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UO Senate to vote Wed on Canvas, new programs, Admin attempts to gut the Equal Pay Act and Clark Honors College, etc.

Update: Rumor has it that the EPA resolution will come up around 4:15.

3-5 PM Wed April 28th 2021, on Zoom here: https://uoregon.zoom.us/j/95815283199

  • Land Acknowledgment
  • Intro Remarks: Senate President Elliot Berkman and Senate Vice President Spike Gildea
  • ASUO updates; Ella Meloy

Approval of the Minutes

  • April 7, 2021

State of the University

  • Provost Patrick Phillips

New Business

Open Discussion

  • OICRC update; Nicole Commissiong

Adjournment

5:00 P.M.

21 Comments

  1. Dog 04/28/2021

    The response rate for the Student Experience Survey is a useful document and suggest people pay attention to the first figure

  2. Barely hanging on 04/28/2021

    Response rates have been tiny and not useful! COVID and the scramble to online teaching is not an appropriate time to use to evaluate a new project like this, and shouldn’t be figured into the evaluation period. Instructors hanging by their toenails just to get their class administered are less likely to beg for feedback.
    At the same time, COVID aside, many people don’t like the survey. Regardless of intent, it seems long. It is nearly double the prior number of rating questions (13 instead of 7, 19 total). I got tired just looking at it. For a student in four classes, that’s 76 questions.

    • Raghu Parthasarathy 04/29/2021

      Note the **40%** drop in response rate when the university got rid of the small incentive of students getting their grades earlier by filling in the course evaluations — this is the blue shaded part in the figure, and is **pre-Covid**. This is a huge drop.

      I agree that the new survey is long and opaque. I’m glad we are trying to improve student evaluations, but I think this version should make way for the next iteration.

      • uomatters Post author | 04/29/2021

        That is the goal – better, more useful feedback for us teachers – not higher response rates with zero or biased information as we got with numbers. I agree the SES is too long and we are looking at factor analysis of the corpus of responses to reduce the questions to their essential orthogonal dimensions. Lather, rinse, repeat.

      • uomatters Post author | 04/29/2021

        That is the goal – better, more useful feedback for us teachers – not higher response rates with zero or biased information as we got with numbers. I agree the SES is too long and we are looking at factor analysis of the corpus of responses to reduce the questions to their essential orthogonal dimensions. Lather, rinse, repeat.

        • Lather and Rinse 04/30/2021

          This tool seems to provide equally ambiguous information from a smaller set of students biased in ways that are more difficult to anticipate than the highly problematic “old” method. Factor analysis of a text corpus for any tool engaging performance evaluation is an awful idea.

          • Barely hanging on 04/30/2021

            Fewer questions but more focus might be helpful to make it shorter and still useful. The seeming repetition of [‘support’ PLUS ‘feedback’ PLUS ‘communication’] and [‘active learning’ PLUS ‘student participation’] suggest room for condensing. On assignments/course material, there is just plain ‘assignments’ and then ‘quality’ ‘relevance’ ‘organization’ – would ‘quality’ suffice? And although important, ‘inclusiveness’ is a vague term – how do students or instructors interpret it? I can see this was designed from the point of view of social science/survey, but if it’s not working…..glad to hear there’s an effort to modify.

          • Cat 05/02/2021

            This is exactly right. The incredibly low response rate generates its own kind of bias. Results from only the super-happy or super-frustrated are useless (e.g., when 1 student of 22 tells me everything is perfect, and the rest leave it empty). The whole point is to reach the ambivalent middle so as to determine how to improve their experience.

            Plainly the students themselves are just not invested in providing the level of feedback this iteration requires. It’s a bust and it’s time to admit it and fix it, instead of doubling down.

            I am especially worried that it will cause complications in the tenure/promotion process. Vulnerable people may have little way to prove that they succeeded in the classroom.

  3. offended 04/29/2021

    What Patrick Phillips is doing to the Honors College is criminal. Whatever you may think about who should be teaching in the Honors College or how their jobs should be structured, you should be offended by the ignorance, foolishness, callousness, and mendacity of his approach. Phillips says he is having “discussions” with Honors College faculty. That’s not true. The current Honors College resident faculty got pink slips with no warning and a couple of weeks to change their career paths. Phillips is only meeting with them because they demanded it and because Melissa Graboyes wrote a letter that he could not ignore. He offered no meeting himself. Whether in or out of the Honors College, under this administration, no faculty line is safe.

    • Dog 04/29/2021

      none of this is surprising at all; the second half of Schillips cares not a rat’s ass about the HC

    • uomatters Post author | 04/29/2021

      “criminal” might be a tad strong.

      • This Is The Way 04/29/2021

        Says the king of headline hyperbole….

      • honest Uncle Bernie 05/01/2021

        “criminally stupid” perhaps? It always seemed to me that the HC, whatever one thought of its anomalous status, was a big draw for UO. It brought in a lot of the best students, and it showed even in the non-HC classes. A lot of the students with brains, and real intellectual spark, unlike the dreary common run of mediocre careerists and even the smarter grade grubbers. It helped add a touch of class, like at a real elite AAU place or top-notch liberal arts college. Not all of what there was at UO, and not all the HC students, but a lot. From what I hear, things declined a lot a few years ago, and now seem to be getting worse.

        • charlie 05/02/2021

          The flagship claimed the nearly $6 million pilfered from the MKA bond fund was a “bookkeeping error.” Of course they want to terminate the HC, only imbeciles would believe such stupidity…

  4. Old Gray Mare 04/29/2021

    offended, would you please clarify? Were HC faculty let go from University employment or were they told that they were being reassigned to departments?

  5. vhils 04/30/2021

    And look who is doing the actual dirty work for the Provost…Carol Stabile, someone with a track record of bullying faculty all on her own. Coincidence?

  6. charlie 05/01/2021

    OT, but I don’t know where else to post. Today’s Oregonian ran a story on the MKA bond deficit fund saga. Goes on to say that a certain Econ prof from the state flagship dropped the dime on the shenanigans. But, The Oregonian reports that the school didn’t have the bond documents available, so they didn’t know doing the transfer was illegal….

  7. prof from another school 05/02/2021

    Can one request the UOM report on the outcome of the senate ESA vote/discussion? After all Bill is a major sponsor of the resolution. Some folks are interested, but dont have the time to watch the video.

    • uomatters Post author | 05/02/2021

      The administration caved and agreed not to appeal to the SCOTUS. So it goes back for a jury trial, unless they settle.

  8. charlie 05/02/2021

    Given the wrongful termination lawsuit ‘taint going admins way, Moody’s negative bond rating, Lane County an extreme risk almost until July, was the near $6 million “bookkeeping error” a looting of the Treasury before the hammer falls??

    • uomatters Post author | 05/02/2021

      It was a very lucrative “error” – and a lucky one too. While I doubt the UO Foundation’s feckless CIO got the full 40% that the SP500 increased over this period, if he got even close he saved about $2M for Uncle Phil’s Legacy Fund – even after penalties.

      • charlie 05/02/2021

        Now, that makes sense. Impossible to believe the flagship would mess with bondholders, the ‘grizzly bears’ of financial markets…

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