4/18/2018: Report here.
3/17/2018: Former UO VPR Kimberly Espy finalist for provost at Ball State, Kansas State, Kentucky
In an ideal world the AAUP or Google Scholar would post metrics on administrators, to warn faculty what’s coming. As a second best, here’s some info on Kimberly Espy. The RIGE report is here.
Full shameful disclosure: Back in 2014 some desperate colleagues convinced me that UO would never fire her, and that my posts about the RIGE report and the negative comments about her were preventing us from passing the trash. So I took them down while she completed her job search. She finally landed a job as VPR at Arizona, to the joy of UO’s PI’s.
Now she wants or needs to move on again, and she’s a finalist for provost jobs at KSU, UK, and BSU:
Hey at least one of those hasn’t had any serious NCAA violations in the recent past …
ah, those golden days of yesteryear….
The Betsy DeVos of academia…
She’s apparently putting a stop to the Dear Colleague witch hunts. That might be more good than I ever manage to accomplish.
still happening at UTSA
No, she definitely didn’t stop doing that. Ask the department chairs she’s run off by trying to control Deans’ Council. Anyone who speaks up, is forced out
Some “Old Man” wrote ” The Betsy DeVos of academia…” I don’t thinkI it was I. However, saddled as I am with a poor short-term memory (characteristic of my seniority), I must admit that I might have. If I did not, will UOM please alert his readers to the impropriety of pen-name appropriation.
do you have any idea how many dogs publish on the Internet?
Dog asks, “do you have any idea how many dogs publish on the Internet?”
No. Duh … I have no idea if they are dogs, it being the internet and me a long-time New Yorker reader.
Thanks, Real Old Man.
Other commenters, please cease and desist from appropriating Old Man’s pseudonym, so that he can get full credit for his comments in the new Faculty Tracking scheme.
in converse
everyone can be a dog
especially now that we have
tracking collars
I hope this works – there has been an update: link
My bad. Clearly this is No Country For Old Men.
Or is our problem that it’s a Great Country for Old Men?
Regardless, nice screen name, thanks.
About the same amount of time it took for Espy to get canned at UO.
The shocking and sad part is how actual performance doesn’t matter in the glad-handing world of academic administrators.
They protect their own even as they foist them onto others at speed.
THIS! ^^^^^^^^
Even if they were warned, most higher ed Institutions don’t believe it or take it as a sign of personal sour grapes.
In the case of Risa Palm I know
1. We, the UO, was strongly warned about her form her previous employer , the University of Colorado – we ignored that, had her here for 6 goddamn years and couldn’t wait to get rid of her.
2. For her next job I was contacted by 2 of her 3 short listers – and told them point blank – she was hired by the third one.
3. She is an excellent example of Peter principle in Higher Ed
as she transitions up every 3-5 years although her saltest stint as Associate Vice President at Georgia State has been for the last 7 or 8 years.
In the case of Espy – she did go on to manage the third highest research budget in the Nation at UA – but of course, fucked that up which led to her departure to a lesser known school – she did not fare well at the bigger name schools that she was trying to
get to, as told by “friends” I know at Kansas State.
I also know about some misgivings mentioned in the Provost search that landed us Coltrane.
In general, I think Higher Ed doesn’t believe that objective criticism is real.
Could be that most admin is just dead wood at this point. Like a gaggle of MBA type middle managers, passing jobs along to someone else because they are too lazy or ‘gasp’ incompetent to do their job, working diligently in meetings on org charts and visioneering that in the end really is only to tell everyone exactly what their job does NOT entail. From financial aid directors who ‘engage the community’ instead of direct the finaid office, or admission directors who ‘engage the community’ rather than run the F*kn office, to the new amorphous buzzword VPs who with names like Enrollment Management who claim domain over “..a crucial element of planning for new growth at a university or college as it concerns both academic program growth and facilities needs. Ernollment management focuses on what is best for students’ success while increasing enrollment numbers and stabilizing institutional revenues….” but with all of that what is left for the registrar, admissions, financial aid, budget and planning, finance, Research, student life, and facilities to do, much less the office of the president and provost? {PS, this is charge is leveled at the current state of higher education management not necessarily any particular department or person who are only acting in their own self interest}
What you say makes sense, Dog…but it is still baffling that professional search firms are not able (or willing?) to find out about a train of past failures for candidates like Kimberly Espy. At least for universities that are not already shackled with a loser, one would think they’d be highly motivated to identify them in advance, before they are forced to push them out with the high praise that they percieve necessary to ensure the fate of the next sucker institution in line.
Congrats UTSA…we’ll see what admiring language you can come up with when you push her out in less than 5 years.
I don’t think search firms care, they just want to provide their client candidates. In addition, the fastest way to get a bad admin out is to praise them externally so they get another job. Not a lot of honesty in academia.
This makes some sense. But why wouldn’t search firms be held accountable after serving up losers like Espy time and time again?
Who holds anyone accountable for anything these days?
Well, Espy has “moved on to other opportunities” (i.e., was canned) several times in a row. So, universities sometimes hold people accountable (though UO obviously has a history of being a bit slow on the uptake) when they fuck up. Given this, why wouldn’t the same university care about whether they are hiring another loser?
To answer my own question, perhaps it’s because the folks hiring fatcat admins quite often have no idea what they are doing and rely entirely on the supposed expertise of search firms. Seems plausible, but dang that is annoying!
The abuse of power continues at UTSA and all faculty are aware. The ones who bow down to her are rewarded with pay increases and higher titles. Just look at the empire she’s created under her office. And under her tenure at UTSA (budget available online) there is a $4.1 million expenditure called “VPAA start-up.”
Don’t worry, when that account gets down to $1M she’ll start looking for her next job.
Hopefully! But she is so far out of control at UTSA with abuse of power and expenditures for such things as remodeling her office to get glass walls (hundreds of thousands of dollars and being investigated by local medial). On campus, the joke is that she is the de facto president and that she has him make bad decisions.
We can’t know just what our CFO tells Shill, since all $ are super secret, or what he tell her. Wish local media would investigate the UO expenditures by CFO/Pres, but maybe the local media can’t afford the prices they charge for information. Hm.
https://therivardreport.com/amid-utsa-austerity-moves-some-faculty-worry-about-impact/
It never ends with her. Transparency is a joke.
Espy strikes again!
https://therivardreport.com/utsa-lays-off-more-than-200-amid-economic-woes-fall-semester-uncertainty/