I can’t imagine why Around the O hasn’t communicated anything about this board meeting. So I’ll update this post as the meetings progress. See below the break for the details.
Update 1: New financial overview info below.
Update 2: Board engages in its traditional 60 minute bashing of the state for underfunding us. This seems unlikely to be productive. See below for some live blogging:
The Trustees love the idea that UO can’t count on the state for funding. President Schill argues that it almost seems they want to hurt us. My question is why is UO so bad at gaming this system? Why do we keep antagonizing the Beaver alumni in the legislature with things like blowing our money on a Duck Baseball program? Why do we make things like state money for the IAAF championships a top lobbying priority?
Maybe their goal is to make sure that UO has to rely on private philanthropy?
Update 3, Friday AM: President Schill announces he will donate his expected $100K annual bonus to the UO, for scholarships for first-generation students, in honor of his mother who helped him get through college as a first-generation student. Good man. Good son!
Board of Trustees Meeting Agendas | September 5-7, 2018
All meetings Room 136, Naito Building, UO Portland. Livecast links will be posted here.
Full Board: WEDNESDAY, September 5 – 2:30 p.m.
Meeting materials here.
1. Financial Overview – Additional Time for Review of Financial Statements and Picture: Jamie Moffitt, Vice President for Finance and Administration and CFO; Brad Shelton, Executive Vice Provost for Academic Operations
Last August I blogged about the fact that the Trustees were not being given the kind of financial planning information they needed to fulfill their fiduciary obligations. Apparently someone got the message, and at the Wed. meeting VP Moffitt presented some basic aggregate forecasts. She didn’t give them to the Board in advance, which might have given them time to prepare:
But they did get them at the meeting, presumably with some concurrent explanation and spin:
https://uomatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/SUPP-DOC-1-SAMPLE-MODEL-WITH-ASSUMPTIONS.pdf
https://uomatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/SUPP-DOC-2-SCENARIO-SAMPLE-MODELING.pdf
Baby steps. Maybe someday our Director of Internal Audit will even share what she knows with the Trustees. But not this day – Chuck Lillis’s Executive and Audit Committee is not even holding a meeting this quarter. Weird.
2. Executive Session – Discussion of President Schill’s Annual Performance Evaluation Executive Session authorized under ORS 192.660(2)(i)
The board will vote on the new contract on Friday, in public session. This closed session is for a full and frank performance review. President Schill’s old contract, which was scheduled to run through 2020, is here:
Assuming the board rubber-stamps this new contract it will start Oct 2018 and run for 5 years. (It begins on page 78 of the pdf here:)
Leaving out perks such as free housing, car allowance and research fund, the old contract was for $660K + $99k bonus after 3 years. Call it $700K a year. The new contract will be for $738K (after 2020) + $50K extra retirement + $100K expected annual bonus. Call it $888K, or a 27% increase.
If you assume this contract will also run for 3 years and do the PV calculations, this works out to be roughly equivalent to a 10% per year raise, which seems like a reasonable target for the faculty union negotiations which start next fall.
Academic and Student Affairs Committee, September 6, 2018, 9:00 a.m.
Committee meeting materials here.
Provost’s Quarterly Report
1. OHSU Partnerships: Leslie Leve, Professor of Counseling Psychology and Human Services, Associate Vice President for Research and Innovation
Sorry, I missed this see page 3 of the pdf here: https://trustees.uoregon.edu/sites/trustees2.uoregon.edu/files/asac_9.6.18_-_meeting_packet.pdf
2. Annual Research Report: David Conover, Vice President for Research and Innovation
See page 20. A snippet:
3. Core Education Redesign – Initiative Update: Ron Bramhall, Associate Vice Provost for Academic Excellence; Chris Sinclair, Associate Professor of Mathematics
Rumor has it that Bramhall and Sinclair gave an awesome presentation. Page 39.
Board of Trustees | Finance and Facilities Committee
Public Meeting | September 6, 2018, 1:30 p.m.
Meeting materials here
1. Quarterly Financial Reports: Jamie Moffitt, Vice President for Finance and Administration and CFO
As usual, VP Moffitt gives an excellent presentation of an OK budget situation. https://trustees.uoregon.edu/sites/trustees2.uoregon.edu/files/ffc_9.6.18_-_meeting_packet.pdf
That said the level of detail in the documents shared with the board is astonishingly thin, e.g.:
2. Oregon Public University Support Fund – How Does It Work?: Jamie Moffitt, Vice President for Finance and Administration and CFO
This is the model the HECC uses to allocate the money it hasn’t blown on fraudulent green energy tax credits and job creation pork between the 7 state universities. It’s a complicated algorithm that allocates money based on in-state enrollment and a combination of cost differences (engineering vs. english lit) and some rather interesting social welfare weights about which kinds of students should get larger allocations, and which majors more worthy, and ends up screwing UO:
Moffitt’s explanation of this mess is as clear as possible given this mud.
So once you take athletics, housing and so on out of the denominator, 13% of UO’s educational and general expenditures come from the state. Much better than the commonly claimed 6%. We’re the lowest of any state university, but this is in large part because all our out-of-state students increase our denominator more than for the other schools.
Moffitt then shows that the state also gives UO the shaft on “mission differential funding” – which is basically pork for the regional universities:
The Trustees love the idea that UO can’t count on the state for funding. President Schill argues that it almost seems they want to hurt us. My question is why is UO so bad at gaming this system? Why do we keep antagonizing the Beaver alumni in the legislature with things like blowing our money on a Duck Baseball program? Why do we make things like state money for the IAAF championships a top lobbying priority?
