Just kidding, they seem to be happy new international students, celebrating their start at UO:
Posts published by “uomatters”
Thanks to Phil and Penny Knight’s $500M Knight Campus pledge. An anonymous post on UO’s official Around the O blog has the data: The UO’s funding campaign continues to be the most ambitious in the state’s history. The $1.7 billion to date doubles the total achieved during the UO’s last…
8/7/2017: UO is failing on economic diversity. Where’s the “Economic Diversity Action Plan”?
UO is ranked #328 out of 377 selective public colleges for promoting income mobility. 56% of our students come from families in the top 20% of the income distribution (4.3% from the top 1%) and only 4.7% come from the bottom 20%:
Our economic diversity has been getting worse over time (except perhaps for a small recent blip):
Despite this poor performance and the bad trends, UO’s long debates about diversity have generally ignored economic diversity. UO’s Institutional Research website has pages and pages of tables slicing and dicing UO’s students and faculty by every imaginable diversity metric – so long as those metrics are race and ethnicity or gender. The good news is that UO has improved markedly by all those measures over the past 10-15 years.
However, if you believe economic opportunity and diversity are important, you will have no luck finding that information on the IR website. If you go to UO’s Office of Equity and Inclusion’s “IDEAL Plan” you’ll find that the latest version now pays lip service to economic diversity, but you will not find a word about how UO compares on the relevant measures, or on the time trends. Similarly, the “Diversity Action Plans” that are now under preparation by every academic and administrative unit under the supervision of Equity and Inclusion have little if anything to say about economic diversity – it’s all race with a bit of gender.
Fortunately there is a new paper out with the data for UO and other colleges:
Mobility Report Cards: The Role of Colleges in Intergenerational Mobility
Raj Chetty, John Friedman, Emmanuel Saez, Nicholas Turner, and Danny Yagan
National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 23618, Revised Version, July 2017
Fact sheet: PDF
Non-technical summary: PDF
Paper: PDF
Slides: PDF | PPT
Data: Stata / Excel
NYT Interactive Tool to Explore Data: Web
Unfortunately that paper makes it very clear UO is failing when it comes to promoting economic diversity. The figures at the top of this post come from the NYT summary for UO:
A new study, based on millions of anonymous tax records, shows that some colleges are even more economically segregated than previously understood, while others are associated with income mobility.
Below, estimates of how University of Oregon compares with its peer schools in economic diversity and student outcomes.
The median family income of a student from University of Oregon is $126,400, and 56% come from the top 20 percent. About 1.4% of students at University of Oregon came from a poor family but became a rich adult.
When it comes to economic diversity UO is near the bottom whether you look at selective publics, the PAC-12, or other Oregon universities:
It would be nice to believe that these sad results will help drive UO’s diversity debate and spending priorities for promoting diversity.
update: And now it seems that the IAAF’s Lamine Diack, who gave the 2021 IAAF meet to Lananna’s TrackTown and UO, is implicated in a vote buying scheme over the award of the 2016 Olympics to Rio. I’m shocked: Rio 2016 President Carlos Nuzman was taken into custody last Tuesday…
Jeannie Suk Gerson in The New Yorker: Over the summer, anticipation over what the Education Department might do about campus sexual assault heightened as the Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, held high-profile meetings with groups advocating for the interests of universities, sexual-assault victims, and accused students—including one men’s-rights group accused of harassing women online. DeVos’s…
My understanding is that this will soon go to the membership for a vote. I vote yes. If you’re not a member yet, the info on joining is here. Bottom line is that faculty will get average 3% raises in Jan 2018 (old contract) and now 2% in Jan 2019,…
From the Industrial Designers Society of America website: \ University of Oregon’s Department of Product Design set SAIL in summer 2017 with a new addition to week-long programs designed to help high school students explore career paths. A product design undergraduate student in UO’s College of Design taught the next generation…
9/8/2017: Some light live-blog below on Friday’s Board meeting. Page down for Th committee meetings. Live video here. Some highlights from today: – President Schill gives his definition of excellence in his remarks below. – Biology Prof Karen Guillemin gives a fascinating talk on the importance of bacterial diversity. My…
More good news for UO’s efforts to increase retention, as our students won’t be thinking about leaving the couch, much less Eugene. The Street has the report here: Based on Baker’s data, the colleges ordering up the most ‘dro to their dorm rooms come from the University of Colorado, followed…
Thanks to an anonymous Harvard Man for the Crimson report. The news on Trump’s decision is not yet up, but I’m sure smart people like these professors must have done the backwards induction, and how else could he possibly react?
