Author Archives: uomatters

Wow this sure takes me back to this blog’s early days. Interestingly OSU has so little trust in their trustees and the Isaacson Miller search firm that the board had to hire *another* firm to do due diligence on IM’s due diligence. I wonder what they dug up on Charles.

A 2010 post on Martinez, who was appointed UO’s first rAVP for Diversity as part of a legal settlement of a discrimination lawsuit against Dave Frohnmayer, is below:

6/3/2010: Martinez makes a lot of his Hispanic background. But he doesn’t speak Spanish.
5/31/2010: See update below on OIED hiring issues, details on this later.
5/25/2010: See update below on NIH grants. Almost unbelievable, but all from report.nih.gov.
5/23/2010: See update below on Associate Professor / tenure. 
5/20/2010: Here are a few of the problems with current Vice President for Diversity Charles Martinez:

• No Affirmative Action search for his diversity job: He was appointed as an interim inside hire, and after 5 years UO still has not had an open, public search that followed the standard affirmative action rules. This is an obvious violation of UO’s AA hiring rules. Given that his job is VP for Diversity, it’s also hilarious.
• No Affirmative Action for his 2009 Associate Professor in the College of Education position either. From what we can tell Provost Bean and Russ Tomlin simply created a new tenured associate professor position out of nothing, just for Martinez. If there was any advertisement, search or any other attempt to follow UO’s AA hiring rules, it’s well hidden.
• Overcommitment with UO and NIH: He has a 0.75 time appointment at UO. He’s got another 0.65 time job off campus at OSLC. This violates UO’s conflict of commitment rules, common sense, and the law of addition. While supposedly working 0.75 time as UO’s VP for diversity he been the Principal Investigator on $5.3 million in NIH grants, run through OSLC. This means UO does not get the ICC money for these grants, and Martinez can double dip on his salary. During this time Martinez has apparently secured $0 in federal grants for OIED. This is why it’s called a “conflict of commitment.” Provost Bean gives him a special exemption from the rules. Then UO claims the documentation of this exemption is exempt from public disclosure. Right.
• Tenure: Martinez has worked since 2005 as a non-tenure-track administrator. Last year UO put him up for tenure and made him an associate professor in the Education school, in violation of the UO tenure policies. Provost Bean then refused to show the Faculty Personnel Committee his letter, or even tell them that he had given Martinez tenure – out of embarrassment?
• No written job description: Last week, 2 years after we asked the UO administration, Martinez did finally come up with a job description, and he even posted it on his web page. Thanks Dr. Martinez, this is step one in an open AA compliant search for your replacement.
• Performance: Even given the hours he does spend at UO, Martinez has been remarkably ineffective at getting external funding or developing new programs to increase diversity. He’s had this job 5 years, and his contribution has been a series of “Diversity Action Plans” which have cost millions, sucked up huge amounts of faculty, staff, and OA time, and accomplished almost nothing.
• Hiring problems at OIED: OIED is currently involved in three open searches. (Not for Martinez of course – at UO, open AA compliant searches are just for the little people.) We’ve heard about complaints and AA issues with the procedures for two of these searches.

Now that his longtime ally Melinda Grier bas been summarily fired, Martinez is suddenly,  understandably, and visibly nervous about keeping his $220,000 sweetheart deal. He should be. So he is trying to convince the local diversity groups that he is their only friend at UO, that UO is blocking his diversity efforts, and that his enemies are trying to fire him because they are racist nuts.

Very constructive strategy, Dr. Martinez. Actually, we’re trying to get you fired because we care about diversity, and you have wasted 5 years and millions of dollars while lining your own pockets. Let’s have a public job announcement and an affirmative action compliant open search, and see if you really are the best person to hold this important job. Does that idea scare you?

Our Board of Trustees once again indulges the urge to show how happy they are with themselves for hiring President Schill by giving him another series of large raises, bonuses, and extra retirement contributions, paid for with other people’s money:

To be rubber-stamped by the board after the usual happy-talk, at its May 19th-20th meetings.

