
Gloomy Phildo looms over poorly attended Prefontaine track meet

This cost is borne by those young and reckless enough to choose to handle an inflammable carcinogen, if not for the beneficent rule of law. On the other hand the ban is a cross-subsidy to those old and wise enough to leave gasoline to trained professionals, who would otherwise have to pay the full cost of this service. Paper here, for the seminal work on this subject see Johnson and Romeo (2000).
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:
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:
After being chosen in a closed search process, F. King Alexander didn’t last a whole year as president at Oregon State University. Now, the university’s Board of Trustees is taking a different approach to appoint his successor. …
The Oregon State board named Alexander president in December 2019, after considering four finalists who were not named publicly. Finalists met only confidentially with a “stakeholder group” of 25 members that included a handful of faculty members and students.
But incredibly, the OSU board still won’t admit they screwed up:
At Oregon State, the surprise and backlash about Alexander’s hiring was in part because board members seemed to not have considered his role in responding to charges of sexual misconduct at Louisiana State, despite the fact the controversy had been covered widely at the time.
In response, the board did a review of the entire search process, including a look at what the search firm and their own background check may have overlooked.
From that review, the board said, it was clear that a more open search was needed, including “announcing finalists, providing an opportunity for broad community engagement with finalists, and soliciting feedback on finalists before the Board makes its final decision” the board concluded in its review.
The board will also conduct its own background check, using a different company than the search firm, said Manning, the board member. The extra step is part of a “robust due-diligence process,” she said, but not necessarily a sign that there was anything wrong with the last search.
“I did not see any indication of a flawed process,” [Trustee] Manning said.
Despite the new process, some faculty members say the board has taken only token steps to involve the campus and community. Bringing finalists to campus is an improvement, Kathleen Stanley, a senior instructor in sociology and president of the faculty union, wrote in an email. But it’s not yet clear how the public can engage with the finalists or how their feedback will be used to evaluate the candidates, she added.
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.
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