Around the O has the good news here: Thanks to a $16 million estate gift for scholarships, scores of high-achieving UO students on the path to becoming public school teachers will be spending less time worrying about debt and more time focused on becoming outstanding educators. The R.H. and Jane…
Posts published by “uomatters”
From his “Open Mike” emails: Dear Colleagues, As I look at my calendar, I am excited about the start of the new academic year and eager to welcome our students back to campus. While every fall brings a fresh opportunity for us to build upon our high aspirations for the…
Bloomberg has the comparatively good news here.
Insidehighered has the report here: Increased faculty diversity has long been a goal of many colleges and universities. But a number of institutions have recently put their money where their mouths are, so to speak, launching expensive initiatives aimed at making their faculties more representative of their respective student bodies…
Interesting story in the AAUP’s Academe, here: With so much technology emerging in recent decades, it can be hard to work out what’s going to be a fad and what’s there to stay. The TrueDialog text messaging software? That’s here for the long run thanks to its amazing results. Rejecting…
Today at Ford Alumni Center, https://academicaffairs.uoregon.edu/content/fall-leadership-retreat. President Schill’s speech focuses on improving academic research and undergraduate retention and graduation. The New New Budget Model will not mindlessly allocate money on the basis of how many easy on-line gen-ed/MC credit-hours departments can churn out, but instead it will allocate at least some money on…
Or is it vice-versa. The 538 website has an interesting post on explanations for tuition increases, here: All of those trends add to the cost of college, but not by that much. At most, about a quarter of the increase in college tuition since 2000 can be attributed to rising…
But just a little. The Bend Bulletin has the story here: The Oregon Department of Justice on Monday lifted an order requiring some state agencies to charge the public for government records, overturning its own 14-year-old advice. Deputy Attorney General Frederick Boss ruled that the Public Employees Retirement System declined…
9/12/2016: The Emerald has the story here, and it’s on the UO Divest facebook page here. Back in April, Foundation CFO Jay Namyet was writing nastygrams like this to our students about their efforts to get the secretive UO Foundation to join the CO2 divestment movement:
Subject: RE: follow up meeting
Date: 2016/03/30 14:14
From: Jay Namyet <[email protected]>
To: [UO Divest undergraduate student]
[UO Divest undergraduate student],
No, indeed we did not. As I told you, based on your conduct, our dialogue was over. I hope in years to come you will appreciate a life’s lesson in this affair. That is what a university experience is all about.
Regards,
Jay
From: [UO Divest undergraduate student]
Sent: Wednesday, March 30, 2016 2:11 PM
To: Jay Namyet <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: follow up meeting
Hi Jay,
I know we didn’t end our last meeting on the best note, but we’d be happy to try and get a fresh start and meet again to discuss divestment sometime this term if you’re willing. Let me know.
Sincerely,
[UO Divest undergraduate student]
On 2015/04/09 18:30, Jay Namyet wrote:
Great, we are in agreement then, no more dialogue.
Sent from Outlook [1]
And
On 2015/04/09 10:05, Jay Namyet wrote:
[UO Divest undergraduate student],
When I asked you all why you were meeting with the president, the response I got was to learn his personal thoughts about this issue.
Turns out, not really.
As is indicated by [UO Divest undergraduate student] below in [pronoun redacted] email to the president’s office, and just as you three did with me this morning, this is about pressing your argument for divestment even though you have already received responses from all parties involved.
I offered an olive branch to you all last meeting and was the basis for today’s meeting. You all chose to ignore that and continue to beat the same drum of divestment.
I don’t appreciate being lied to about your intent of meeting with the president and I don’t appreciate your not honoring the reason for meeting today with me.
As a result, you have now lost the opportunity for further dialogue with me.
Jay
I’m mystified as to why Namyet didn’t want the students to talk to the President of their university, but whatever.
After a Johnson Hall sit-in, a free-speech controversy that sucked in FIRE, and some outraged letters from UO donors he and Weinhold came back to the table, and are now true believers:
Investment Management Statement
The University of Oregon Foundation is an independent, non-profit organization that exists for the sole purpose of supporting the academic mission of the university. We carry out our mission through prudent investment management, maximizing the value of private gifts for the benefit of the university and honoring donor intent.
Our strategy is to invest in a diverse set of smart, longer-term investments. This approach has created a well-diversified, progressive portfolio whose performance ranks in the top 10 percent nationally of all university endowments. Our philosophy and approach are guided by making prudent, socially and environmentally responsible investments that advance the financial objectives needed to support the university’s academic mission.
