Presumably our colleagues in the Johnson Hall administration will still get their free junkets, courtesy of UO’s “general fund”. But it sounds like the UO undergrads whose tuition pays for those Pasadena trips are getting a little restless. Twitter feed here:
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We’ve now got two PR machines fighting to get out different messages about UO. On the one hand there’s the “Go Ducks” brand, encouraging students to come to a party school with football-fueled binge drinking. Add to that the basketball rape allegations and the mismanaged administrative cover-up, and we’re really not delivering the…
12/18/2014: And people at UO flip out over a few picketing grad students? Last I heard the status of the $15M endowment payment to the UO Foundation was still up in the air. I can’t imagine $60 oil is going to increase the chances it will happen. 6/18/2014 update: Trouble in…
This kind of money would buy a lot of FMRI scans and hormone assays.
They’ve been hoping that opinions issued by Lane County DA Alex Gardner and Associate DA Patty Perlow would allow them to redact UO documents en masse, instead of having to explain what they were hiding. But the Oregon Court of Appeals has just rejected that Gardner and Perlow interpretation of…
Rumor down at the faculty club snookers table is that Duck athletic director Rob Mullens is entertaining an offer from high roller Gordon Gee, currently president at West Virginia University. It seems unlikely Mullens would seriously consider a step down like that, even if he is an alumnus. But maybe he can…
12/17/2014 update: The Johnson Hall central administration wants to argue we need to pay a lot to get a President, so that they can use that salary when justifying their own raises. Search firms have their own incentives. They are getting some pushback from the RG’s Editorial Board. Read it all…
It’s time to start collecting nominations. I’ll get things started, please add yours in the comments. (Very helpful if you include the link.) Voting for the worst of the worst and the best of the best will start eventually. Google reports that UO Matters had 868K pageviews for the year: The…
The Daily Emerald has the latest from Dahlia Bazzaz, here: As far as crime goes on campus — how much, where it occurs, how often — it’s safe to assume that any time there’s an event – a game at Autzen Stadium or a concert at Matthew Knight Arena, among…
12/14/2014: Video of the Senate meeting is now available:
12/10/2014 PM update:
Alexandra Wallachly from the Emerald has posted a report on the meeting, here.
On the Board meeting Thursday: I think it’s important to show up at the Board meeting Thursday at 8AM in the Alumni Center. While the board has backed off on the latest power grab, there’s plenty of potential for surprises, those making public comments deserve some supporters, and it’s important that the Board sees that the faculty take what’s been happening very seriously. And I hear someone will be passing out “Save our Senate” buttons.
On the Senate meeting today: I got there at the very end. I’d love it if someone would send me some notes or post them. People tell me it was standing room only, and filled with dismay and outrage over what’s going on with our administration.
The Senate passed an amended version of the motion below, opposing the Triplett/Park power grab. The fact that they did this even after Coltrane announced the Board would withdraw the motion at his suggestion shows how deep the mistrust of Johnson Hall has become. Coltrane and Bronet need to take charge of that snake-pit, decisively and soon.
The Senate then apparently wrote and approved a second motion, directing the Academic Integrity Task Force to investigate the administration’s “alleged plans to establish groundwork for disciplinary procedures” against Philosophy Dept Chair Bonnie Mann and other faculty who refused to issue “fraudulent” grades. Apparently there is also an accusation that a CAS administrator not only gave out grades for courses, but then raised them after students complained. I don’t know if the TAIF will also investigate that.
I’ll post the video when available, and I expect the motions (passed unanimously?) will be on the Senate website soon, here. Meanwhile check Try Bree Nicolello’s twitter reports on the meeting: https://twitter.com/breenicolello.
12/10/2014 update: (see below for Coltrane response)
Sorry, I’m at the Board committee meetings, no live-blog.
This is part of Interim President Coltrane’s new effort to reduce athletic subsidies and shift money towards academic excellence. Breaking news here: The biggest cost-cutting move is just limiting the number of people who go, which saves travel and hotel costs. In 2009, the Wolf Pack did not take its…
Highlight of the day’s meetings: Page down for the live-blog of the Presidential Factors Committee meeting. They are setting up a reasonably open evaluation process for UO presidents starting next month, and setting pay for a new President.
