Disclaimer: My summary of what people said or should have said. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes. The Monday committee meetings are here. The wrap up (Note: I skipped out before the votes on some of these, but I assume the board rubber-stamped whatever Lillis and Wilhelms put in…
UO Matters
Jock Mills has been OSU’s lobbyist for ~20 years. I’ve never met him, but he sends his legislative updates to anyone with an email address – even a @uoregon.edu one – and they are far more informative than anything I’ve ever got from UO’s lobbyists. He is retiring from lobbying…
What would happen if a UO Dean or program Director was to publicly protest a UO policy? It turns out that Nike employees may have more job security than UO’s when it comes to free speech. From Willamette Week, here: … While the company didn’t interrupt the protest, its loyalists…
Disclaimer: My summary of what people said or should have said. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes. This is a bit disorganized but I made it through the entire set of Monday committee meetings, and will be here for the full board meeting at 9:30 AM Tuesday.
The gist of the agenda, with details, links, and live-blogging below.
- Re-elect Charles M. Lillis as Chair to a 3rd term, since no one else will take on the job of being Phil Knight’s amanuensis. Avoid mention of his ERISA lawsuit settlements and the ~$175M he and the other WaMu board members had to pay out after they led it to the largest financial bankruptcy in US history. Video here.
- Offer President Schill a retention package with a $100K bonus and a fat retirement deal – teach two courses a year for $450K – in the vain hope he won’t use it as proof of how highly his current board values him while shopping around for his next job.
- Avoid any substantive discussion of what work our trustees might do to carry through with the promises Lillis, Knight, and the other backers of SB270 and UO independence made about stabilizing UO’s funding. They don’t like to work or think, that’s why they’re using tuition money to pay people like Angela Wilhelms to do it for them.
- Thank VPFA Jamie Moffitt for her hard work ensuring that ASUO is on board with the next round of tuition increases, and that they will result in only minor student demonstrations and minimal public embarrassment to the Trustees.
- Issue $120M in debt to finish constructing the Athlete Village for Phil Knight’s Oregon21 T&F championships. Bonds to be repaid with higher room and board charges for UO students.
The board’s meetings are open to the public – even faculty and students if they tug the forelock. All sessions are in the Ford Alumni Center Ballroom and are webcast here. Note that the committees meet on Monday, but I’ve put the Full Board agenda for its Tuesday meeting at the top:
Finance and Facilities Committee, December 9, 2019 | 1:15 p.m.
How surprising. As reported in InsideHigherEd here: Student evaluations of teaching, or SETs, can provide a better understanding of what is working and what isn’t in classrooms. But gaining a “meaningful” understanding necessitates separating the “myths and realities” surrounding these evaluations, says a new report on the topic. That, in turn,…
That would be the transparent OSU board, which has taken to this simple 1990’s technology with enthusiasm. In contrast UO’s Board Secretary Angela Wilhelms still can not, or will not, email out meeting notices or agendas or post them in usable form. (The UO Matters transparent version of our board’s…
Thanks to a reader for the link. Lananna is the former UO coach who, after UO lost the public bidding for the 2019 Championships to Doha, cut a deal with corrupt IAAF President Lamine Diack for 2021. Links to some previous stories on this are here. Ken Goe has the…
12/4/2019 update: Daily Emerald reporter Ardeshir Tabrizian has the official UO response to the settlement, here: “For the reasons outlined in the University’s previously filed Answers and the settlement agreements, the University of Oregon and former Dean Christoph Lindner disagree with the plaintiffs’ allegations,” UO spokesperson Kay Jarvis said in a…
Since I teach Econ honors students how to write these, I keep a file of good and bad examples. This is a great one. From the NYT, quoting Portland economist Robert McCullough from his report on the 2018 Camp Fire: “PG&E’s behavior was unforgivable and totally unnecessary,” said Robert McCullough,…
Dear Colleagues, The Faculty Club is open during the usual hours this week (Wednesday and Thursday from 5:00 to 8:00). Wednesday, Provost Patrick Phillips will be on hand to chat informally with faculty and to deliver the Six-o-Clock Toast. If you’ve known him for years, it’ll be a fine time…
That would be a replacement for Provost Jim Bean of Northeastern. Bean was formerly UO B-school dean, then interim provost under Lariviere. He left UO after Rob Kyr and the UO Senate made it clear we would not accept him as UO President. The students abandoned him after a timely…
When I go to Great Britain to give a talk and the Queen’s immigration officers find out I’m a professor, they give me a skeptical look, then stamp my passport with a prohibition against recourse to public funds: But when Niels De Vos wanted a US visa to work in…
Thanks to a loyal reader for the link: Members of the union—Academic Researchers United (ARU)—ratified the 3-year deal in a 2450-to-53 vote on 8 November. The contract guarantees: Salary increases of up to 24% over the duration of the contract Eligibility to participate in the same benefits and retirement programs as other…
I know I’ve posted some unkind things about the UO BoT, and they can expect more to come, e.g. about the IAAF 2021 championships. But things could be worse. We could have a board that decided to donate $2.5M in university money to a neo-confederate group, so they could build…
The RG’s Adam Duvernay has the interesting story here. If you’re using these data for a consulting report on the economic impact of Duck football, or to forecast the impact of the IAAF 2021 championships, don’t make the mistake of assuming that this money will stay in Eugene. Rational utility-maximizing…