9/20/2017: I don’t know. Here’s his job description, explaining that his duties are split between the Ducks Department of Athletic Medicine, and the University Health Center, followed by his salary report showing all his pay comes from the UHC, which is funded by student health fees:
But at least he’s board certified in Sports Medicine. In fact it was a requirement for the job, although his boss doesn’t have it.
9/7/2017: Duck Director of Athletic Medicine Greg Skaggs is not board certified in Sports Medicine
The American Medical Association / ABMS website notes:
My Doctor is Board Certified. Is Yours? You want quality care for your family. That’s why choosing a Board Certified doctor is so important.
Board Certification is a voluntary process that goes above and beyond licensing requirements – it’s a commitment to continually expand knowledge in a medical specialty.
Presumably that knowledge would include concussion treatments, rhabdo, exercise during low air quality, and perhaps some CTE on medical ethics and conflicts of interest while working as a team doctor. This 2010 UO job announcement for a University Physician notes:
MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:
Graduate of accredited medical school
M.D. or D.O. Licensure by the Oregon Medical Board – (or license eligible)
ABMS-approved board certification in Internal Medicine, Family Medicine or Pediatrics
Successful Completion of Sports Medicine Fellowship
Board Certified or Board Eligible in Sports Medicine
Dr. Skaggs’s Sports Medicine certification lapsed in 2009: https://www.theabfm.org/diplomate/find.aspx?ts=636403559
9/2/2017: Duck Physician Greg Skaggs delays Utah game over unhealthy smoke levels
Alisha Roemeling in the RG, with the results of a survey of 1120 North Eugene public school parents:
Gordon Friedman in the Oregonian, here:
Update: I think a nephelometer measures fine particulate pollution, but I suppose these time-series data from the LRAPA website would also be consistent with recent Oregon Bach Festival complaints: Eugene air particulates hit record 381, vs. 57 in Beijing. Eugene: Beijing: Yesterday’s HR letter: Dear Colleagues, Wildfires around the Willamette Valley and…
9/4/2017: The full text of President Schill’s message here includes links to UO resources and the UO Dreamers website, here.
Members of the University of Oregon community,
President Trump this week is expected to make changes to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration policy, also known as DACA. I join hundreds of university leaders as well as local, state, federal, and business leaders in strongly urging President Trump to continue this program. I also write to let our students know that we support them, and to provide information about where our students and their families can go for assistance, should the need arise.
In a world full of ambiguities, there is no ambiguity for me about the importance of continuing DACA. My view of morality dictates that young people, many of whom were brought here as infants or toddlers, must be allowed to remain in the United States to learn, work, and make a life for themselves. The United States is their home. To uproot them would be wrong. Period.
But the argument for DACA doesn’t just rest on principles of morality; it is also good for our country. One of the reasons the United States became the greatest nation in the world is because it was founded, built, and shaped by immigrants. Millions and millions of people, including all of my grandparents, risked everything to come to the United States to escape religious, ethnic, and political oppression or to seek out a better life for their children. The very act of coming here showed grit and determination, the willingness to assume risk, and courage—just the skills necessary to build our nation. …
The UO Senate resolution from last November, written by Prof. Lynn Stephens and other members of the DACA and Undocumented Students Working Group, with cooperation from the UO administration, is here. The video of the Senate meeting is here. Minutes:
4.4 Vote: US16/17-09: Declaring UO a Sanctuary Campus; Lynn Stephen (Anthropology) et al. Lynn Stephen read the motion. She thanked President Schill and Provost Coltrane for their statement on immigration earlier in the day and for working together with the Senate. She noted that over 200 local jurisdictions throughout the United States, though not Lane County, have expressed their unwillingness to help ICE enforce immigration laws.
Motion to adopt. Presented by: _______________. Second: ________________.
Craig Parsons expressed his concern about the Senate addressing issues like this one, which asks the UO to take a position on how it will deal with federal agencies. The previous resolution focused on the university’s own values, but this one requires a political stance from senators who were not elected based on their political beliefs. Jane Cramer said this resolution will make many students she knows feel safer. Chris Chavez said it is important for the university to speak up at critical moments like this.
Vote to adopt. No – 2. Yes – all other votes. Moved/Seconded/Carried.
9/4/2017: Miserable old man finds brief joy in punishing innocent children
Politico has the news on Donald Trump’s decision to repeal the Obama directive that gave temporary residency and a path to citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, here. Congress will have 6 months to decide to reinstate it, or not.
Sept 5 downtown Eugene rally against DACA/Dreamer repeal:
By some of the same people who organized the excellent Eugene Anti-Hate march. On Facebook here.
8/14/2017 update: Peaceful Eugene Anti-Hate march from EMU to downtown