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Board of Trustees holds snoozer of a meeting March 1, 2

I’ll try to live-blog some of this, and I’ll be there for the public comments Friday, but there are limits on how much of this stuff I can take.

Their website makes it as hard as possible to figure out what is going on, so here are the agendas for the committees and the BOT, with links to the meeting materials. Looks like a snoozer to me, but if you see something, say something.

As usual Jamie Moffitt does not show the Trustees any substantive data on UO’s budgetary decisions such as how much goes to athletics, the various colleges, etc. No mention of the centralization of resources which is causing College of Ed dissension. No discussion of the increasing proportion of resources going to the central administration at the cost of the College of Arts and Sciences. No discussion of the continuing subsidies for the law school and (rumor has it) the College of Design.

The Executive and Audit Committee materials do not include Internal Auditor Trisha Burnett’s report, and when the Trustees do get to see the report, at the meeting, it will avoid any specifics that might alert them to problems or lead them to ask tough questions or allow them to do their due diligence.

There are, however, shiny powerpoints from the Chief Resilience Officer and the Chief of Police, complete with photos of the new dog.

Board of Trustees | Academic and Student Affairs Committee
Public Meeting | March 1, 2018, 9:00 a.m.
All meetings in Ford Alumni Center | Giustina Ballroom

Materials

1. Accreditation – March Report to NWCCU

Banavar: No worries, all is well. No questions from the board.

2. Educator Equity in Teacher Preparation Plan – Submission to HECC (Action): Randy Kamphaus, Dean, College of Education; Krista Chronister, Associate Dean, College of Education

Chronister: No worries, all is well. No questions from the BOT. Endorsed unanimously.

3. Teaching Excellence: Scott Pratt, Executive Vice Provost; Sierra Dawson, Associate Vice Provost; Lee Rumbarger, Teaching Engagement Program Director

Starts with photo of a recent intermediate microeconomics class:

Pratt: No worries, all is excellent and we’re making it more excellent.

Rumbarger: Teaches courses on the fictional representation of teachers. (I didn’t know that, cool.)

Dawson: Fact based research on how to do more excellent teaching. Starts by asking the BOT to recall some excellent teaching they were exposed to.

Trustees seem to be enjoying this.

Rumbarger advocates for using specifics to talk about teaching excellence. Read the packet, I can’t type that fast. Many specific examples of how the TEP is promoting simple practices that improve teaching.

Dawson explains more about how AAU is now emphasizing teaching improvements, need for better student feedback and teaching evaluation procedures.

Pratt explains need for better evaluation, more emphasis on using the Teaching Excellence Program to improve faculty teaching.

Some good questions from the trustees.

4. Mental Health – Student Services and Support: Doneka Scott, Assoc. Vice Provost for Student Success; Shelly Kerr, Director of the Counseling and Testing Center; Kris Winter, Dean of Students

The Trustees are asking some excellent and skeptical questions of Kerr, regarding the survey and what it means.

5. Clark Honors College – Structural Changes and Updates: Karen Ford, Interim Dean, Clark Honors College

Sorry, I’ve got to leave. Ford did a good job presenting this to the Senate yesterday.

 

Board of Trustees | Finance and Facilities Committee
Public Meeting | March 1, 2018, 1:15 p.m.

Materials.

1. Quarterly Financial Reports: Jamie Moffitt, Vice President for Finance and Administration and CFO

2. Capital Project Proposal – University Health Center / University Counseling and Testing Center: Michael Griffel, Director, University Housing

Sorry, I missed this meeting. I’m sure it was a thorough 45 minutes.

 

Board of Trustees | Executive and Audit Committee
Public Meeting | March 1, 2018, 2:00 p.m.

Materials.

1. Quarterly Audit Report: Trisha Burnett, Chief Auditor

There’s no there here:

And here it is, shown to the Trustees just before the meeting: https://uomatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Q3-EAC-Quarterly-Report.pdf Three pages. How can the Executive and Audit Committee do its due diligence like this?

Chuck Lillis: Trisha is doing a great job telling me things in closed meetings.

Ross Kari: Some evidence of improvements in past deficiencies.

Peter Bragdon: How have you tried to market the hotline? A little.

No mention of departure of Auditor Stephanie McGee, for a better job at another university. Lots of turnover – never a good sign in an internal audit department.

2. Enterprise Risk Management: Andre Le Duc, Associate Vice President and Chief Resiliency Officer

Not clear where the Bach Festival fits into this. UO’s spending on risk management has grown enormously – here are the employee counts, from IR. Not clear why the Board doesn’t require this sort of information in reports:

Connie Ballmer: Why is your office dealing with things like enrollment and academic quality?

Le Duc: It’s all about protecting the brand. My office needs to monitor and proactively manage everything.