From Eric Kelderman at the Chronicle, thanks to a regular reader for forwarding:

My scotch consumption is not exactly a secret to regular readers, but I had no idea how far my reputation had spread:

Link here.

Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees or Private Vices Publick Benefits, 1714:

Pride and Vanity have built more Hospitals than all the Virtues together.

Pres Schill, in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, today:

… First, a disclaimer. The University of Oregon has been fortunate to receive three extremely large donations from generous benefactors during the time I have served as president. Two gifts of $500 million each are from Penny and Phil Knight to create an applied bioengineering research campus. Another gift of more than $425 million is from Steve and Connie Ballmer to establish an innovative institute to fight one of the most important social problems of our time — the behavioral and mental-health crisis among our children. These gifts are transforming the university and enabling us to achieve our missions of teaching, research, and service.

…

How can one say that the billions of dollars devoted to medical research, student scholarships, and technological innovation by generous and, yes, wealthy people is not something to cheer? While we should all work hard to increase government support for higher education, we cannot and should not for a moment feel guilty for celebrating the philanthropy that enables our universities to grow and flourish. And, perhaps, if we execute well on the big ideas our donors have funded, we can demonstrate to the skeptics that there is no better public investment than higher education.

I can picture them in the JH conference room chuckling over the divide-and-conquer possibilities. “This will teach them to bring up equity again!” Who do they pay to come up with these ideas? Brad Shelton? Kevin Reed? Jeff Chicoine? The latest bargaining news from your union:

The administration’s lawyer opened by explaining that the wage increases negotiated in December represented the totality of what the administration is willing to invest in faculty for this contract period, so any new costs would need to be funded by a reduction elsewhere. As such, they proposed a complete elimination of the TRP (where they would honor existing TRP arrangements but neither enter into new ones beyond June nor institute a new retirement incentive program), with the savings redirected to fund a pool of $250,000 for each of six years to address internal equity issues. The administration would have complete discretion over these funds and would allocate them as they see fit. The proposed elimination of TRP would be immediate, effective at the beginning of the next contract (presumably on July 1 this year) after which no new TRP agreements with individual faculty would be signed.

And apparently the jurors bought it, letting the cartel off. UO had already paid Brenner $500K. I haven’t been following the case, so I don’t know if former UO Journalism Dean Tim Gleason admitted that his supervision as “Faculty” Athletic Representative was deficient, or was exactly what AD Rob Mullens expected of him.

Stute’s argument, from the Oregonian’s James Crepea:

Stute’s hour-long closing argument veered from absolving the NCAA of blame or liability because of its legislative process and legal structure, to saying that because the risk of death from exertional rhabdomyolysis is minimal when not related to sickle cell or heatstroke that its issuing of guidelines more than 10 years ago was sufficient. Stute also pointed at Brenner because he “didn’t do anything to try to change the legislative process at the NCAA” as one of UO’s Student-Athlete Advisory Committee representatives while in college.

“He didn’t go to the Oregon president and say, ‘You know, I was injured in this rhabdo incident and I’d really like you to change the legislative, we’d like to propose legislation, can I talk to you about that?’” Stute said. “Or do anything through SAAC, which has members in the position to propose legislation directly — they can’t do it themselves, but they’re involved in that process.”

I missed the part where Provost Phillips and President Schill consulted with shared governance in these decisions. Rumor has it that the Deans also feel a bit left out. In any case here is Johnson Hall’s latest:

From a webinar at Quinnipiac College:

“What we need to do is make sure the NIL reflects the value that the students’ name, image and likeness has instead of inducement of donors and boosters,” Schill said. “We need federal legislation that provides a uniform, federal definition of allowable NIL so everybody’s on an even playing field.”

Schill suggested the NCAA be given a limited exemption to antitrust laws so it could enforce the NIL regulations.

InsideHigherEd has the story:

Iowa State University announced Thursday that it is leaving the Association of American Universities.

The news revived a debate over the AAU’s membership criteria.

“While the university’s core values have not changed since joining the association in 1958, the indicators used by AAU to rank its members have begun to favor institutions with medical schools and associated medical research funding,” said an Iowa State statement on its departure. (University leaders said they made the decision to withdraw.)

