Last updated on 10/26/2023
Good news update: After googling around and getting some inside info from a helpful JH administrator, I think UO Onward is a worthwhile sounding effort by Development (no consultants) to engage with alumni and donors about something other than Duck sports, with a thin veneer of faculty participation to make it look legit. There seems little danger that President Scholz will suddenly start asking the faculty for input on questions like “Is my administration’s lowball GTFF ultimatum going to make it harder for you to recruit good grad students?” or “What percentage of the Big-10 media loot should I take from Rob Mullens and spend on the academic side?”
10/25/2023: Your chance to waste hours of your time helping our President burn hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants in pointless “input sessions”. How embarrassing and disappointing:
Dear University of Oregon community members,
I am pleased to invite you to take part in our institutional priority setting process called UO Onward. As we help forge a path for the future, every member of our UO community is encouraged to take part in this effort.
About UO Onward
You are invited to contribute your ideas—goals, strategies, tactics, and indicators of success—toward the development of the university’s strategic action plan.
Through a series of input sessions and an online survey this fall, university community members are encouraged to share perspectives and ideas around cornerstone priorities in:
- Student learning and achievement
- Elevating our outstanding scholarship and service
- Campus belonging
Get Involved
We would like to hear from as many people as possible. Broad participation will result in better ideas and, ideally, lead to greater buy-in for future goals and decision-making. Please take time during the fall term to share your input.
I encourage you to participate in a stakeholder input session, take the online survey, or both. Please plan your involvement by viewing the available input sessions and survey option. Should you want to attend an input session during work time, please work with your supervisor so that schedules can be managed accordingly.
Process and Timeline
UO Onward is taking place over the 2023-24 academic year in four phases:
- Listen (fall term): gather as much input as possible by listening to the UO community in a variety of input sessions and surveys. We seek broad community input to inform the strategic plan.
- Analyze and inform (winter and early spring): compile and analyze work from the sessions and produce the draft plan.
- Review (spring): review the draft plan, seek final comment and input, revise working goals, and present a final draft to the president and Board of Trustees for approval.
- Launch (spring/summer): plan becomes a living document and roadmap for action. Teams and individuals are assigned work toward achieving the goals.
To learn more about the goals, timeline, and input sessions, please visit the UO Onward Strategic Engagement website.
Thank you in advance for participating in this process that will shape the University of Oregon’s future.
Sincerely,
Karl Scholz
President
Didn’t we just do this? or am I caught in a time warp?
You’re thinking about the Bill Murray movie. But that actually had an ending.
The more things change
https://web.archive.org/web/20010215015955/http://pythia.uoregon.edu/~llynch/solutions.html
Or maybe just fool me once…
Oh boy this guy really knows how to cook up the hooey. And pitch it like a somewhat mad carnival barker. I remember how a similar process led to the ongoing disaster of Tykeson Advising.
President Scholz has brilliantly created a template for answering the most difficult, and most fraught question in all of higher education: Whether ’tis better — or even nobler — to enhance vibrant implementations, or perhaps more boldly, to implement vibrant enhancements? (And I so look forward to the Street View version of the “roadmap for action” in Google Earth. By the way, Lane Public Health advises to be sure always to wash your hands after touching a “living document.”)
Living Document comment of the month. I’d send you my last used UOM coffee cup, but it might be diseased.
You were a bit off with your headline. With respect, the editor in me thinks it’s a bit wordy; and, being that you are, after all, an academic, it calls out for a colon. Here’s how it *should* read:
Prez Scholz: the same old buzz words.
Where’s the vision go?
Exactly.
Sports and “experience” is not a sustainable business model, especially in times of higher inflation.
Also, the alumni that matter might not want to be associated with this university if it continues to go down this track.
I attended UO 10 years ago and in hindsight it did not teach nearly enough specialized skills. I was a business major btw.
I think students should have access to certificates and other specialized credential programs. Maybe UO can partner up with a trade school?
It’s not a vision, it’s an hallucination
A public university that educates a disproportionate amount of non-resident students is no longer a true public university. Such a trend is also a worrying sign. The best public universities cap non-resident enrollment and usually no less than 70% of their student are in-state.
Got any evidence for this?
Institutional data
https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/
National averages
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d22/tables/dt22_306.10.asp
I may have misspoke when I said cap. Highly ranked universities like UCLA (77%), Berkeley (78%), Virginia (62%), UNC (83%), etc. are all majority in-state. UMich (51%) is the notable exception (maybe due to funding woes?). I also hear Michigan is VERY liberal.
Scholz came from a university that is only 43% in-state. I think that is a worrying sign.
As an aside I think it is hard for students to build meaningful lifelong connections with students from other regions/states, this is especially true if they are VERY rich and disconnected with reality.
Of the more well known AAU public universities, Oregon (43%), Purdue (46%), and Wisconsin (43%) all are less than 50% in-state at the undergraduate level. Purdue and Wisconsin both enroll considerably more international students. There is no compelling reason why an out of state student should come to UO. Sooner or later this will stop working, given the hefty price UO charges.
Scholz oddly was supportive of being admitted into the Big Ten from the day he arrived. Now maybe that’s because it was also in Wisconsin’s interest for Oregon to become a member. They are now very dependant on out of state students. They need also the flash they can get.
What makes a university a “true” public university? One could also say that a state that chooses not to fund their public university system is choosing not to have a “true” public university.
It’s hard for me to blame UO administrators (and administrators at the other universities you cite in these comments) for responding to incentives. If the state of Oregon wanted to ensure that 70% of UO students were in-state, I’m relatively confident that UO could make that happen… but a substantial amount of money would have to be allocated.
The trouble with the 70% notion is that we’re in a bit of a tough time for enrollment. Despite the desire to serve a higher percentage of in-state students, the reality is that there are not enough young people graduating from in-state high-schools to fill that 70% quota at just about any of the state public universities. Yes, the OOS population rise has been a bit of a boon, what with the higher tuitions coming in from each of those students, but Oregon students are not being turned away in droves in favor of OOS people taking their slots. So if the 70% number were fixed in the firmament of what we must do, the only way to get there is with less OOS enrollment, thus overall enrollment would have to drop to achieve that number, with the ensuing hilarity that would accompany such a drop.