We are proud to lead the Pac-12 in adopting the first ever environmental, social and governance considerations to help inform our investment decisions. We believe that green energy initiatives, such as solar and wind power, sustainable forestry, and organic farming will steadily replace investments in carbon-based fuel sources, and we do not have any investments in coal. We intend to let those carbon-based investments –which were initiated many years ago– expire without renewal, ending our investment in carbon-based fuel sources.
Our responsibility is to balance financial support for today’s students, faculty and staff, with those of future generations at the university. We are currently providing more than $45 million each year in direct student, academic and operational funding to support the academic growth of our university and students. We are pleased that with our approach, we continue to successfully deliver on that mission.
Jay Namyet
Chief Investment Officer
4/22/2016: Students arrange marriage of Duck & CO2, mock secretive UO Foundation
More news from Johnson Hall: Dear Campus Community, Our students attend the University of Oregon for the excellence of our faculty and the strength of our research opportunities. Academics are at the heart of everything we do, but our students also choose to be Ducks because of the exceptional student experience…
The puck drops at 7:30PM. Data from IPEDS 2014 and USA Today 2015. Ducks Cavaliers Game Points: TBA TBA Finances: Endowment $659,671,118 $5,876,310,216 Instructional spending $294,436,620 $405,715,209 Research spending $81,982,046 $332,297,288 State funding $49,430,860 $145,711,683 Athletics spending $103,880,557 $91,345,925 Athletics spending as % of academic 28% 12% Students: Undergrads 20,538…
our pointy-toed boots. Maxine Bernstein has the report in the Oregonian on the government’s latest infringement of our constitutional rights to occupy a bird refuge and wear a bolo tie, with 1064 comments so far.
These are not easy to find on the Board’s website, so I’ve put them here. Schedule and links. Each link below takes you to a post with the respective committee agenda, documents, summary and sometimes some commentary. The full board agenda and materials and some live-blogging are at the bottom.…
Or will this just make their work less transparent? I don’t think it’s bad for universities to teach about how free speech can offend, but it’s not the sort of thing that the faculty should leave up to the administration to police. From InsideHigherEd: The University of Northern Colorado has announced that…
9/8/2016: Federal Judge McShane has ruled in favor of UO. The Emerald has the story here. Duck advocate Tobin Klinger has the party line in Around the O, the official organ of the Ducks:
“The court’s decision dismissed all of the students’ claims and upholds the University’s position that the students were afforded appropriate due process under the UO’s student conduct code. In addition, it affirms that the student conduct processes are separate and independent of criminal matters.
But Klinger fails to report that Judge McShane left the door open to refiling. And, according to the more accurate report by the Oregonian’s Tyson Alger here, it seems that the young men’s legal counsel, well-known celebrity attorney Alex Spiro, plans to try phoning it in one more time:
Court documents show that many of the claims of the players against the university were dismissed without prejudice, meaning they’ll be allowed to refile within the next 30 days. U.S. District Judge Michael McShane did dismiss the players’ claim of not receiving due process with prejudice, meaning that it can’t be refiled.
“We are simply redrafting the pleadings and moving forward with the case pursuant to the court’s decision,” said Alex Spiro, the lawyer for Dotson and Artis.
Judge McShane’s full opinion is here. I believe this is the last of the lawsuits related to the alleged rapes on the night of March 8, 2014, if it ever ends. UO paid Jane Doe $800K, Morlok and Stokes $425K, $2.5K for Shelly Kerr’s ethics fine, and unknown amounts for lawyers, including defending UO attorneys Doug Park and Sam Hill from an Bar ethics complaint. And, of course, UO’s “brand” took a huge hit.
As it happens, just an hour before this opinion was released Duck AD Rob Mullens was talking to the UO Board of Trustees. They had no questions for him about any of this, including why the academic budget had to pay for it.
The gist of Judge McShane’s decision:
I’m no law professor, but it seems pretty clear-cut. UO’s Deputy Counsel Doug Park offered the student-athletes a deal that would allow them to go play basketball somewhere else, and they took it after getting advice from their own lawyers:
Then they had second thoughts. Judge McShane essentially said “too bad, a deal’s a deal”.
8/27/2016: Celebrity lawyer Alex Spiro calls Dana Altman’s black basketball players “boys”
