9/17/2009: Times are tough for UO faculty, what with salaries stuck at 80% of those at Missouri. Lots of us are looking around for something on the side, to make ends meet. Apparently former Pres Frohnmayer is now in the same boat. And his golden parachute contract – which pays…
UO Matters
9/15/2009: Oregon law requires the OUS Board to keep minutes of their meetings and make them publicly available. They haven’t done this since December 2005. Check their website if you think we are making this up. Back in mid July (2009) we tried to get a copy of the minutes…
9/14/2009: What is it about UO administrators. Do they take a blood oath to defend each others’ paychecks til the bitter end? We’ve written before about the OUS audit which found current Provost Bean had cut former Provost Moseley’s retirement contract job duties without reducing his FTE, and was letting…
9/11/2009: The Bend Bulletin editorial board writes: Although it’s difficult to be gleeful in light of the big picture, supporters of the Oregon State University-Cascades Campus must be at least hopeful today. Alone among public higher education institutions in Oregon, it may well see its finances improve in the coming…
9/10/2009: The Institutional Research web site at http:/ir.uoregon.edu is a clean, well lit and informative place. One curious UO Matters reader has been digging around there and reports on recent trends in administrative growth. Note that the most recent numbers are 2007, and are head counts – not dollars. Most…
9/9/2009: From the Chronicle: The cost of goods, services, pay, and benefits in higher education rose 2.3 percent for the year ending June 30—a figure that is nearly a percentage point higher than the Consumer Price Index for the same period but less than half the 5-percent rate that colleges…
9/7/2009: The PSU AAU union has an active website, with information about the staff contract among other things. They report staff furlough days will be scheduled as follows: Monthly pay of $2,450 or below: 8 days Monthly pay $2,451 to $3,105: 12 days Monthly pay $3,106 to $5,733: 14 days Monthly pay $5,734…
9/6/2009: From the AP: … The tentative agreement calls for eight to 16 unpaid furlough days over 21 months pegged to salary levels and a one-year freeze of scheduled raises. … Before the agreement was reached, workers had begun preparing for a possible strike after Chancellor George Pernsteiner demanded far…
9/4/2009: Contrast President Lariviere’s statement below with what the RG wrote in May, about then President Frohnmayer’s refusal to say anything to condemn the threats by Duck fans against Professor Sohlberg. Change we can believe in? Update: Lariviere has suspended the player for the year, while letting him keep his…
9/4/2009: OUS Board Secretary Ryan Hagemann hasn’t made minutes of Board meetings publicly available since December 2005. He says he is too busy. OUS does send out press releases, however. Here is an excerpt from the latest, on budget allocations. Higher Ed Board committee recommends 2009-10 budget allocations for campuses…
9/2/2009: Regular readers of UO Matters know that we spend a lot of time and money trying to pry public records from the cold grasping claws of UO General Counsel Melinda Grier and her Associate Counsel Doug Park. They resist, we appeal to Oregon Attorney General John Kroger. Sometimes he…
9/1/2009: Rumor is that Lariviere will soon decide if UO is going to pull the plug on its Bend programs, which graduate about 15 students a year, and run at loss to the Eugene campus of $1 million or so per year. (Update: actually 50 students, or a loss of…
9/1/2009: The staff here at uomatters.com tries to keep focused on numbers. UO’s numbers are really fascinating, sometimes even actionable. Just ask former Provost Moseley. But every now and then something like this comes across the screen: The University athletic department told Duck cheerleading advisors Laraine Raish and Corine Lewis…
08/30/2009: Suzanne Pardington has an interesting article in the Oregonian today, about Kulongoski’s stalled efforts to reform Oregon’s higher ed system. Pardington writes: Five years ago, Gov. Ted Kulongoski recruited a new slate of business leaders to serve on the State Board of Higher Education and charged them with saving…
The Teach Naked movement is about not using powerpoint for lecturing – or at least not relying on it as a crutch. The Chronicle has an article on it here. Last year I started posting powerpoint slides online, but lecturing just using the blackboard. Way more fun and interactive. The…