Plenty of buzzwords though. The deadline to comment on UO’s “strategic framework” is today. In Around the O, here.
The document is meant to complement the UO’s mission statement and the 2009 Academic Plan, not replace either. Further, the framework is not written to be a “plan”—it does not contain metrics or specific tactics—and to be honest, we may not have the resources to fully execute each strategy. That will not, however, preclude us from striving to reach the important goals contained in the overall framework to enhance excellence at the University of Oregon.
Uh, no thanks.
Most of the “strategic framework” boils down to “Look for outside money so we can do X, Y and Z.”
wow
now that is priceless …
So do they at least have 12 percent of a plan?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD-ZKyGfhsE
The most telling part of this is not that it is yet another document about EXCELLENCE (literally in capital letters in the document) that sketches in the outline of generally desirable things (improve access … promote research … support students and faculty …) with almost no specifics, just like the half-dozen other initiatives and documents we’ve had along these lines in the last few years. The most telling part of it is that they used up the free time of *fifty faculty members* for a *year* to devise this thing. Fifty people who could have been mentoring students, publishing articles, working outside jobs to support their puny salaries, or even sitting around recovering from the onslaught of busywork and initiatives and documents. This is not EXCELLENT. This is yet another waste of time.
Fortunately, those fifty people probably just had a handful of committee meetings–though even that was a waste of valuable time.
Ha ha!
If one tired little word deserves a break around here, it is ‘excellence.’
I once had a boss who made us watch 6 hours of Tom Peters’ “In Search of Excellence” videos. So I quit and became a professor. But it turns out there’s no escaping his brainless zombies of excellence. Maybe we can distract them with a new business strategy book?
deja vu all over again – the 1997/1998 Process for Change
https://web.archive.org/web/20120427200413/http://pythia.uoregon.edu/~llynch/solutions.html
Nice find – contact our swag office for your UO Matters Coffee Cup of Excellence
Nothing says mediocre like EXCELLENCE
What about “Flagship?”
It’s a UO document, not OSU…
I can’t get Bill and Ted out of my head. It took only two years for the excellent adventure turn into a bogus journey. Dude, you’re in a totally deep hole. Can I have your Megadeth collection?
Just endlessly frustrating.
I have spent my whole damn career at the UO just trying to make my area of responsibility as productive and high-quality as possible given limited resources, and I have done better than could reasonably be expected, thank you.
Excellence is absolutely out of the question with the institutional support and institutional will that I have experienced over the last decade or two here at the UO.
Doing more with less, making reasonable budget projections, proposing rational solutions to problems, and keeping expenses within budget are hanging offenses at the UO, while fraud, mismanagement, and outright incompetence, not to mention violations of our fellow humans’ basic constitutional protections, are rewarded.
In unrelated news, I saw The Big Short last night. Good flick.