3. University of Oregon Police Department – Overview and Updates: Matt Carmichael, Chief of Police

By all accounts Carmichael is doing a great job rebuilding the UOPD. And his budget is flat:

That said, I can’t help but think that somewhere far, far away there’s a poor village surrounded by landmines from some forgotten war. They could really use this dog:

Carmichael and his three students have many other good things to report, including more student shuttle services (started by ASUO, now managed by UOPD at their request) and bringing the UOPD back on campus, by putting a substation in Onyx Bridge.

Adjourn til Tomorrow.

13 Comments

  1. Dog 02/23/2018

    Would there be shiny photos of the new dog?

    Dogs like shiny things – like medals for metrics …

  2. skeptic 02/24/2018

    I don’t see how they can do an even adequate job of fulfilling their responsibilities as a BOT.

  3. honest Uncle Bernie 02/24/2018

    As UOM says, the Board website is almost totally lacking in information, certainly for any interested outsider.

    UOM is right about the lack of financial information being presented to the Board. It is truly shocking, I am stunned! Anyone can go to the UO Institutional Research website and learn a lot more than is going to be presented to/discussed by the Board. The shifting priorities of the budget — e.g. faculty vs. administrator growth, educational vs. central administration growth, priorities among the colleges, the health of the various units — none of it is there.

    If the document they posted is any indication, the Board has a shockingly naive apprehension of the real workings and issues of UO finances.

    It is as if the Board does not want to know or deal with any of this. Chuck Lillis, at least, should have the background to go there (though I am not sure I would want him to).

    In general, the Board members are very parochial, most or all are Oregon-based and/or alumni. (Plus an unrepresentative faculty member and a student.) I don’t see them having the ability to really probe or inquire into what is going on at UO. If anything, probably less effective than the old state system, which unfortunately was dysfunctional for UO.

    The Board is basically dependent on the will or whim of the Administration. As long as the Admin doesn’t cause a crisis, I think the Board will do whatever the Admin wants.

    I am sure they mean well and have the intention to provide a public service.

    • Dog 02/24/2018

      Like I said, shiny things …

    • OMA 02/24/2018

      Of course if a board member wanted to at least seem to care they could call out the lack of info at an open meeting, and request more details… Oh, if only they were a governing board. Oh wait, they are, and each individual up there has a lot of power they could wield in an open meeting… If only.

    • Anon.0 02/26/2018

      Why is the board faculty member “unrepresentative”?

  4. Kitten 02/26/2018

    Does no one else find it odd that there’s been no turnover at all in the board since it’s inception? The student, faculty, and staff reps have all rotated, but no the rest of the membership–much less the chair. Don’t they have terms, shouldn’t they be staggered, and isn’t a balance between experienced members and new blood most effective?

  5. Big Bad Duck 02/27/2018

    The BOT is turning out to be a big ghostly figure on our campus against which our administrative cadre is pushing the faculty and the students: to the faculty the current coalition of dark Johnsonites (Blonigen-Shelton-Schill) gives constant threats with the BOT as a demanding “stockholder” body, this they ain’t. To the students, they use the board to push higher fees rather than to make the case for higher taxe revenue used for the UO as a not-for-profit Higher Ed. campus. The current pose of Johnsonites needs to hear more noise from both constituencies, and both constituencies need to communicate with each other to make it clear to the Johnsonites once more that their extravagant salaries and their philistine metric-bullshit-turn-Phil-Knight-professor-X-into-a-sausagearticle-dishing-out-MacDonalds-employee-of-the-month approach to education is on the way out in an increasingly overheated planet ruled by a corrupt elite with a fake billionaire as leader and president of the “free world” and that the Mueller investigation should give the current BOT and the Johnsonites a good example of what they could face when we get our inquisitor general as president of the senate and we call for a general assembly to intervene the finances of the show-business-Walmart-style campus they are running. After all, how can we have shared governance and oversee academic matters if the financial spreadsheets of the Johnsonites is so very biased against academic standards and promotes only a “professional”-school model as if we were about to become an oversized merchant school attached to a brightly-lit patent office, surrounded by sports clubs and Greek houses for our 21,000 “donor-students” who can just log in to Canvas and expect a degree just by showing up and of course paying up through their noses… Blonigen-Shelton, your time is up, the scam Ponzi scheme is showing already!

    • Environmental necessity 03/01/2018

      Do you feel better now?

  6. Steve P 03/01/2018

    Any truth to the rumour Rudy Chapa left the Board to work on cleaning up the IAAF 2021 debacle?

  7. Curious to know 03/02/2018

    Where does the Finance and Administration Shared Services group fit on the ’employees by area’ chart? That group separated from Campus Planning… etc. a couple years ago.

  8. Question Finances 03/02/2018

    Using the spreadsheet above and further wondering about all the rest of the university….

    2007-2008
    Classified 331
    OA/Admin 122

    2017-2018
    Classified 350
    OA/Admin 168

    Change
    Classified + 5.7%
    OA/Admin + 37.7% <====== !!!

    • Question Finances 03/02/2018

      Also would be nice to see the $ for each of those increases…

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