A new PNAS paper concludes: … Comparing passive lectures with active learning using a randomized experimental approach and identical course materials, we find that students in the active classroom learn more, but they feel like they learn less. We show that this negative correlation is caused in part by the…
UO Matters
Budget crisis? That’s just for the academic side. The heavily subsidized Duck athletic program is paying Nevada $650K. From the USAToday database here.
From reporter Michael Tobin in the Emerald, here: … In addition to being out of compliance with federal rules, the audit also found that some of the department’s firearms lack acquisition records. Of the 121 firearms UOPD acquired since 2012, 18 did not have records documenting their acquisition. Of the 18…
Follow Emerald Reporter Ryan Nguyen on twitter at https://twitter.com/ryanjjnguyen. It sounds like an interesting meeting – maybe a little too interesting for our bosses: Schill encourages those in the community, including labor unions, to be honest, transparent and respectful. He adds that we don’t need to be disrespectful when you…
About $23K each. Most of that will come from regular UO undergraduate students’ tuition payments, to discount the tuition of mostly out-of-state law school students: According to the terms of this 2014 MOU the law school was to get a temporary bailout from UO’s general fund, peaking at $3M, then…
It seems that outsourcing is not exactly the cost saver that he’d promised: But that doesn’t seem to have hurt his salary: His budget increase would fund a 10% raise for the GTFF.
Here: In calling for the Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission to reconsider its prioritization of science, technology, engineering, and math subjects in how it distributes state funding to state universities (“Oregon shortchanges the liberal arts. What the HECC?”), The Register-Guard editorial board misses several critical points about the existing funding…
The UO boosters who broke up OUS with SB270 have not delivered on their promises. They know the legislature isn’t going to give them more taxpayer money without more control. Our SEIU staff union is now in the midst of negotiating a new contract with Oregon’s public universities, and they’ve…
UO Board Secretary Angela Wilhelms has buried the agendas in pdf’s, to make it hard to see what our board is up to. I’ve reformatted them as html below. Among the items that our board will not be discussing in public: UO’s current budget crisis and administrative bloat UO’s future…
The Board of Trustees is meeting this week, and Chairman Chuck Lillis is obsessed with the idea that UO’s faculty are overpaid deadwood. So I’ve prepared this helpful Spreadsheet of Excellence. As a bonus I added another 20 excellent faculty at the bottom to get it to 120, to offset…
https://www.registerguard.com/opinion/20190901/oregon-shortchanges-liberal-arts-what-hecc
Auburn is a university in Alabama – I looked it up – and last I checked UO is in Oregon. The game is in Texas. That’s a lot of travel. Does anyone know how to estimate the carbon impact of an event like this? I googled a bit but didn’t…
Hmm, not posted on the UO calendar. Immediate past senate president and union leadership not invited. And our administrative leaders wonder why they still need to work on trust? Fortunately the SOJC Dean has leaked a little info: I’m sure Kyle Henley was there, and one of his PR flacks…
8/29/2019 update: As explained below the most recent faculty union salary deal included Jan 1 2019 raises of 2% ATB for NTTF and 1.25% ATB for TTF, with the other 0.75% for TTF held back until UO’s slow and overpaid consultants could figure out how much gender inequity there was in the TTF ranks. They didn’t find much, so TTF now get the leftovers as ATB raises of about 0.68%. (The 12 faculty identified as underpaid on the basis of gender have apparently all been notified of their separately calculated catch-up raises, so if you have not heard you are probably not getting one of those.) The retroactive portion of the leftover raise, 5.5 months plus interest at a hopping 1.17%, is being paid out tomorrow.
Bottom line: TTF should see a one-time payment tomorrow of about 0.68%*5.5 months or 3.8% of your normal monthly pay, followed in fall by a permanent 0.68% increase. If you log onto Duckweb you should be able to see your earnings report now. One reader reports that the withholding is unusually high, for reasons not even an economist can understand. So the average TTF will get about $150 net this month. Or, in real purchasing power:
The external equity raises for TTF will be calculated soon, and will be paid starting Jan 1 2020. I’m no faculty union treasurer, but this time there will be no consultants and no delays.
8/22/2019: Provost Phillips emails TTF about long delayed gender equity raises
Thanks to an anonymous correspondent for compiling these from official data sources: INFLATION Western States Consumer Price Index: 3.1% HIGHER ED FUNDING State Funding (PUSF): +16.3% UO Student Tuition: +7.1% GTFF Graduate Employees Average Salary: $16,000 (based on 9-month .49FTE) Mgt Proposed Cost of Living Adjustment: 1.85% (~$296/yr) Union ask:…