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Posts published by “uomatters”
Disclaimer: My interpretation of what was said or meant or should have been said, nothing is a quote unless in quotes.
Short version:
Pres Gottfredson gives short content-free speech, gets called out for speaking as “The University” on academic matters, i.e. the boycott of Israeli universities.
VP Roger Thompson starts off with fluff, gets tough questions, gives thorough, thoughtful, knowledgeable answers. Impressive. So why was he so evasive about revenue athlete SAT’s in his “Around the O” interview?
Librarian Deb Carver: Blackboard will be replaced! Wait, maybe not, we’re reviewing it and may replace it, maybe not. Current license goes through Sept 2015. If we change, year of overlap to switch to new alternative.
Huaxin Lin: When are we going to elect a Senate President elect for next year? Should have been done in May.
Really long version: Senate Meeting Agenda – January 15, 2013
115 Lawrence, 3:00-5:00 p.m.
3:00 pm 1. Call to Order
3:05 pm 2. Approval of Minutes The Senate minutes are very thorough, here.
3:10 pm 3. State of the University, 3.1 Remarks by President Gottfredson
Working on academic plan, divorce from OUS and new relationship with HECC and UO Board. Board meeting coming soon. He’s impressed with Trustees. UO will be taking over some OUS functions – e.g. selling bonds. Some shared services will remain, e.g. risk management, using an innovative opt-in model where universities are customers and can leave if they get a raw deal.
More provost candidates coming. Close to decision for UO Ombudsperson, announcement soon. Also searching for Deans of Education and Libraries, going well.
Boycott of Israel: Gottfredson is opposed to boycott, based on faith in Academic Freedom.
Questions?
Sullivan: Congrats on UO board, when does the Senate get to meet them? MG: Soon.
Kyr: Summary on boycott? MG: Gives summary. All the other AAU presidents were doing this, I thought I should too.
Bonine: As you know, professors shouldn’t speak for the university. But your statement says “We”. Would you consider changing this to “I”? MG: I’ll take that under advisement with my administrative advisors, but I think I get to speak on behalf of the University.
Bonine: Suppose, hypothetically, that the Senate took an opposite view. Can we also speak on behalf of the university? Shouldn’t this have been discussed by Senate?
MG: I appreciate your thoughts.
3:30 pm 4. New Business
4.1 Motion (Legislation): Redlined Policies (Revised Policies) for Senate Review; Robert Kyr, Professor (Music) & UO Senator
Kyr: Admins have been proposing changes to UO policies and we can’t figure out what changes they are making. Format them to make it obvious. This is a great motion, Randy Geller’s redlines are often pretty damn hilarious.
Bonine: Can we “tell” the administration to do this, or just plead? Should be the administration’s job, not the Senate Coordinator’s job to keep track.
4.2 Motion (Legislation): Housekeeping Changes to Senate Bylaws; Lisa Raleigh, Director of Communications (CAS) & UO Senator
Raleigh: Fixes a few numbering mistakes. Lin: Takes the opportunity to ask for clarification on the definition of a 2/3 majority.
4:00 pm 5. Open Discussion
Sullivan: In light of Bonine’s comments on who speaks for the university on academic matters, I propose the Senate draft a resolution speaking for the academic side.
Paris: MG did talk with me and the FAC, I told him this was OK since it was reaffirming the status quo.
Bonine: No. All kinds of things could be swept under the status quo rug. Reads resolution, points out how this resolution actually can be read as restricting academic freedom.
Emami: Several years ago I brought up a resolution against the war in Iraq. I was told it was not a suitable subject for the Senate.
Dreiling: This boycott is clearly an academic matter, has to do with academic freedom, we should move forward with a Senate resolution a la Sullivan.
Sullivan: Defer further discussion til there’s a resolution, if someone wants to write one?
Bonine: Agree, we should use AAUP statement on academic boycotts, which cites Nelson Mandela on appropriate responses, and which takes a statement on boycotts in general rather than a “which side are we on” reaction to this particular issue.
Dreiling: Reads part of AAUP statement against boycotts, as anti-academic freedom.
Paris: Actually, our by-laws state that we can make resolutions about anything.
