Tag Archives: Lorraine Davis

Rob Mullens gets $50K for Alamo Bowl, players get $125 gift certificate

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Seems like as good a time as any to repost this, from 2016. And yes, Lorraine Davis is still on the payroll.

And how much did UO pay Lorraine Davis for her Alamo Bowl duties? Last year’s bowl overload was pretty lucrative:

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The NCAA’s unwritten rule is that “no black man shall make money off college football”. MLK biographer Taylor Branch’s expose is in the Atlantic, here:

The Washington Post reports on a new study on how racism drives opposition to paying college football players, here:

Racial prejudice is driving opposition to paying college athletes. Here’s the evidence.

… To find out whether racial prejudice influences white opinion on paying college athletes, we conducted a survey of opinions on “pay for play” policies using the 2014 CCES.

In a statistical analysis that controlled for a host of other influences, we found this: Negative racial views about blacks were the single most important predictor of white opposition to paying college athletes.

The more negatively a white respondent felt about blacks, the more they opposed paying college athletes.

UO Athletic Director Rob Mullens’s contract is here:

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While the Duck players get this:

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UO relaxes hiring freeze – for learning specialists willing to help Duck players with “a lack of academic preparation”

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This is the first time I’ve seen Lorraine put it so plainly – or lay out what a tough and poorly paid job this is:

Quoting from the full ad here:

The Learning Specialist must be willing to work a flexible year-round schedule, including evenings and weekends.

Master’s degree or equivalent combination of education, experience, and skills.

Experience working with students experiencing academic challenges for any reason,
including but not limited to, a lack of academic preparation, …

Salary: $38,000 – $40,500 per year

Meanwhile, for the coaches:

And for Lorraine Davis:

Free Jock Box parking for Lorraine Davis and other Duck Nomenklatura

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Back in in the day the land now occupied by the Jaqua Center for Student Athletes – or as the NYT calls it the Jock Box – was a parking lot, mostly used by OA’s in Oregon Hall.

In 2010 or so UO gave the land to the Ducks, for free. The eastern part of the lot is still a parking lot, but it’s now reserved for Duck Athletic Department camp-followers. Some might ask why UO is still employing Lorraine Davis, much less giving her a free parking spot. Apparently Mike Schill has not.

FWIW, neither of the employees the Ducks list as “Sports Psychologists” can be found in the state’s registry of professional psychologists, here. One can be found in the list of licensed counselors list, here, as a “Marriage and Family Therapist”. The APA rules are strict:

APA recognizes sport psychology as a proficiency acquired after a doctoral degree in one of the primary areas of psychology and licensure as a psychologist.

So that’s two parking slots that should open up as soon as someone reports them to the notoriously strict Oregon Board of Psychologist Examiners, who have fined UO Counseling Director Shelly Kerr $5K for past violations.

Here’s the latest list of free Jock Box parkers, courtesy of Kevin Reed’s public records office. If you want to know their salaries, check https://ir.uoregon.edu/sites/ir1.uoregon.edu/files/Unclassified%20110119.pdf

“Art of the Athlete” II – next spring in Aix-en-Provence!

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The “Art of the Athlete” course was one of the more hilarious scams set up by the Duck Athletic department, presumably with the help of their academic liaison Lorraine Davis, although it’s often hard to get the administration to reveal exactly what it is that Ms Davis does:

The Art of the Athlete course was only open to athletes, taught in the Jock Box, and until the Senate’s IAC found out, every athlete got an A+, which certainly helped pump up the Duck’s academic excellence. As soon as we reported it to the NCAA it was changed to pass/no-pass, and supposedly opened up to unathletic students.

UO’s academic side currently spends about $2M a year subsidizing the athlete-only Jock Box operation, paid out of UO’s general fund: i.e. state support and tuition. This is roughly $4K per athlete. In contrast expenditures on regular students are about $400 per student. You’d think that the Ducks would be able to pay for the tutoring for their athletes themselves, with some of the Duck Athletic Fund donations they collect – but any money left over after paying tuition goes to the athletic department’s own expenses.