Moffitt very patiently answers the usual questions from the Trustees, giving the same explanations that she’s given them at every one of their meetings, 4 times a year for the past 5 years. Will it sink in this time?
3. UO Portland – Neighborhood Safety: Jane Gordon, Vice Provost for UO Portland; Matt Carmichael, Chief of Police
UOPD is going to hire a police sergeant and two officers to provide security for UO-Portland, replacing security guards. A Trustee asks how much this will cost. No real answer.
Full Board: THURSDAY, September 6 – 3:00 p.m.: Convene Public Meeting
3. Freedom of Expression on Campus and the Presidential FOE Series: President Michael Schill; Juan-Carlos Molleda, Dean, School of Journalism and Communication
Full Board FRIDAY, September 7 – 9:00 a.m.: Reconvene Public Meeting
– Public comment
4. ASUO and University Senate Reports
-ASUO President Maria Gallegos
-University Senate President Bill Harbaugh
5. President’s Report
6. Academic Programs in Focus – Carnegie Global Oregon and the Prison Education Program: Shaul Cohen, Professor of History
7. UO Portland Strategic Plan: Jane Gordon, Vice Provost for UO Portland
8. Presidential Evaluation and Contract (Action): Board Chair Chuck Lillis
9. Awarding of Honorary Degree (Action): President Michael Schill
SHARED [redacted]
While this blog has a strict one cuss-word per comment policy (unlike the union raises this is a ceiling not a floor, and with exceptions for Dog and for free speech topics) I draw the line at using all caps. Feel free to repost.
I presume the dough comes out of the Knight Center endowment?
I have worked here for over 30 years and would love to see $60,000 a YEAR. $55-60,000 a MONTH? Excuse my caps, but I am bad at math and have just now realized how paltry I am compared to the Great Lords of Johnson Hall. The sacrifice will indeed be mine and that of all we lower class peons on the front lines of university work. Will we get raises next year? The well will be dry…….
30-years-anon: I’m inclined to talk you out of any envy you might have for Schill, but that’d probably just come out badly. No idea what you do, but I do very much appreciate the people who clean the toilets, cut the grass, and generally keep the U running. It’s being done well here. I hope we all get good raises next year, but that will mostly be what it will be. All will be dust soon enough.
Deplorable Duck —
Actually there are MANY long time employees who make under $60,000 a year. Check out the classified compensation bands and you will see long time employees are are office staff, travel coordinators, administrative assistants, lab assistants, etc. Everyone at salary range 20 or less, as well as many OAs.
I’ve heard a few stories suggesting that some long-timers seriously clean up on their pensions. Anyway, I hope it’s true, even though it won’t be for me.
Yeah, longtimers like Bellotti. Not longtimers like secretaries.
As a classified in one of the high classified salary bands and darn close to 30 years in PERS, almost all at UO, I can tell you this:
I will not be “cleaning up” in my pensions by any stretch of the imagination. My pension will be cut more than 50% than what I was told when I started on this lifetime career of public service.
Beloitti gets more in a month than I will get in a year. And I’m in the higher scale, remember.
I’ve taken my public service very seriously all these years, and felt my contribution as such was worth shitty wages compared to those in the private sector. And the good retirement I was promised that has been methodically chipped away.
Bah.
Without competent staff we simply could not have a university. It would collapse. To echo Deplorable, Thank you!
On the other hand history shows that our university can survive, if not thrive, without competent central administrators. If necessary for years.
Ummm… you all do know that we have senior instructors who don’t make $60k/year, right? It’s not just the grass cutters, etc.
All salary info is available on line, though in PDF form. Does anyone know if it can be had in a form we can pull into Excel?
It would be informative if temporary employee information was also similarly available on that website.
They make sure that it is 3-9 months out of date. It only takes a moment to run this report, but…
Of course it could easily be available in a file Excel could read. But they will not do that.
Those (snore!) financial documents. All about revenues, nothing about priorities of operating expenses. I’m sure the ace senate budget is on top of this, at least until J Hall tells them it’s none of their busuness.
That was me. You know, the webste no longer autofills? That may be why you are getting a lot of Anonymous.
“Update 3, Friday AM: President Schill announces he will donate his expected $100K annual bonus to the UO, for scholarships for first-generation students, in honor of his mother who helped him get through college as a first-generation student.”
That’s great to hear!
“The Trustees love the idea that UO can’t count on the state for funding.”
You really mean this makes them happy? That they want state support to be erratic and skimpy?
“President Schill argues that it almost seems they want to hurt us.”
In light of the above — who is “they”? The state? Or the trustees?
“My question is why is UO so bad at gaming this system?”
I can’t remember when UO has ever had a sustained campaign to rectify the situation. Involving the press (what is left of it), alumni, UO legislators, parents, business.
My guess is there has been a deal: the Legislature will stiff UO, and in return UO takes as many out of staters as seems decent, i.e. up to half of the UG population. The Legilature uses the money to help the non-viable smaller campuses, plus OSU, and to some extent, PSU.
RG reports on Schill’s raise.
https://uomatters.com/2018/09/trustees-meet-sept-5-7-in-pdx-pres-schill-to-get-188k-raise.html#comments
“UO’s contract with Schill includes specific goals for him as president:
Grow the university’s endowment to $4 billion, from its current level of about $900 million.
Increase graduation rate.
Improve graduate programs and UO’s overall academic position.
Increase externally funded research.
Advance and promote diversity, equity and inclusion.”
The endowment figure seems pretty absurd. $4 billion by 2021 or by the end of his tenure?