4:15 pm 6. Reports
6.1 Report on Tenth-Year Committee Review; Robert Kyr, Professor (Music) & UO Senator
Kyr: Committee on committees met, is setting up working groups, will prepare several slates of legislation for working groups, etc. Many meetings to come, reforms will be focused on important reforms of IAC, STC, SBC, etc. Goal is to finish by spring.
6.2 Report on Athletics Subsidies Committee: William Harbaugh, Professor (Economics) & UO Senator
REPORT on Senate motion “An End to Subsidies for the UO Athletic Department”
From: Bill Harbaugh (Economics), to the UO Senate, 1/15/2014
Last spring the UO Senate voted in favor of a resolution asking UO President Gottfredson to end subsidies for the UO Athletic Department, and to begin having the AD make modest payments to the academic side for need-based scholarships and other academic purposes.
In the absence of any concrete action from the administration in response to this resolution, at the November Senate meeting I followed up with a similar motion, but as legislation. At the December meeting the Senate voted to table a vote on the legislation until the February meeting, and to establish an ad hoc committee to meet with President Gottfredson to discuss this legislation.
That committee is chaired by myself and includes Jenny Ellis (Business), Ali Emani (Business), Rob Kyr (Music), Sam Dotters-Katz (ASUO President), Jane Cramer (Political Science), Terrie Minner-Engle (Academic Advising), and Helena Schlegel (Student). President Gottfredson stated at the meeting that he approved of this plan.
Prior to the discussion of the motion, President Gottfredson had noted that he believed that the Senate Budget Committee was the appropriate place for discussions about Athletic Department finances and these subsidies, and that they would soon meet to discuss these matters. After the Senate meeting and the vote establishing the ad hoc committee, I emailed the members of the SBC asking who was the chair, and if I could attend this meeting. I was told by the members that the SBC had not picked a chair. I was then told by VP Brad Shelton (an ex-officio member of the SBC), that his decision was that I could not attend the meeting of the Senate Budget Committee about athletic finances.
My feeling is that the decision by VP Shelton to prevent the chair of a committee appointed by the Senate to work on athletic finances from attending a meeting of the Senate Budget Committee meeting dealing with athletic finances is a bizarre one – particularly given President Gottfredson’s support for the establishment of this ad hoc committee. I think that this, in combination with the fact that the SBC includes no Senators (except the ex-offico Senate President) and has not reported to the Senate since 2010 shows a systemic problem with the SBC as currently constituted. So I have introduced a motion to have the Senate elect SBC members, which should come up for a Senate vote in February.
The ad hoc committee does now have a meeting scheduled with President Gottfredson, Interim Provost Scott Coltrane, and VPAA Jamie Moffitt for January 28th, and despite all of the above I remain optimistic that the Senate will make progress on the issue of athletic subsidies, and perhaps also on reforming our general lack of influence over financial matters.
6.3 Report on Academic Freedom/Freedom of Speech Committee; Michael Dreiling, Professor (Sociology) & UO Senator
Dreiling:: Sent draft to Senate, 4 responses, will distill and present to the Senate work group and discuss with President Gottfredson at the next meeting with him. Any changes will be distributed and posted.
6.4 Report on Legal Services Policy; Margie Paris, Professor (Law) & UO Senate President
Paris: Paris, Lininger and Sayre and I have met, reviewed Randy’s redlines, will post these soon. I know that this has now been 6 months. We lost Susan Gary from the committee, Lininger is the replacement and has got up to speed very quickly, hope to have substantive report soon.
Bonine: Where is Randy’s redlined version? Paris: I’ll have that in a day or two with our response.
Sullivan: How’s it been meeting with Geller?
Paris: We haven’t even sat in a room together with Geller yet. (Wow!). Not sure we’ll be able to compromise.
6.5 Report on Admissions; Roger Thompson, Vice President for Enrollment Management
Me: I’m wondering if Thompson will deal with the latest info on UO’s special admits of football and basketball players with verbal SAT’s of < 400. Not sure but this looks like the last 5 years or so:
Sara Ganim of CNN has now posted the data showing the SAT/ACT scores for UO’s revenue sport athletes. Her original story is here: http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/07/us/ncaa-athletes-reading-scores/index.html
The raw UO data is here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1005755-university-of-oregon-data.html
Her explanatory notes are pasted below. As you can see, a rather large percentage of UO football and basketball players have scores that, according to the experts Ms Ganim cites, are below the thresholds for “being college literate”.