So has the athletic department made any effort to get the Duck boosters to cover some of this subsidy? Quite the opposite. A few years ago Robin Jaqua gave $5M to set up an endowment to help with this, but AD Rob Mullens got his hands on it before the Provost did, and he uses it to pay for the utility bill – the only part of the Jaqua Center operating costs that the athletic department is responsible for.

And now it’s getting crazier: instead of giving to help the academic side offset the $2M athletic tutoring subsidy, UO’s development office is letting a Duck donor give money for a second gut “Art of the Athlete” course:

The Art of the Athlete in Aix-en-Provence:

Duck AD Rob Mullens gives faculty hints on how to get a retention raise

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If you’re a UO professor, the only path to a significant pay increase is to get an outside offer in writing and then use it to convince your dean to give you a 10% raise to stay at UO. For most of us, this requires that we lie to colleagues at other schools about how mobile we are. You have to say things like: “My department is dysfunctional. I love your work and would like to co-author with you. My colleagues aren’t bad, for deadwood. My SO just loves Missouri weather.UO’s central administration is a disaster. My kids really want to move to a new school”, etc.

But if you’re a Duck, the retention game is a little easier. Austin Meek reports on what AD Rob Mullens had to do to get a  ~100% raise, in the RG here:

Mullens said he began contract discussions with university president Michael Schill last summer, with the two agreeing on terms before the 2016 football season. Oregon’s subsequent 4-8 finish and the decision to change coaches didn’t play into the contract negotiation, he said.

“I’d had, what, five presidents in six years? Or five in five years if you count interims?” Mullens said. “For us, this is where we want to be. We knew that. That was the biggest piece.

“Football really didn’t factor into it. If you would have asked me last summer in June or July if I saw a 4-8 season coming, I didn’t see that coming.”

When he signed his previous contract extension in 2015, Mullens was working for interim president Scott Coltrane. He said his goal in the latest negotiation was to sign a contract that would keep him in Eugene until his youngest son graduates from high school.

“We wanted some stability in an unstable business,” Mullens said. “That was important to us.”

So he traded some pay for job security? Just kidding, he got both. If this bargaining strategy has worked for any faculty, please let me know in the comments. Of course more money for Mullens means less money for others, and Meek’s article also reports on the departure or demotion of a variety of Duck staff:

Craig Pintens, whom Mullens sent to sell football tickets in Siberia:

[New Strategic Communicator Jimmy] Stanton assumed the role of department spokesman from Craig Pintens, who will focus on his roles overseeing marketing and ticketing operations.

“Those are his areas of expertise,” Mullens said. “He’s proven that. I felt we were doing him a disservice by spreading him too thin and asking him to take on these heavy lifts.

Tom Hart, who famously warned Duck players to avoid Egyptian motorcycle gang prostitutes, and never to call him on his office phone, is also out:

Hart served as the coach’s personal body guard, enforced the program’s security guidelines and monitored off-field issues. Oregon’s campus security force now provides an armed guard to patrol the field during practice.

“Willie said he’d rather use those resources in a different way to support our student athletes,” Mullens said.

I wonder who will monitor their facebook accounts now? And then there’s this:

Oregon also eliminated the position of academic coordinator for football held by Tim Bruegman. Bruegman, who’d been with the department since 2005, was in charge of “providing players with educational resources and support to help student-athletes meet eligibility standards” and “collaborat(ing) with instructors to ensure members of the football team succeed athletically and academically,” according to his Oregon bio.

Instead of using a liaison, Mullens said Taggart and his coaches will communicate directly with staff at the Jaqua Academic Center.

“He said, ‘I’ll work directly with the Jaqua staff. I’ll be hands-on,’” Mullens said.

Sure. Maybe Taggart will just teach all their classes too. Probably with a little help from Lorraine Davis, whose well-paid job as athletic fixer seems to be secure.

Provost Search Committee named

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Recent Provosts:

John Moseley
Linda Brady
Jim Bean (Interim)
Lorraine Davis (Interim)
Scott Coltrane
Frances Bronet (Interim)
Scott Coltrane (Interim)

Search Committee announcement:

Provost and Senior Vice President Search

The University of Oregon is embarking on a crucial leadership recruitment effort: the selection of a new Provost and Senior Vice President. As the chief academic officer of the institution, the new provost will lead the academic units, work with deans and department heads to shape our academic programs, and lead our efforts to retain and attract world-class faculty.

