Breaking news from “Around the O”: UO Foundation leaders held a press conference in front of the gas fireplace in their new $25M offices, to announce that a generous $1M alumni donation would fund an endowment to buy every PLC faculty member one pair of long-johns each winter, “in perpetuity, or until the next…
Posts published in “Uncategorized”
11/17/2014: Today, 4PM in the Alumni Center. Deputy Chief Strategic Communicator Tobin Klinger has the report here.
11/14/2014 update: Strategic Communicator Tim Clevenger fiddles with the brand, as grad students burn away
Job #1 was keeping us in the AAU by boosting research and grad student enrollment. But UO’s IR office reports that grad student enrollment has dropped yet again: down 100 just this year:
That would be the University of Wisconsin, here.
11/14/2014: Senate to vote on admin efforts to “dilute and degrade” academic standards Here’s hoping Scott Coltrane will reign in Gottfredson’s $300 an hour lawyers and settle with our grad students. If not, the Senate will be taking up legislation next Wednesday: One well spoken UO faculty member sent out…
Dave Hubin writes a glowing report on Dave Hubin’s Public Records Office, for UO’s official “Around the 0” blog: “The UO is open with its information, much of which is available in many places, and our hope is to consolidate some of the existing information and make it more accessible for public records requesters,”…
Many gifts for academic or cultural buildings include contracts with “naming rights” in return for the donation. These are usually carefully negotiated – universities will offer bigger letters for more money and so on. Presumably the contracts for the Matthew Knight Arena, for example, include many such details. Non-profits occasionally get sued…
Increased readership has led to some server overload, particularly in the AM. I am working to resolve these issues, sorry for the delays.
“Around the 0” has the good news, here. Money for low-SES student scholarships, research, and $5M in spare change for UO’s branding team. Enrollments and GPA dipped this year – small but terrifying. Maybe this will help move the UO brand away from big-time sports insanity, towards something more academic,…
11/12/2014 update: No, of course I’m not talking about UO. The UO administration wouldn’t even share the Eugene Police investigation of the basketball rape allegations with it’s own UO Police. I’m talking about Southern Oregon University in Ashland. New York Magazine has the very powerful story by Katie Van Syckle, here:…
Update: UO’s undergrad student government supports the grad students. In the Emerald:
Given this history, we were deeply disappointed to see that university administration is not interested in similarly striving to meet the needs of our GTFs. The paltry offers handed down to our GTFs have been thoroughly insufficient. Although it has been suggested that there are simply not enough funds, in the wake of former President Gottfredson’s million-dollar severance package, those words ring hollow. To state that this university does not have the funds to provide paid medical and parental leave to its GTFs is utterly unacceptable and suggests that there is a dire need to reassess our university’s priorities.
And what are those UO’s priorities? Dave Hubin’s Public Records Office is doing its best to stall release of the new data until after the mediation sessions with the GTFF later this week, but judging from last year’s numbers, lining the pockets of the Johnson Hall administration seems to be job #1:
11/11/2014:
The UO administration’s rather pandering response is below the break. I’m guessing the upcoming mediation session the email mentions is the reason the Public Records Office is hiding the contracts showing current pay for top Johnson Hall administrators.
Under President Lariviere this sort of request would have taken a few days. It’s been 2 weeks so far, with no response: They actually took the time to redact the names of the administrators from the posting on the PR log. How sensitive of them. The last one on the list…
Diane Dietz has the story in the RG, here: This year, OSU raised the bar slightly, attracting freshmen with an average high school grade point average of 3.59, up from 3.57 the previous year. UO’s freshman class slid a bit to 3.58, down from 3.6 [corrected] last year. And as…
Alexandra Wallachy has a report in the ODE, here.
Here’s a simple way for Rob Mullens to save $1.7M: Fire Altman, and hire Bergerson. The ODE has the score on the UO v. WOU game here. Dana Altman’s contract pays him $1.8M, plus bonuses if he wins. That kind of money could even make an Eagle Scout cut a few corners:…
I’m amazed at her patience, given the intemperance of the UO administration’s response to her efforts to get the sexual violence survey done. She’s quoting Karl Popper, and explaining how science works: Third — and this is by far the more important consideration — true scientists have an incentive to…