school with tuition discounts. Guess who got him the money?
Provost Coltrane and President Schill not available for an interview today. I tried reaching out to them since yesterday.
Try VPAA Doug Blandy:
Name Doug Blandy
Title: Sr Vice Prov for Acad Aff
Department: Provost and Academic Affairs
Title2: Professor
Department2: Arts and Administration
Office Address: 206 Johnson Hall
1258 University Of Oregon
Eugene OR 97403-1258
Office Phone: (541) 346-3029
Employee Email: [email protected]
Background on AAD here: https://uomatters.com/2014/01/blandy-pulls-off-daring-1000000-credit.html
Or try Law Dean Michael Moffitt:
Name Michael L Moffitt
Title: Dean of Law/Philip H Knight Ch
Department: Law SchoolFacebook PageTwitter Feed
Title2: Professor
Department2: Law SchoolFacebook PageTwitter Feed
Office Address: 105E Knight Law Center
1221 University Of Oregon
Eugene OR 97403-1221
Office Phone: (541) 346-3836
Employee Email: [email protected]
Background on his $10M bailout here: https://uomatters.com/2016/02/coltrane-gave-law-10m-aaa-5-3m-with-off-budget-mous.html
Where was the union in these cuts? The non-actions of Dreiling and his union lieutenants confirm pre-union-election concerns that the union is less than useless when it comes to supporting university academic quality and protecting teaching jobs. We have a punchless Union, an irrelevant Senate, a visionless Administration and an out-of-touch Board of Trustees with an imperious chair. Any wonder the University is in free-fall? When will one of these groups actually do something to improve our university?
Are you so unengaged that you haven’t even read the CBA?
Very Trumpesque of you UOM. The CBA is clearly good for the horribly paid and treated NTTF but it is useless for TTF. And it obviously did zilch for the NTTF whom are not being renewed. From this vantage point, all the pre-union-election promises of improving academic quality have not come to pass. Name me three academic improvements since the union came into being? How about two? One? Ask your TTF colleagues or your students: Is our university better off now that we have a union? The answer might surprise you union leaders…
In this context, let me offer my own view of what would constitute actual improvement – and these are in no particular order
1. Serious attention and investment paid to increasing graduate enrollment in interesting and relevant new programs. This would keep us in the AAU
2. Significant reduction in the current ridiculous ratio of TTF to undergrad students. Yes, I understand this is now on the radar and Shill seems aware and responding (but at a low rate).
3. A real undergraduate research program with real facilities and infrastructure and incentive for faculty
4. A budget model that invests in scholarship and scholarly ideas instead of counting beans in a ZERO SUM game.
5. An actual researach computing infrastructure
6. better parking ….
UOmatters seems to have excised one of my retorts to Tzu the general so that my list is out of context.
To be clear, I am NOT saying that any of this has yet happened at the you nor that the UNION would make it so.
Its just that I am tired of the vagueness that plagues this forum. The generic comment that “things have not improved at the UO” requires a) an exposition of the “things” and b) a rubric for
measuring improvement.