On August 19, 2016, President Schill named the following members of the Provost Search Committee:

  • Geraldine Richmond, search committee chair – Presidential Chair in Science and professor of chemistry
  • Yvette Alex–Assensoh – vice president for equity and inclusion
  • Bettina Cornwell – professor of marketing
  • Erica Daley – associate dean of finance and operations, School of Law
  • Andrew Dunn – undergraduate, ASUO external director of staff
  • Karen Guillemin – professor of biology
  • Dean Livelybrooks – senior instructor of physics
  • W. Andrew Marcus – dean, College of Arts and Sciences
  • Gabriela Martinez – associate professor of journalism and communications
  • Laura Lee McIntyre – professor of school psychology
  • Jamie Moffitt – vice president for finance and administration
  • Aaron Montoya – web communications specialist, College of Education
  • Paul Peppis – professor of English
  • Chris Sinclair – associate professor of mathematics
  • Eleanor Wakefield – graduate teaching fellow, English
  • Frances White – professor of anthropology
  • Keli Yerian – senior lecturer of linguistics

Lorraine Davis’s brief unpaid stint as Professor Emerita ends

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A month ago UO’s directory listed longtime UO administrator Lorraine Davis’s only current UO affiliation as Professor Emeritus [sic] – an unpaid honorific typically bestowed upon faculty who retire after long and distinguished careers as teachers and researchers:

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I was a little surprised to see this, since Davis’s recent work has been more focused on Duck sports than UO academics, and if not honorific has certainly been well paid:

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I’m sure these “Overload Alamo Bowl Duties” are essential to our academic mission – although I’ll be more sure after my obligatory tax deductible bowl game junket as Senate President – but has UO really sunk to the place where this crap gets you a Professor Emerita rank?

Not yet. Ms Davis’s position as Professor Emerita has now been removed from the UO directory, there is no mention of her on the Department of Educational Methodology, Policy, and Leadership’s website, and she’s now just listed on the UO website as a “Special Assistant” to our Athletic Director, President, and Provost:

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But I wonder who costs the academic budget more – Special Assistant Lorraine Davis, or “Faculty” Athletics Representative Tim Gleason?

Harbaugh brings in $174M in Nike money for university

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Sports Illustrated has the details on the ~$11M a year deal here.

Meanwhile the Ducks get only $600K a year from Nike, plus free shoes and clothes for UO administrators, of course. Frances Dyke renewed this contract in 2009, and it expires November 30, 2017. This deal is so bad.

Unfortunately the Nike contract renegotiation will likely be in the hands of the Duck’s feckless – but well paid – Associate AD for Finance Eric Roedl:

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Roedl talks tough to UO students when it’s time to squeeze them for more football ticket money. But, according to the legal briefs filed over his botched attempt to buy insurance from Lloyds of London for Duck football coach bonuses, it’s not clear Roedl knows how to read a contract, much less write one:

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OK, the truth is that Cousin Jim brought in the $174M for Michigan, not me.  But my muckraking here at UO did play a small part in setting up the AD’s $100M reserve fund for the $235M arena bonds – along with work by John Chalmers (Finance) and Dennis Howard (Marketing) and the Senate Budget Committee. And my well-researched complaint to the state auditors did force VPFA Jamie Moffitt to make a modest $455K a year increase in the AD’s overhead rate. Frohnmayer and Bellotti had set up a sweetheart deal for the jocks, the auditors decided it violated state rules after the DOJ made Jamie Moffitt and Rob Mullens give up the secret MOU they’d had been hiding from the Senate IAC.

Will Econ grad Dakota Prukop take a class at UO from Harbaugh?

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Ken Goe of the Oregonian asks the question, here. The Duck’s new QB is an Econ major at Montana State, and will come to UO as a grad student.

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As it happens, I have two degrees in economics from Montana State University, a BS and an MS. I transferred there after a year at Columbia University in NYC. I got a better education at MSU than at Columbia – it’s one of the reasons I’m an enthusiastic supporter of the academic mission of public universities like UO. The professors there were inspiring teachers for me.

