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Posts published by “UO Matters”

Duck’s prep new missile for first strike against UO’s academic side

UOM agents have acquired photographic evidence that the new Hayward Field “cell phone tower” – Diane Dietz story here – is actually a disguised Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile, now in the final stages of fueling. The Duck athletic department, whose leadership has long viewed UO’s faculty as an existential threat, now…

New CIO pauses IT reorg to collect data on current IT services

From the informative transformit.uoregon.edu website: A message from Jessie Minton, Vice Provost for Information Services and Chief Information Officer: I am excited to announce an important change in the way the university will proceed with Transform IT. We will first inventory IT services offered across the university, and then we…

Four Years a Student-Athlete

Patrick Hruby’s award winning long-form report has one hell of a lede: While the NCAA’s rules governing college athletes are colorblind, the impact of amateurism is anything but—disproportionately costing black football and men’s basketball players and benefiting white stakeholders by as much as $2 billion a year. … Today he…

Editors of Nature reject UO’s proposed budget metrics and merit pay plan

Nature is of course one of the most prestigious, highest impact science journals. Their editors think UO’s new plan has it backwards. Instead of making decisions about budget and pay based on what faculty have already published, they think we should give money to promising faculty, to do promising new…

OSU’s Jock Mills and Karli Olsen provide thorough legislative session wrap-up

Read it all – many twists and turns. Obviously this has an OSU focus, but particularly towards the end it is filled with info relevant to UO etc.

A Review of the 2017 Legislative Session

With the adjournment of the 2017 legislative session last Friday afternoon, this issue provides a summary of the session, including:

  • The big picture and a prognosis for the next year;
  • How OSU’s legislative priorities fared;
  • Other bills that captured our attention and time; and
  • Acknowledgements for all the help we received over the last seven months. 

The Big Picture

As described in previous updates, the legislature entered the session with a list of “mega issues” that demanded attention in order to balance the budget and address real problems facing Oregonians across the state. Over the course of the session the items on this list ebbed and flowed, but they generally included:

  • Revenue reform (tax increases);
  • Investments in transportation infrastructure;
  • Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) reform;
  • Health care reform, including a health provider tax and bolstering the state-financed health care system that was susceptible to changes at the federal level;
  • Housing affordability; and
  • Overall cost management/cost cutting for state agencies.

University Health Center employees protest discrimination, favoritism

Letter in the Emerald, here: … In a recent anonymous survey of SEIU 503 members working at the UO Health Center (UHC) – including licensed and non-licensed staff – 83 percent of respondents reported having seen specific coworkers being targeted and held to a different standard than their colleagues. 70…

Public records office releases names of the entities bidding on discrimination study

7/12/2017 update:  Dear Mr. Harbaugh: Below please find the names of the vendors who responded to procurement number 900100-00012-RFP, responsive to your request made on 07/12/2017. • Berkeley Research Group, LLC • Gallagher Benefit Services Inc. • Robert K. Toutkoushian, Ph.D. • Sibson Consulting The office considers this be fully responsive to your request, and will now close this…