The “Around the O” article by Joe Mosely, with quotes from VP for Enrollment Roger Thompson, which Ganim discusses, is here: http://around.uoregon.edu/story/academics/gpa-and-test-scores-show-uo-student-athletes-academically-prepared
As you can see, there is a vast difference in college preparation between the student athletes in sports that bring in no revenue, and those who are brought to UO to earn money for the athletic department.
VP for Enrollment Roger Thompson: We buy lists of prospective students – 100K this year. Lots of undergraduate growth, not grads. GPA up from 3.4 to 3.6. More AP courses. (No adjustment for inflation?) Yup, SAT scores haven’t budged since 2000.
Thompson: We ignore writing scores since there’s no evidence they are consistently scored. Slices and dices students on race and ethnicity. 10% international students.
Moving on to SES diversity, 37% of resident students that are Pell grant eligible, 14% of non-resident. Good discussion of how it may not make sense for low SES out-of-state to come to UO, given that so many drop out over the high out-of-state tuition.
Sullivan: Any more undergrads coming? Thompson: No. At the moment the goal is 24,500 total enrollment, no more growth.
Q from floor: Why did you focus your presentation on rising, probably inflated grades, not on the flat SAT’s?
Thompson: OUS policy prevents us from looking at SAT’s (!) I hope to change that with new independent board. (Good idea, IMHO.)
Bonine: I just googled it, and the number of Pell eligible students is increasing due to the recession, your trend is not unique to UO.
Thompson gives a good response, starts to realize his presentation was a little too dumbed down for the Senate. Lots of other good questions and he’s got good answers when he’s pushed. ODE reporter is here, I’m hoping they’ll give a good report. Talks about lack of state financing – PathWays is all funded with UO money, Oregon Opportunity state money is trivial. Oregon exports too many HS, college grads, hopes with new board we can figure out a way to educate more Oregon students, particularly rich science kids from west Portland, instead of being so dependent on Californians.
6.6 Report on Evaluating Course Management Systems; Deborah Carver, Dean of the UO Libraries
Carver: We may replace Blackboard. Psaki: Is it true we’re using the low-rent version of Blackboard? Carver: Yes, and even worse their proposal for us keeping it is still the bad version. (WTF?)
4:50 pm 7. Announcements and Communication from the Floor
Lin: When are we going to get a vice-president/president elect? (Should have happened last May.) Paris: We’re working on it. Any volunteers?
4:55 pm 8. Other Business
Psaki: We no longer have time to get across campus, set up laptops. Can we increase time between courses from 10 min to 15? Eveland: Probably not.
5:00 pm 9. Adjournment at 4:50!
1/14/2014 Update: This Senate meeting may be more important than I’d thought. Rumor has it that President Gottfredson will give a substantive presentation on UO’s financial situation, complete with spreadsheets and forecasts, and also ask the faculty for input on his “Clusters of Excellence” plans.
1/13/14: This Senate meeting will be more notable for what is not on the agenda than for what is. The draft minutes from the December meeting are here, and the agenda is here. What’s still hanging fire?
UO now has a list of “Centers Clusters of Excellence”. These are the areas that UO will emphasize during decisions about funding and fundraising. What departments are included? What factors were weighed in deciding the list? Who had input? There’s no substantive information from JH of course. The rumors I’ve heard…
I’m no economist, but I hear they say a little competition can be a good thing. Mr. President, with all due respect and civility, we’re losing. Time to hire a new General? From the latest UO and OSU brag sheet reports to OUS, here:
“Around the O”‘s response to Sara Ganim’s CNN investigative piece on the pressures on universities to admit and pass revenue sport athletes manages to entirely ignore the distinction between revenue athletes, and those in non-revenue sports like women’s tennis. Joe Mosely’s piece – with some disturbingly evasive quotes from UO…
Story about the hiring of award winning investigative reporter Kate Willson here. A good sign for more transparency about Oregon higher education.