And, by the time I graduated, I’d turned them into decent backcountry telemarkers too:

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The MSU economics program is pretty rigorous, so I’m very happy to hear that the Ducks have recruited Mr. Prukop. I’m guessing that AD Rob Mullens’s $200K academic fixer, Lorraine Davis, didn’t even need to bend the rules or lean on any faculty to get him admitted as a grad student. Maybe a few free tickets to the members of Roger Thompson’s special admits committee, which I assume the NCAA would not have any problems with. Probably better not to ask though.

I don’t know what department Mr. Prukop will be getting his MS from, but I’m hoping he can find time to talk with some of the UO economists about the NCAA cartel, a classic economic example of monopsonistic exploitation. If Tom Hart and Craig Pintens will let him talk, that is.

Ducks to let regular UO students go upstairs at Jock Box

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but just this Thursday at 1:00, for a meeting of the Senate’s Intercollegiate Athletics Committee:

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Word is that SSA Director Steve Stolp and his boss Lorraine Davis will address questions about the effectiveness of the Services for Student Athletes operation, which segregates Duck athletes from regular UO students while making the regular students foot the entire $2.4M bill for the athletes.

Only two of the twelve black male athletes UO admitted in 2008 had graduated by 2015. That’s a one-year anomaly, but from what I’ve seen of the data Stolp and Davis are going to have a hard time showing a positive effect, even using some of the NCAA’s specially cooked up measures. More here:

This is an open UO Senate committee meeting, so anyone can attend. Ignore the signs on the stairs saying “Stop: Authorized use only.” Just don’t ask too many questions. The last time UO student reporters started asking questions, AAD Eric Roedl had them kicked out, Dave Hubin made sure they couldn’t use student funds to pay for the public records, UO redacted the shit out of them anyway, and a few years later the administration subverted the IAC with a toothless, secret PAGIA.

Lorraine Davis and $2.4M Jock Box don’t budge Duck graduation rates

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The NCAA made its annual release of graduation data last week, here. Despite UO’s $80M Jaqua Center for Student Athletes and the $2.4M SSA program (which UO’s non-athletic students pay for and which former Interim Provost and Athletic Director Lorraine Davis oversees at ~$200K a year), the graduation rates for Duck revenue sport athletes are near the bottom of the PAC-12. And they’re not increasing.

Here are some extracts. These are sorted on the 6 year Federal Graduation Rate. This measure has lots of problems, but so do the alternatives. The NCAA would like you to use its home-brewed “Graduation Success Rate” on the argument that it deals better with transfers. Which it does. But it also counts players like Brandon Austin, who was able to transfer out of UO in good academic standing, as a success. (KATU story here.)

The most recent available NCAA data is for the 2008 cohort. So Stanford’s FGR of 92 means that 92% of the football players they admitted as freshman in 2008 had graduated from Stanford by 2014, six years later. Not bad. For UO this was 52%, the 9th worst in the PAC-12. For contrast, back in the day for the 1998 cohort UO graduated 66% within 6 years – the second best of the PAC-12:

PAC-12 Football, 2008 v. 1998 freshman cohorts:

2008:

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1998:

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I picked 1998 since it’s the earliest year in the NCAA database, but it turns out to have been a high point for UO’s FGR, though not for the GSR. Here’s the whole history. The simple takeaway is that UO is pretty bad:

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For basketball, the Ducks have always been towards the bottom, and still are:

PAC-12 Basketball, 2008 v. freshman 1998 cohorts:

2008:

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1998:

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GODUCKS.COM has buried the press release on the NCAA data here. No mystery as to why Craig Pintens and Tobin Klinger are hoping not to be asked about this story. Perhaps the Jaqua Center is having a positive impact somewhere? Any comments are welcome.

The are several reviews of Steve Stolp’s SSA on Provost Scott Coltrane’s website, here. It’s the usual white-washing. Here’s Eric Price from the PAC-12, doing what is ludicrously labeled as an “external review”. He doesn’t present any data on outcomes – none – but the building? Just stunning:

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Here’s the conclusion of the report from UO’s former Interim Provost Frances Brohnet. Who cares if they’re graduating, they think they’re doing great, and they’re not complaining to the press:

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Just what does Lorraine Davis do to earn her ~$200K? According to UO’s Public Records Office, that’s top secret:

The NCAA’s blurb on graduation rates is here:

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President commissions investigation of athletic recruiting scandal

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It’s the usual big-time college sports scandal: athletic department recruits transfer player with history of sexual assault without doing due diligence, player assaults another student, university keeps it secret, victim hires Attorney John Clune to sue the university.

A few twists: at Baylor University the second assault ended in a trial and conviction, and Baylor’s President Ken Starr (yes, of Monica Lewinsky investigation fame) has asked Baylor’s Faculty Athletics Representative to lead the investigation of what went wrong.

Now why didn’t President Gottfredson ask UO FAR Jim O’Fallon to lead the investigation of the gang rape allegations against Dana Altman’s basketball players? Maybe because it would have been hard to find anyone with less credibility than an administratively appointed Faculty Athletics Representative to do an independent investigation of anything having to do with athletics. (Although Baylor FAR Jeremy Counseller seems more credible than most.)

Actually, I should give President Starr credit. At least he’s commissioning an investigation. President Gottfredson explicitly told his “Independent Review Panel” that they were not to investigate how Dana Altman recruited Brandon Austin. And so UO still knows almost nothing about Altman’s decision to pursue Austin and how it was that UO admitted him. What was Lorraine Davis’s role? Did Roger Thompson’s Special Committee on Special Athletic Admits raise any questions?

Here’s the latest, from ESPN:

The woman who accused former Baylor defensive end Sam Ukwuachu of raping her in 2013 has hired a law firm experienced in Title IX litigation to represent her in potential civil litigation.

On Friday, the woman, a former Baylor soccer player, hired John Clune and Chris Ford of Hutchinson Black and Cook of Denver. The firm also represents Erica Kinsman, the woman who accused former Florida State Seminoles quarterback Jameis Winston of sexually assaulting her in 2012.

Ukwuachu, who transferred from Boise State to Baylor in 2013, was convicted of sexual assault on Aug. 21 by a jury at Texas District 54 Court in Waco. Judge Matt Johnson sentenced him to 180 days in county jail, 10 years of felony probation and 400 hours of community service.

“At the request of the victim and her parents, our firm has been retained to investigate a number of issues surrounding this case,” Clune said in a statement. “We are glad to see that President [Ken] Starr and Baylor have chosen to conduct their own investigation and look forward to learning the outcome of that process. Regardless of what facts these investigations may bare, there is a significant teachable moment here for all in higher education and we are hopeful that Baylor University embraces that great opportunity.”

After Ukuachu’s conviction, Starr, Baylor’s president, called for a “comprehensive internal inquiry into the circumstances associated with the case and the conduct of the offices involved.” The review will be led by Baylor law professor Jeremy Counseller, who is a faculty athletic representative to the Big 12 and NCAA and a former assistant criminal district attorney. …

RG columnist raises questions about UO graduate student

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Austin Meek, here:

Oregon’s gamble on Adams might pay off in time. Right now, all the Ducks have is a graduate transfer who hasn’t graduated and distraction simmering in the background.

If you’re wondering how we got here, this is the short version. Sometime in the past week, Eastern Washington posted a list of its 2015 graduates. Heather Adams got her degree in social work. Alexander Adams got his in recreation management. Vernon Adams, according to this list, didn’t graduate.

I’m guessing Lorraine Davis has her fingers in this, one way or another.

Special Athletics Admits Group at heart of athletics scandal

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For years Lorraine Davis, a former UO VP and current assistant to Provost Bronet for athletics, has been at the center of UO’s admissions of athletes that don’t meet regular academic standards. Now, just 2 days after the UO Senate voted to appoint two new faculty members to keep an eye on the secretive group that Davis runs to approve these admits, Sports Illustrated has come out with a major expose, here. Oh wait, this scandal is at UNC. I’m sure it could never happen here. Never mind.

Dana Altman’s lax recruiting practices continue, where’s Lorraine Davis?

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9/17/2014: Justin Wise has the story in the ODE, here. After Brandon Austin you’d think Dana Altman would be a little more careful vetting his players, but apparently 2 of his new recruits have failed to meet UO’s academic standards (or those of the notoriously lax NCAA). No word if Lorraine Davis’s Special Athletic Admits Committee approved them. The IAC will take up a resolution tomorrow (below) to appoint a member to her committee.

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