Ginevra Ralph is chair, she runs a tight meeting. She was very cognizant of the need for transparency and the problems with paying a president more than our comparators when staff, OA, and faculty salaries are below comparators.
VPFA Jamie Moffitt really didn’t want to talk about that data. I assume she’s just being modest, since she’s making out pretty well. So here it is, from UO’s own IR website and other easily obtained public sources:
And a snapshot from last year, showing salaries for faculty and some specific central admins at UO versus comparator data:
The reports from the Wednesday’s committee meetings are here, and from Thursday’s meeting are here.
12/12/2014: The 8AM full board meeting is not off to a good start, given the quotes from Board Chair Chuck Lillis in today’s RG story about UO’s new Sports Product program. They make the University of Oregon Board of Trustees look ridiculous. And a board in their position cannot afford to look any more ridiculous:
… Lillis, however, wasn’t prepared to let the subject of efficiency drop. His friend, retired UO business professor Roger Best, worked at General Electric when Lillis was an executive there, he said.
“He was a world class business school professor,” Lillis said. “In the ’80s he routinely turned down $10,000-a-day as a consultant. He was the executive of a big British firm when he lived in Eugene and he commuted on the Concorde. He has started two businesses and sold them both — and is a very large donor to the university,” Lillis said.
That certainly is an interesting definition of a world class business school professor.
If the university is not going to trust someone like that, Lillis said, who will it trust. “We have this, like, superstar. …
… Barbara Altmann, vice provost for academic affairs, said the various committees gauge the soundness and coherence of proposed programs and ensure that the proposers have a stable line up of courses to guarantee quality for students who pay a lot, especially for business graduate degrees.
8:00 am (other times approx.) RECONVENE PUBLIC MEETING, FORD ALUMNI CENTER, GIUSTINA BALLROOM
Usual live-blog disclaimer: This is my opinion of what people said, meant, or should have said, nothing is a quote unless in quotes.
8. Overview of Research Funding
Vice President for Research and Innovation Brad Shelton will give an overview of the University
of Oregon’s funded research programs.
I missed most of it seems pretty similar to last year’s. Shelton is interim VPR, appointed after Espy left for a university that she thought had a better football team. Whoops.
Shelton doesn’t have the research background that would be normal for this job (short vita, no NSF grants) and he’s rather amazingly overpaid. He gives a reasonably informative talk though, and given his control over our limited research funding, no one on the faculty can afford to look cross-wise at him, unless you’ve got a pipeline to that sports product money.
Shelton ends his talk with a note of approval for the changes that Espy made in UO’s research office, and a word of thanks to Mussolini for getting those trains to run on time.
12/11/2014 update: One of the few funny parts of Thursday’s Board meeting was seeing UO public relations flack and $115K Duck advocate Tobin Klinger sitting in the press section, just one table over from Register Guard reporter Diane Dietz. Back in July Klinger sent this rant about Dietz to the RG editors, who promptly, and I’m…
Short version: It was good.
The board listened to the faculty and the students today. More than that, it felt like they heard us. They even responded. They took the administration’s policy-grab motion off the table, until the Senate has had a chance to fix it and restore some semblance of shared governance. Yesterday’s committee meetings were also very positive. It felt like we’ve got the board that we’d hoped we would get, when we supported the legislation to get UO out of OUS.
Here’s hoping Scott Coltrane and Frances Bronet heard us too, because UO is not going to make progress until someone performs a few Johnson Hall defenestrations.
The Board meeting resumes Friday at 8AM with the first item being a presentation from Interim VP for Research Brad Shelton. I expect to live-blog it too.
12/11/2014 Live-blog. Usual disclaimer: my opinion of what people said, meant, or should have said, unless in quotes:
Diane Dietz has the story in the RG, here: (whoops, link fixed) University of Oregon interim President Scott Coltrane on Wednesday outlined his plan to keep top UO faculty from getting picked off by wealthier universities — in the wake of two high-profile departures to the University of Chicago earlier…