See the official announcement below, to take effect July 1. Professor Banavar will become UO’s 31st most highly cited faculty member, according to the prestigious Google Scholar rankings. Not bad for a part-timer. The pre-rumor from the faculty club’s opening session next Wednesday is that Pres Schill will need to…
UO Matters
4/2/1019 update:
Some good news from Around the O, for once:
Members of the campus and community can learn more about the University of Oregon’s proposed redevelopment of the former Joe Romania car dealership on Franklin Boulevard at an open house at 4 p.m. April 5.
1/8/2019 update: UO cutting deal to save historic showroom, and make some money
A generally well-informed CoD professor notes that she was not the preferred choice of Dean Lindner, and provides this anonymous endorsement: She is calm, capable, wise, fair-minded and well respected by her peers, across departments. People trust her, and trust is an important issue after three years under a dean…
Sorry, but no. As an economist my professional ethics definitely do not include an obligation to help the NCAA’s monopsony and its athletic directors, coaches, and Faculty Athletic Representative Tim Gleason exploit our more athletic students. Shame on Gleason and the members of the IAAC for endorsing this message: Dear…
In totally unrelated news, reporter Caleb Diehl has an excellent story on the subsidies UO’s academic budget gives the Duck Athletic empire, in Oregon Business here: The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), a nonprofit that regulates college sports in the U.S., oversees a $13 billion college sports industry powered mostly by its…
Psychology professor Jennifer Freyd spent several years documenting that she was significantly underpaid relative to her full professor peers in the psychology department, and getting agreement from her department chair and external reviewers on the facts, but still not getting a significant raise. So in March 2017 she filed a…
Back in Sept 2017 the faculty union and the administration signed this MOU here, by which the administration would hold back 0.75% of a 2.0% across-the-board raise for TTF to address “unexplained equity differences potentially related to race, gender, or ethnicity” to be paid starting in Jan 2019. 0.75% works…
Which is good, because someone should pay college basketball players, and apparently Dana Altman refuses to give them a cut of his bloated salary and bonuses. Jeff Manning and Brad Schmidt have the story in the Oregonian here: Earlier this week, Avenatti accused Nike of paying “large sums” to Bol,…
Another 4/1/2019 update:
The influential Foundation for Individual Rights in Education also wrote to the NWCCU against their plan to remove academic freedom from their accreditation standards:
Full letter here.
4/1/2019 update:
Thanks to the AAUP-Oregon’s Michael Dreiling for alerting the UO Senate and Provost to the NWWCU’s proposed accreditation standards. His letter asking AAUP members to press the NWCCU on this is here:
We write to you with an urgent request to take action and protect academic freedom as a standard and criterion for accreditation by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU), the largest single accreditation body in the region. Inexplicably, the latest draft of accreditation standards from the NWCCU removes all references to academic freedom and to institutional bodies and practices of shared governance such as university senates, faculty vote and voice, and tenure (see the proposal and compare to current standards here). The strong emphasis on centralized authority and the implicit erasure of faculty participation in decision-taking is new and it is a threat to the integrity of higher education at hundreds of colleges and universities in the region. …
As you can see below, many issues with these proposed revisions remain unresolved, but NWCCU Pres Sonny Ramaswamy has promised to keep freedom, and give more time for input on other issues:
From: Sonny Ramaswamy <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2019 10:07 PM
Subject: Revision of NWCCU’s Standards
ALOs.
Over the last couple of weeks we have received emails regarding NWCCU’s draft, revised Standards from AAUP affiliates and faculty senate chairs, and provosts of a few institutions. (Those individuals are copied on this email.)
Additionally, we have received input during conversations with some individuals.
Based on the recent input received, we’ve made a decision to incorporate appropriate language in our draft Standards for Academic Freedom and Governance, along with revisions on other matters suggested by others.
We’ve extended the deadline for submission of additional comments for revisions through April 15, 2019.
The draft will be revised and sent out for further comments in May. The draft will be revised based on this round of comments.
After the Commission has provided additional comments on the near final draft, it’ll be revised as needed. Then it’ll be sent out for a vote by NWCCU’s family of institutions to approve the proposed Standards in late Summer 2019.
As I have noted previously, this is an iterative process and we appreciate the input, which continues strengthen the Standards.
Our hope is that, once approved, the new Standards will be deployed starting in January 2020.
If not already done, please connect with your relevant faculty organizations on your campuses, such as faculty senate chairs, and exhort them and other faculty to provide input regarding the draft Standards.
They may submit their comments on the current version of revised Standards available at (http://www.nwccu.org/accreditation/standards-review/) either via this link (https://www.tfaforms.com/4719938) or via email ([email protected]).
Thanks for your help.
Sonny Ramaswamy, President
Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities
8060 165th Avenue NE, Ste 100 | Redmond, WA 98052
Email: [email protected]
Tel: 425-558-4224
URL: http://www.nwccu.org
Twitter: @NWCCUSonny
The letter to the NWCCU from the UO Senate President (me) is here. The letter from UO Provost Jayanth Banavar is here. My response to the email above is:
Dear Pres Ramaswamy –
I’m glad to hear this. Thank you for responding to the concerns regarding academic freedom.
For those from other institutions considering commenting on the NWCCU’s proposed changes to our accreditation requirements, I’ve attached the letters to the NWCCU from the UO Senate and the UO Provost.
As you can see these address issues beyond academic freedom, and include such matters as shared governance, research, governing board evaluations, institutional control over transfer credits, student success metrics and their use.
I look forward to seeing how the next draft addresses these concerns.
For those interested, I’ll continue to update the posts at https://uomatters.com/tag/accreditation with new information.
Yours,
Bill Harbaugh
University of Oregon
Senate Pres & Econ Prof
3/26/2019: UO’s accreditor considers weakening academic freedom and governance standards
Sorry, long post.
Members of the Oregon State University community, I am writing to let you know that it is my intention to step down as president of Oregon State University on June 30, 2020, when my current five-year contract will be completed, and after almost 17 years since I had the great…
The Twitter has a hashtag for this that’s pretty woke: https://twitter.com/hashtag/GTFF3544?src=hash In the EMU Crater Lake room 12-? today. About 75 GE’s and the 7 member administrative bargaining team. The wifi is slow, and glancing around at the GE’s screens it’s easy to see why – they’re checking email, writing,…
In Sports Business Daily, here: The Pac-12 is seeking $750M from investors, considerably more than the $500M it originally discussed four months ago, according to multiple sources. The conference will distribute $700M of that investment to its 12 schools. The other $50M will go into a new entity to manage…
Just kidding, of course they won’t meet about that. This is about our greedy basketball coaches. Two days after President Schill announced that UO is facing an $11M budget crisis which will likely lead to layoffs for instructors and OAs, our Board’s executive committee will be phoning it in on…
Emailed to the campus today: Dear colleagues, On March 5, I wrote to let you know that the University of Oregon’s budget situation is becoming more challenging and it is imperative we move forward with efforts to reduce the UO’s annual operating costs. Since then, I have met with a…
$3.5M in salary plus bonuses for 2021-2. Talk about bad timing. UO’s lobbyists are at work in Salem, trying to get UO a bigger share of the state budget. If they fail, UO will have to cut staff, limit hiring, and/or raise in-state tuition. The legislature is already asking why…