Posts published by “UO Matters”

Wow is this a dumb move. Here’s hoping their Senate takes action to defend his academic freedom. From InsideHigherEd: Peter Boghossian A hoax revealing that academic journals had accepted fake papers on topics from canine “rape culture” in dog parks to “fat bodybuilding” to an adaption of Mein Kampf met with applause and…

The Chicago Tribune has the story here: A bitter lawsuit between Chicago State University and two professors who published a blog rebuking school leadership is coming to an end after more than four years. Chicago State has agreed to pay $650,000 in damages and attorneys fees to professors Robert Bionaz and Phillip…

An excellent, nuanced story on the statewide program that pays community college tuition for state residents, including undocumented residents, here.

UO physicist Raghu Parthasarathy’s Eighteenth Elephant blog has a fascinating post about changes in what students are majoring in, here. It was motivated by this report about the decline in history majors, which included this remarkable figure: Obviously there have been huge shifts in what sorts of knowledge undergraduates demand. Raghu takes…

But what did Reed promise UO would do? It’s now almost 4 weeks six weeks since I asked for this agreement. Eventually they’ll run out of ways to hide it:

09/28/2018

Dear Mr. Harbaugh:

The University of Oregon, Office of Public Records has received your public records request for “The document I am looking for is called a “Facilitated Resolution Agreement” and it was signed by General Counsel Kevin Reed on or about August 21.” on 09/21/2018, attached.

The University is the custodian of at least some of the records you have requested. …

You don’t say.

9/21/2018 update: GC Kevin Reed cuts deal with Betsy DeVos & wants $378.49 to show the terms

Apparently Dean Lindner thinks he can, and Provost Banavar is backing him up. I’m wondering how we can recruit new faculty if they know that their job can be moved from, say, Eugene to Portland without their consent. This does not seem well thought out. Fortunately for the sake of…

September 19, 2018 Dear University of Oregon faculty members, I am pleased to share with you some important information regarding the fiscal year 2019 salary increases for both represented and non-represented tenure-track faculty (TTF) and career non-tenure-track faculty (NTTF) at the University of Oregon. The fiscal year salary increases will…

I’m no slave to metrics, but who are you going to believe? Professor Christine Blasey, who’s most cited work is the very useful sounding Sage book on “Statistical Power Analysis in Research“, with 1343 citations since 2015: With increased emphasis on helping readers understand the context in which power calculations are done,…

Thanks to a helpful reader for the link. A snippet: These last few years have been tough for higher education. Enrollment is down year after year, state funding increases have stalled even as costs skyrocket, and most people don’t have much confidence overall in American colleges and universities. The standard explanation within academia for these…

A helpful reader notes this opinion piece from PNAS, asking if Knight Campus is a potential example of it: Opinion: Expansion fever and soft money plague the biomedical research enterprise, Henry R. Bourne Academic biomedical science has had both a long boom in its funding and a subsequent scary bust. From…

Just kidding, they don’t care about that kind of diversity. The Office of Equity and Inclusion has spent millions encouraging UO to hire faculty who look different but think the same. Apparently they’ve been very effective. Back in 2006 I matched the list of UO tenure track faculty with the…

Dear CAS faculty and Staff, As you’re aware if you’ve walked down 13th Street between Chapman and Johnson, Tykeson Hall, the new home for CAS and a building that will offer integrated academic and career advising to UO students, is quickly rising.  We expect Tykeson to open for classes in Winter…