From our Corvallis branch office: Outgoing Senate President Kevin Gable spoke eloquently about the role of Faculty Senate in a shared governance setting. That would be at Oregon State University: http://media.oregonstate.edu/media/OSU+Faculty+Senate+January+9%2C+2014+part+1+of+7/0_tkg0wb61 Nice little profile in the Gazette-Times, as well: http://www.gazettetimes.com/news/local/osu-faculty-senate-president-kevin-gable-notes-importance-of-shared/article_d7d0d012-7a74-11e3-ba4f-0019bb2963f4.html Then Gable ticks off the pieces of the OSU puzzle in…
Colleagues: To strengthen our operations and create new opportunities for us to advance the UO’s research and innovation agenda, there are some personnel changes in the office for Research, Innovation and Graduate Education (RIGE), effective January 1, 2014. Please share this message with others for whom this announcement is pertinent.…
That would be Chicago State University, trying to shut down the aptly named Crony State University blog. Maybe CSU needs a journalism or business school dean? VP for Research? Special Presidential Assistant for Athletics? InsideHigherEd has the latest.
Wow. The NBER has the economics paper about MTV’s “16 and Pregnant” here, based in part on Google trends data. NYT story here.
From Kelsey Thalhofer in the RG: One of TV’s most notorious drug-dealing villains will be visiting Lane Community College this month to give the keynote speech at the community’s 2014 Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration. And it seems that LCC was a little more forthcoming about his contract than UO…
The in-depth Washington Monthly article is here:
Colleges mostly see this as a win-win situation, solving budget woes and adding to the value of the school’s education at the same time. But with the impact of the boom still reverberating, pockets of dissent are emerging. In states like Washington and California, there are growing complaints that the influx of foreign students is crowding local students out of their own state schools. Meanwhile, at least some Chinese students are complaining that American universities exploit them by charging extra fees. It’s difficult to argue against the valuable opportunities for cultural exchange and public diplomacy that international education provides. But at the current scale, Chinese students have become so concentrated on some campuses that in many ways it’s as if they were attending separate schools within schools.
International students bring a lot of money into the United States, contributing roughly $22 billion to the U.S. economy in 2012, according to one estimate. Francisco Sánchez, the undersecretary for international trade at the Commerce Department, has said the U.S. has “no better export” than higher education, and Larry Summers, former secretary of the treasury and former Harvard president, lists “exporting higher education”—bringing more international students to American institutions—as a key part of his recommendations for economic growth.
I wonder where UO’s exports of undergraduate degrees would put us, on a ranking of Oregon’s most successful foreign trade industries?
And former UO professor Arif Dirlik sends this warning about the influence of Chinese money on academic studies of China, with regard to the Tianamen square demonstrations and the Chinese government sposored Confucius Institutes:
Tiananmen commemorations, June 4,1989—June 4, 2013
The Tiananmen Tragedy of June 1989 is significant not just for humanitarian but also for historical and political reasons. It is a humane obligation to recall those who lost their lives and those who continue to suffer under its shadow. Analysis of the forces that brought it about, and the forces that issued from it, requires confrontation of questions of crucial importance to understanding the PRC’s development over the last three decades–as well as of outsiders’ reaction to and entanglement with that development. A broad group of China scholars and other specialists involved in the study of the PRC is urging centers for China Studies (including the so-called Confucius Institutes) to use this occasion to discuss issues of democracy, human rights and social justice with reference to the PRC. These issues are pertinent to the contemporary world in general. They include especially issues of complicity in the perpetuation of human rights abuses of outsiders involved with oppressive regimes in some capacity or other that have been dramatized by the recent American Studies Association decision to boycott universities in Israel. Attached here are the statement, “We Will Not Forget June 4th,” with a list of signatories, and a draft copy of the letter being circulated to Confucius Institutes by Dr. Stephen Levine on their behalf. Further information may be found on the website, http://www.june4commemoration.org
Arif Dirlik, Independent scholar, Eugene, OR (Knight Professor of Social Science, UO, 2001-2006)
Diane Dietz has the story in the RG. Good to see Roger Thompson’s admissions office is doing more than organizing sham events to cover for our administrators’ bowl game junkets. Speaking of which, President Gottfredson’s office is now denying they have any public records showing which UO administrators and spouses got junkets “paid work related travel” to the San Antonio Bowl:
The university has searched for, but was unable to locate, records responsive to your request made 12/24/2013. The office considers this to be fully responsive to your request, and will now close your matter. Thank you for contacting the office with your request.
Sure. Last year’s Fiesta Bowl memo is here. I wonder why JH is so secretive about this year’s list?