Rumor down at the faculty club is that JH has decided we can’t keep the current Interim Dean because what with our Provost and President, white males are already over-represented in UO’s senior leadership. Here’s hoping the winner negotiates a large cut in the subsidy CAS is paying to prop up our law school, before accepting the job:

Pres Schill and Prov Phillips save the good news for the end. Here’s hoping this is the start of a compete reform of UO’s budgeting, planning, and Institutional Research offices. At well-run universities these are staffed with competent professionals who provide credible timely information to the central administration and are trusted by the Deans and department heads. At UO, not so much.

You know your university has a problem when the resident muckraker gets emails from Deans asking if he knows what’s really up with the university budget.

Dear University of Oregon colleagues,
We are pleased to announce that Anshuman (“AR”) Razdan will join the University of Oregon as our next Vice President for Research and Innovation.
Dr. Razdan currently serves as associate vice president for research development at the University of Delaware, where he oversees the development of UD’s research enterprise and aligns assets and faculty strengths to increase institutional competitiveness and develop clusters of strengths across disciplines.
Prior to joining UD, he was professor (now emeritus professor) and center director in the computer science program in what is now the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence at Arizona State University, where he spent 20 years of his academic career.
He holds a PhD in computer science and MS in mechanical engineering, both from Arizona State University. His BS in mechanical engineering was earned from Kurukshetra University (now National Institute of Technology) in India.
We are immensely grateful to Cassandra Moseley, an experienced and capable leader who has served as interim VPRI with distinction for the past two years. She led the team with strength and conviction through the turbulent and uncertain early days of the COVID-19 pandemic with the thoughtful implementation of a phased research recovery process, ensuring continuity in critical research operations and communicating regularly to keep researchers informed and engaged through the many transitions. Prior to stepping into the interim role, she spent five years as senior associate vice president for research. She has also served as the deputy incident commander for the university Incident Management Team.
Moseley has recently accepted an offer to serve as vice provost for academic operations and strategy in the Office of the Provost, to which she will transition when Razdan begins in early July 2022. This position will be replacing the existing role of Executive Vice Provost for Academic Operations, currently held by Brad Shelton, who will be fully retiring from his administrative position by the end of the calendar year.
Please join us in welcoming Dr. Razdan to the UO.
Sincerely,
Michael H. Schill
President and Professor of Law
Patrick Phillips
Provost and Senior Vice President

The faculty union first brought this modest request to the table pre-pandemic. Our administration – led by a full professor who never even passed the prelims – has now caved on the title, but not the substance. From the UAUO bargaining news, which contains much more info:

As in past bargaining cycles, some of our most fundamental disagreements at the table revolve around working conditions and protections for Career and Limited Duration faculty. Several of these came to light in this session, including in the administration’s counter on Academic Classification and Rank (Art. 15). We are happy to report that admin agreed to the “Teaching Professor” category, despite having previously balked at attaching “Professor” to the titles of even our most accomplished Career faculty. Unfortunately, their acceptance of the title was not accompanied by any enhancements in job security, and their proposal instead reasserted their concept of an honorific program that is fully controlled by the Provost and lacks any faculty input or peer review.

We’ve all heard about the controversial practice of closed presidential searches, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a closed search for a Dean before – not even at LSU. But UO seems to be trying, so here’s my public records request for a little transparency:

From: harbaugh <harbaugh@uoregon.edu>
Subject: Public records request, CAS Dean finalist info
Date: April 12, 2022 at 3:39:00 PM PDT
To: Lisa Thornton <pubrec@uoregon.edu>
Cc: Elliot Berkman <berkman@uoregon.edu>
Dear Ms Thornton – 
This is a public records request for the cover letters and cv’s of the finalists for the CAS Dean position. I ask for a fee waiver on the basis in public interest in the hiring of a public university official who will have responsibility over the bulk of UO’s academic matters and a large chunk of its budget. 
I’m ccing search committee co-chair Elliot Berkman, as he should be able to provide these documents without your office’s usual fees and delays. 

Thanks,
Bill Harbaugh, UO Economics, harbaugh@uoregon.edu

The ask: