Tag Archives: Martinez’s (Diversity VP) 2nd $150K job

Former UO Provost Linda Brady “retires” after failing to send staff to prison

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I spent a lot of time talking to Linda Brady about Charles Martinez’s double dipping, UO’s first 5-year diversity plan, and John Moseley’s UO-Bend scheme. Before I met her I assumed top administrators needed to be reasonably smart, competent people. But she was clueless and easily manipulated, which was presumably why Frohnmayer hired her. That was something of a revelation to me. When she left, Frohnmayer appointed Jim Bean to as interim provost, presumably for the same reasons. That said this is a bit surprising – not least because she let Martinez get away with much worse:

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4/25/2011: Former UO Provost Linda Brady is the subject of a feature article in the Chronicle on UNC-Greensboro (4/25/2011). She left UO to become Chancellor (president) there:

Ms. Brady says that communication, particularly with the faculty, is something she needs to improve. She’s heard that professors think she is distant and unsympathetic. When a news story about the university’s $31-million renovation of the dining hall came out in the local paper, she worried that students and professors wouldn’t understand that the project was covered through auxiliary money, separate from state funds.

Brady was hired by Frohnmayer to run things after John Moseley took his Bend golden parachute. She spent a remarkably ineffective two years at UO – except for helping Frances Dyke spend millions remodeling Johnson Hall. Frohnmayer didn’t trust her, so Melinda Grier ended up running UO. Brady left as soon as she could, to everyone’s relief – I’m guessing not least hers.

Frohnmayer then appointed Business School Dean Jim Bean as interim Provost on a two year contract. When Lariviere arrived he appointed Bean as UO’s permanent provost, without going through the normal search process.

Breakfast for Diversity Champions

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10/29/2013:

The UO Breakfast for Diversity Champions on October 31, 2013, will feature UO President Michael Gottfredson and Expert-in-Residence Dr. A.T. Miller, Associate Vice Provost, Cornell University. President Gottfredson will charge the university community in preparation for the next strategic planning process, …

In the past UO has spent its diversity money on things like the double dipping salary for former Director Charles Martinez (Education) and the Under-represented Minority Recruitment Plan, which gives $90K to departments if their hires pass a probably illegal racial and ethnic diversity test set up by Russ Tomlin. New OEI VP Yvette Alex-Assensoh seems to have a more thoughtful data driven approach – helping to fund SAIL, for example.

Scott Jaschik from Inside Higher Ed reports on the latest empirical evidence supporting “fill the pipeline” programs that, like SAIL, target low income students:

A theme of several studies in the last year has been that there are plenty of academically talented low-income students who for some combination of reasons are not applying to competitive colleges to which they would probably be admitted.
A new study along those lines — this time documenting the impact of intense college counseling — was released Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research. 

The study (abstract available here) found that a nonprofit group that focuses on college counseling in Minneapolis-St. Paul had a significant impact in increasing the rate at which low-income students enrolled in four-year colleges, including competitive institutions. …

Shades of UO’s Charles Martinez

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3/28/2013: From Insidehighered.com:

Jonathan Hart was appointed professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Alberta in 2004. In 2011, he was also appointed professor of English studies at Durham University, in Britain. Neither was a part-time position, and it appears that neither institution knew about Professor Hart’s dual roles until the facts came to light at the end of last year.

Not very impressive compared to UO’s former VP for Diversity, Charles Martinez, who was able to pull off multiple appointments right here in Eugene, working 0.75 FTE at UO and 0.6 FTE at Oregon Social Learning Center. Martinez got away with this for several years under Frohnmayer, who wanted him to help cover up the details of the discrimination lawsuit Frohnmayer and Moseley had lost to Joe Wade.

At one point his total FTE was up to 2.1. Lariviere finally fired him as VP, but Bean had already given him tenure (as an administrator?) and now he’s still in the College of Ed, pulling down $153,502 as an associate professor.

Update: New VP for Diversity Yvette Alex-Assensoh shakes the table

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Update, from the comments:

One of the groups leading the attack against the restructuring is the Oregon Indian Education Association. Their president is Alison Ball. http://02af27e.netsolhost.com/OIEA/welcome-to-oiea/board-of-directors/

She is the wife of Tom Ball, one of the 3 AVP’s that was just reassigned: http://diversity.uoregon.edu/dr-tom-ball-assistant-vice-president 

I haven’t seen any acknowledgement of this rather obvious conflict of interest in any of the statements her group has made opposing the OIED restructuring, including this online petition: http://02af27e.netsolhost.com/OIEA/calltoaction/

12/28/12: And it’s about time someone did. Diane Dietz has the story in the RG, which focuses on complaints from local minority leaders about lack of consultation. My view is very different. This office has been horribly mismanaged for years. Yvette Alex-Assensoh was brought in by Lariviere to change things, after a petition from more than 60 faculty, staff, and OAs. And it seems like she’s got the courage to make change happen. Good for her!

UO’s Diversity office was started by Dave Frohnmayer and John Moseley – but only after they lost a discrimination lawsuit to UO administrator Joe Wade, who forced them to create the office in his legal settlement:

Joe Wade’s complaint against Frohnmayer and Moseley was valid. The court ruled in his favor, and UO’s central administration still shows minority under-representation – a legacy of Johnson Hall’s continuing failure to hold open searches for executive positions:

Frohnmayer even appointed insider Charles Martinez to run the Diversity office without conducting an AA compliant public search. And he let Martinez double dip at an off campus job. Not surprisingly, Martinez ran the office into the ground.

Eventually the faculty and the diversity office staff rebelled. I heard 60 people signed the letter of protest. Richard Lariviere then fired Martinez and held an open, public, AA compliant search for a new VP for Diversity. CAS Dean Scott Coltrane ran the search, with plenty of input from the local community – including many racial and ethnic minorities and community leaders, such as 4J superintendent George Russell, on the hiring committee. Coltrane held 5 “visioning sessions” to get input from various stakeholder groups, including local minority community groups. The hiring committee was a notably diverse group, in terms of race and ethnicity:

Scott Coltrane, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
Robin Holmes, Vice Provost for Student Affairs
Allison Davis-White Eyes, OSU Director of Office of American Indian Initiatives
Sergio Ibarra Bolanos, UO MBA student
Maneesh Arora, UO undergraduate student
Rasheid Light, Multicultural recruiting, UO Admissions
Edward M Olivos, Associate Professor of Education
Gregory Rikhoff, UO Director of Community Relations
George Russell, 4J Superintendent
Carol Stabile, Director, UO Center for the Study of Women in Society
Roger Thompson, UO VP for Enrollment
Mia Tuan, Director of the UO Center for Diversity and Community
Carmen Urbina, 4J Schools 

Three candidates came to campus, with well attended public meetings. UO then hired Yvette Alex-Assensoh from Indiana. She was the top pick of the committee. She has stellar credentials: poli-sci professor, law degree, administrative experience, and a record of real accomplishment. From her application letter:

Legally proper. Retention. Good jobs. I like. She started this fall. Give her a chance to set a long, long series of wrongs right.

Former UO Prof Hsu has opinions about stuff

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10/7/2012: Physics Prof Steve Hsu left UO this fall, to be VP for Research at MSU. Matthew Miller of the Lansing paper has a report. Not the usual generics, it deals in part with an email sent to MSU colleagues by UO Prof Daniel HoSang about Hsu’s views and research on IQ, but mostly about plans to link MSU research to local economic success. His blog has his response.

For contrast, I looked at what the RG has written about UO VPR Kimberly Espy and her efforts to keep UO in the AAU, etc: nothing. The ODE had generic puff piece on her when she replaced Linton, here. We need more serious journalism about this issue at UO.

Update: But meanwhile, we’ve got our readers, one of whom posts this:

Forget the genetics stuff, I’m more interested in this…
The Strategic Partnership program provides major grants ranging up to $400,000 over three years for areas of research growth. They are used to leverage matching support from other sources, to provide seed funding for the development of new knowledge, and to initiate new centers of excellence. These grants are treated as investments in the future development of MSU as one of the nation’s leading research universities.
…as compared to, oh I don’t know, maybe this…
Projects which fund Graduate Research Fellows will be prioritized and eligible for funding to a maximum of $8,000 if fully matched by funds from non-RIGE sources… Projects that do not provide support for Graduate Research Fellows will be eligible for funding to a maximum of $5,500.

New VP for Equity and Inclusion Yvette Alex-Assensoh

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3/4/2012: Best of luck to Ms Alex-Assensoh, who was hired by CAS Dean Scott Coltrane and VP Robin Holmes after an open, reasonably transparent national search, and who has excellent credentials (PhD, law degree, research) and relevant experience at IU. I didn’t go to the interviews but on paper I though she looked like the best candidate. Let’s call her the VP for Equity for short. From the new VPEI website:

Yvette Marie Alex-Assensoh, a political scientist and attorney who has served on the Indiana University faculty for the past 18 years and as dean for women’s affairs since 2008, has been named vice president for equity and inclusion at the University of Oregon. She will begin work at the UO in August.

The diversity position was originally created because former UO administrator Joe Wade sued Provost John Moseley for employment discrimination, and then insisted in the settlement that UO make some policy changes to encourage open searches, and transparent hiring processes. Good for Mr. Wade! Unfortunately UO is still a long way from doing the right thing when it comes to administrative hiring.

The office got off to a troubled start, then suffered through 5 years of mismanagement by Charles Martinez, who ironically was appointed by Frohnmayer and Moseley without any search at all, and then allowed to double-dip at an off campus job. Two years ago most of the relevant faculty and staff broke out in rebellion against Martinez, so Bean and Tomlin created a tenured position for Martinez in the Ed School, then President Lariviere dumped him as VP and sent him back to teaching.

Robin Holmes has already made some much needed changes in the office as interim head. Here’s hoping this office is now off on a good track and that the new VP will undertake a thorough review of  some of its more questionable programs, such as the UMRP, and move resources to fill-the-pipeline efforts that work and are legal, such as the OYSP. The fact that Ms Alex-Assensoh has a law degree seems like a good sign. Maybe she will even abandon the 5 year “diversity action plans” window-dressing effort.

Her application materials are here. This clip from her application letter looks very encouraging. “legally proper”, “best students”, and “just as likely to complete the program and find good jobs”:

Nice contrast to the inane “diversity *is* excellence” mantra that Martinez and Linda Brady used to spout.

3 VP for Diversity candidates

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1/13/2012: Diversity VP Charles Martinez was one of those no-search interim appointments gone permanent and bad. He had a remarkable ability to screw up UO’s diversity efforts, despite spending most of his time off campus double dipping at his second job at OSLC. Jim Bean and Russ Tomlin protected him for years, but last spring pretty much everyone who’d ever had to deal with Martinez, including his staff and the ethnic studies department, broke into open revolt. I think 60 people signed the letter. Lariviere finally announced he would do what UO Matters had been calling for for years – have an affirmative action compliant open public search for UO’s VP for Diversity. What a radical idea – this is why Martinez called me a “racist nut”. Bean and Tomlin bought Martinez off with a $153,502 no-search tenured job in the College of Education – they hid this from the FPC – and a sabbatical.

Given that the search for his replacement was chaired by Scott Coltrane and Robin Holmes, it’s not surprising to see that 2 of the 3 finalists are academic administrators with pretty standard diversity track careers. I’ll keep an open mind, but I don’t see a lot of intellectual diversity on issues or policies coming out of this process. The last candidate does look like an interesting scholar though.

The end game here is pretty simple: We hire one of these three, or Coltrane declares the search failed and then Berdahl adds Diversity to VP for Student Affairs Robin Holmes’s portfolio. Just like happened with our new CFO Jamie Moffitt. Then Holmes’ runs with it for a year and goes on the road for a third tier university president job. Sounds good to me.

Anyway, here are the candidates she and Coltrane picked:

Roger Worthington, Missouri:

PhD in Counseling Psych, 5 years as diversity administrator with $1.2 million budget. Web page here.

January 19, 2012
Public presentation
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Papé Reception Room
Candidate presentation: 4:00‐5:00 p.m.*
Question and answer: 5:00‐5:45 p.m.* 

Worthington Cover Letter
Worthington CV

According to this story, Worthington resigned (coincidentally, he says) from his diversity administrator job just after the UM faculty rejected his plan to require all students to take a diversity course:

Roger Worthington is stepping down as chief diversity officer and assistant deputy chancellor of diversity at the University of Missouri.

The announcement comes on the heels of a faculty vote that defeated a proposal to require all students to take a diversity course. Worthington said the timing is coincidental and that he made his decision before that vote. MU won’t hire a replacement, at least for the foreseeable future, spokeswoman Mary Jo Banken said.

If I resigned on principle, I’d brag about that. I’ll never understand administrators.

 Sheila O’Rourke, Berkeley. JD.

Assistant Provost for some sort of faculty diversity initiative.  O’Rourke Cover Letter, O’Rourke CV

January 23, 2012
Public presentation
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Papé Reception Room
Candidate presentation: 4:00‐5:00 p.m.*
Question and answer: 5:00‐5:45 p.m.*

Video here of a pretty low level gender pipeline talk at OSU. As might be expected for a Berkeley admin she’s been involved in lots of controversies, do a google search.

 Yvette Alex-Assensoh, Indiana:

Phd in Poli Sci, JD. Poli Sci Professor, Dean in Office of Women’s Affairs. Long and interesting publications list. Alex-Assensoh Cover Letter. Alex-Assensoh CV

January 26, 2012
Public presentation
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Papé Reception Room
Candidate presentation: 4:00‐5:00 p.m.*
Question and answer: 5:00‐5:45 p.m.*

She’s also a finalist for an AVP job at Missouri State.

Holmes cleans up Martinez’s mess

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10/30/2011: OIED VP Charles Martinez was one of those interim appointments gone permanent and bad. He had a remarkable ability to screw up UO’s diversity efforts, despite spending most of his time off campus double dipping at his second job at OSLC.

Last year Lariviere bought Martinez off with a no-search tenured job in the College of Education, then this fall he appointed VP for Student Affairs Robin Holmes to run OIED on an interim basis. My prediction? The secretive search run by Scott Coltrane and “Diversity Search” at a cost of $100,000 fails, and Holmes then adds the VP for “Diversity and Institutional Equity” job to her portfolio.

And – trust me I *really* never thought I would say this – maybe that’s a good thing. Holmes has a stubborn flaw as an administrator: She just won’t consult with faculty or students about anything – from moving graduation day, to the EMU renovations, and now to the reorganization of OMAS. But the reorganization itself is long overdue, it’s sensible, and Holmes appears to have support from the people who want to change things for the better. OIED needs good administration.

As this ODE story by Mei Tsai reports, some of the students that use OMAS are now up in arms. Their blog is here.  This was predictable, they should have been brought into the reform process. The story I’ve heard is that they are being manipulated by those OMAS advisors who are going to get reassigned by VP Holmes to actual real jobs. Jobs advising students, reporting to administrators with goals, and held to account for their productivity. Nobody likes that.

VP Holmes is apparently scheduling meetings with the students next week. I hope this gets fixed. Meanwhile here’s the latest Org chart:

UO’s new "Diversity and Inclusion" hire

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Update: How public will this search really be? The ad ends with

All communications will be treated confidentially.  Nominations, inquiries, and applications (including a cover letter, curriculum vitae, and the names of five references) should be directed electronically in confidence to [email protected].  For further information, please contact: Kim M. Morrisson, Ph.D. Managing Director and Practice Leader …

I’ve got a request in to find out if a state agency can really keep this stuff confidential. From what I read in Attorney General Kroger’s handy online public records manual, I don’t think so. The contract with the firm “Diversified Search” is here. From what I can see from the job posting archives, the only UO searches promising confidentiality are the ones they have ran. And then there’s this, from the contract appendix:

“Transparent nature of our search process?” Umm, whatever you say.

8/30/2011: The job ad is up for a replacement for OIED head Charles Martinez, who will have double-dipped his last as a UO VP as of Sept. 15. Now Mike Bullis and the Ed School will have to deal with him – enjoy!

The administration originally said his last day would be tomorrow, but then they gave him another 2 weeks, ostensibly to give him time to train Robin Holmes as interim VP. I’m not bitching, after the millions that Martinez has blown doing nothing, another $10K or so for doing more nothing is not going to be noticed.

When we get a new hire it will be the first time in 5 years that UO’s diversity efforts will be run by someone hired through an open, public affirmative action compliant search. Martinez was appointed on the quick by Frohnmayer and Moseley, to help cover up the discrimination lawsuit Moseley lost. This time, we are paying a search firm $100,000 to not screw this up. It took a year and many public records requests to get UO to actually write a job description for Martinez. Then it took another public records request to get the search committee head, CAS Dean Scott Coltrane, to release the hilariously overblown top-secret draft of the new position description:

This report has been prepared exclusively for the University of Oregon and includes sensitive information. The use of this report should therefore be controlled and limited to those concerned directly with this assignment.

Nice try, but the whole thing is currently posted online here. The job ad is considerably more concise:

The VPEI leads efforts to identify gaps in equity across the University, promoting access and equal opportunity for students, faculty and staff and equity in the policies and procedures that support them.  In addition, the VPEI plays a key role in the achievement of progress on key priorities: faculty recruitment and hiring; student recruitment and retention; strengthening of recruitment pipelines; and reorganizing the Equity and Inclusion Office to support faculty, school, department and unit diversity efforts across campus. 

No crap about pointless “5 year diversity action plans” for once. My suggestion? Don’t hire anyone. Charles Martinez’s OIED spent $903,587 last year – that’s just counting salaries and administrative overhead for his office, not program costs. For comparison, in 2009-10 UO awarded $1,706,250 in need-based financial aid, and another $2,086,425 in need-based tuition waivers. So we could dump the OIED administration (while keeping OMAS, the Longhouse, etc) and have enough money to increase UO’s support for low income students by 25%. 

A modest proposal

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7/14/2011: Charles Martinez’s OIED spent $903,587 last year – that’s just counting salaries and administrative overhead for his office, not program costs. Add another $100,000 to cover the cost of hiring a search firm to find a competent and honest replacement for him.

For comparison, in 2009-10 UO awarded $1,706,250 in need-based financial aid, and another $2,086,425 in need-based tuition waivers.

So we could dump the OIED administration (while keeping OMAS, the Longhouse, etc) and have enough money to increase UO’s support for low income students by 25%.

VP for Diversity search

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12/14/2010: From the official announcement:

The University of Oregon is firmly committed to diversity and seeks to further this goal among our faculty, staff and student body.  To lead us in these efforts, we are searching for a new Vice President of the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity to replace Charles Martinez, who will step down this summer.

I have asked Scott Coltrane, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, to chair the search committee.  Robin Holmes, Vice President for Student Affairs, will work with Scott to assemble a search committee to conduct a national search for the best person to lead our diversity efforts in the coming years.

We will hold a series of listening sessions during January and February to receive the advice and counsel of various constituencies about how best to enhance our ongoing diversity efforts.  A top search firm will assist us in identifying candidates and engaging the campus and larger community.  We look forward to a successful national search for this important senior leadership position.

Richard W. Lariviere
President

After Martinez, whoever takes the job can be sure they will look pretty good!

Diversity VP Charles Martinez resigns

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9/15/2010: “Transformative change has been seeded.” Effective Aug 2011, he’ll return to teaching and research in the School of Ed, presumably while trying to keep his second job at OSLC. My opinion of Martinez and what he has done is not a secret. This is an opportunity for a big improvement in UO’s Diversity efforts. But there are many groups with very different interests, and the process will surely be difficult. The UO press release is here.