1/6/2014: Ducks to lose money on Alamo Bowl after administrator junkets?
Now 3 weeks, and still no memo from the public records office. But Troy Brynelson has a great article in the ODE about our administration’s tortured efforts to justify their Alamo Bowl junkets as a worthwhile admissions recruiting trip, here.
12/30/13: More than two weeks since I made this request, and UO is still hiding the memo showing which administrators got Alamo bowl junkets.
12/27/2013 update from Lewis Kamb in the Seattle Times:
For the Alamo Bowl, which pays nearly $3.2 million to the conference, the conference pays a school $1.2 million, plus up to 500 charter seats and the ticket subsidy.
“The reimbursement usually does not cover the entire bowl game expense amount,” the UW’s Sasaki said.
True, but each university also controls the size of its travel party to a bowl game — a factor that largely determines whether it financially wins, loses or breaks even.
Then there’s the $50K bonus we have to pay Rob Mullens.
12/26/22013: Ducks cancel Alamo Bowl junkets over tax issues
Or maybe they just gave them a different name. On Dec 11 I made this public records request, after hearing rumors that President Gottfredson had cut back on the number of UO administrators and spouses getting all-expense-paid trips to this year’s bowl game:
12/11/2013: This is a public records request for a copy of any email, memos, or similar announcing which UO employees will get paid junkets to this year’s “Valero Alamo Bowl”. I ask for a fee-waiver on the basis of public interest.
These trips are a potential conflict of interest for UO administrators like VPFA Jamie Moffitt, who must make tough decisions about cutting athletics subsidies after getting a sweet free vacation from the Ducks. Just to make sure the public records office knew what I was asking for, I followed up with a link to last year’s announcement – which took a month or so to obtain, if memory serves me:
12/11/2013: if you need any clarification on this PR request about junkets, last year’s announcement from President Gottfredson is here:
Update: With the faculty hiring season well under way, I thought I’d repost this classic.
7/4/2013 AA Plan update: For the first time in living memory, Penny Daugherty’s Affirmative Action Office has managed to complete the federally required annual update to UO’s AA Plan on schedule. Last time she and Randy Geller got President Gottfredson to backdate it just as Frohnmayer regularly did, making it look like UO was in compliance when it wasn’t. The updates are here, the “Executive Order” report deals with race and gender.
Take a look at Table 3 on page 41. Using the federally specified methodology and the latest NCES data, UO’s tenure track faculty is representative of the available pool of Phd’s with respect to race/ethnicity in every single job group. For women, there is under-representation in Music, Education, CAS Humanities, and CAS Sciences:
How can this be, when a quick glance around UO reveals so few minorities? It’s because the available pool of minority PhD’s is very small. Logically, you’d think we should focus our efforts on increasing the number of minorities who get PhD’s. (Which the recent SCOTUS decision leaves some scope for.)
Nope. Instead we’ve developed a “beggar thy other universities” Under-represented Minority Recruitment Plan, paying departments $90K for every existing racial or ethnic minority TTF PhD we are able to keep another university from hiring. UO spends about $1M a year on this. And to add to the absurdity, there’s nothing in the UMRP for hiring women, and it doesn’t apply to NTTFs. And don’t get me started on SES, political, or religious diversity. UO wants faculty who look different, not faculty who think different.
When it comes to UO’s central administration , they mostly care about hiring their cronies for “special assistant” jobs without open affirmative-action compliant searches. Former Journalism Dean Tim Gleason is the latest case.
Back in 2006 I filed a complaint with the DOE’s Office of Civil Rights about the UMRP, which at the time was giving the money directly to the minority faculty, who often took it as summer salary. Unequal pay for equal work. It took a lot of public records requests, a bar ethics complaint against Melinda Grier, and a long talk with Associate AG David Leith at the Oregon DOJ, but eventually UO changed the plan to give the money to departments, and require them to ensure the funding was not distributed solely on the basis of race.
So while the UMRP may now be mostly legal (though see below for some of the stunts Russ Tomlin pulled) it’s still stupid, and there’s no sign that new VPAA Doug Blandy is going to try and fix it.
Posted on request of an anonymous reader, who writes “In a time that has been so divisive on campus – athletics vs academics, unions vs admin, etc – perhaps a bit of an inspiration from the UOM to work together to complete the hard work required to make a functioning…