Tag Archives: Provost Moseley

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

Clusters of excellence start with $245K for Jim Bean

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6/28/2014 update: Slow Saturday, thought I’d repost this classic. President Gottfredson and Provost Coltrane have now given former Provost Jim Bean a new job – directing UO’s new “Sports Product” cluster of excellence. We’ve been paying him $245K a year for putting the proposal together:

4/16/2012: Bean and Davis rehire John Moseley

Johnson Hall has two simple hiring rules:

  1. When UO has money to hire either a professor or an administrator, hire an administrator.
  2. When choosing between an open search for a new administrator and hiring one of your old friends with no search at twice the pay, hire the old friend.

John Moseley was Dave Frohnmayer’s longtime Provost and Lorraine Davis was his VP for Academic Affairs. Back in 2004 Frohnmayer wrote them both special golden parachute retirement contracts. The Oregonian wrote a story about the questionable deals in 2008. OUS audited Moseley in 2009 and required Jim Bean to write him a new, clean contract, here. The Oregonian wrote another story, here on the audit. In the summer of 2010 Pres Lariviere announced he was killing the UO-Bend program that had served as the justification for Moseley’s pay check. Greg Bolt had this to say in the RG on July 19, 2010:

… Some faculty members who reviewed the budget concluded that the program was costing the university more than $1 million a year beyond what it brought in, draining revenue from the Eugene campus as it struggles with steep cuts in state funding.

But Bean maintains that at least in the program’s most recent years the UO’s Bend efforts were breaking even. “We have gone to minute detail and passed the spreadsheets around, and some people believe them and some people don’t,” he said.

The Bend program also is tied up with another sore spot among some faculty: the post­retirement contract the UO made with former provost John Moseley. After retiring from his full-time provost position at the UO in Eugene, Moseley since 2007 has been working half time as a special assistant to the provost, acting as the liaison for the Bend program on a contract that pays him $124,000 a year.

The large paycheck for part-time work has drawn the ire of many professors. Moseley will continue in his post through next year, which also is when the UO expects to wind down the undergraduate program in Bend.

So by the original Frohnmayer deal and by this report it sure seemed that we would pay Moseley his last paycheck summer 2011. More than enough money to hire one of the 100 new professors that academic plan has been promising.

But nope. He’s still pulling down $10,372 a month in UO salary – plus another $10,095 in PERS. So how is it Moseley is still on the UO books a year after Lariviere said he’d be gone?  Easy: Jim Bean and Lorraine Davis rehired him:

The contract and other emails are here. More on Moseley’s other adventures here.

Will the circle be unbroken? Bean has no contract?

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7/31/2013: Back in July 2011 UO got in trouble with the State auditors for post-dating Frohnmayer’s retirement contracts and no bothering to specify what work he’d done for the money. Then Bean got in trouble with Davis for hiring his buddy John Moseley for an extended post-retirement gig without bothering to write a contract. Davis had to write another retroactive one while Bean was on sabbatical, and she chewed out Bean for it. Then in April 2013 Gottfredson announced Bean would “return to the faculty effective 7/1/2013” And now Bean is working for UO without a contract – if he’s still working for UO that is. From the UO Public Records Office yesterday:

The university does not possess documents responsive to your request for “a copy of the current employment contract(s) for James C. Bean“.  The office considers this information to be fully responsive to your request, and will now close your matter.  Thank you for contacting the office with your request.

My April 2012 request for docs on the unusual deals between Bean and Moseley, including the retroactive contract and Davis email, was quickly followed by Bob Berdahl’s clampdown on public records releases, which has continued under President Gottfredson. I did get the response above without having to pay a fee, but it took 11 days. 

Futile update #2: Provosts gone wild

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2/17/2013: Time to get real. Gottfredson’s not going to fire Bean. He’s not even going to fire Geller. It’s up to us faculty. Sure, we could fight with conventional weapons, like Tublitz’s senate resolution. But that would take years. No, this requires a really stupid and futile gesture. And

So get to work. Post your list of our Provost’s five two greatest accomplishments, and suggested wording in the comments. I’ll add some fluff and a signature,

and send the letter off to academic headhunter firms. Surely there’s a Dental Hygienics College somewhere in Dubai that needs a leader.

2/16/2013: I thought I’d repost this classic, since it bears on both the never-ending Bean and public records issues. Note the part at the end, explaining Berdahl’s revocation of the fee-waiver policy which had been instituted by Lariviere after a year of hard work and perseverance (some have called it intimidation) by the Senate Transparency Committee.


5/4/2012: When Richard Lariviere found out about the secret Frohnmayer/Bellotti deal he wrote:

“This institution did not follow acceptable business practices in the past. That will not be repeated by my administration.”

Apparently that message didn’t get through to John Moseley, Jim Bean, and Lorraine Davis. I wrote a little about their latest deal here. All in all this involves maybe $60,000 in UO money, plus a bunch more from OSU. In addition to the questionable UO contract addition, there are some expense issues. In a nutshell, after a 2009 audit investigation raised a few issues with Moseley’s contracts and expenses – he was charging UO for his travel between his homes in Eugene and Bend – UO promised the auditor that Moseley would not receive any more reimbursements  … :

The auditor made it a point to cc James Bean on the report. Moseley and Bean broke that deal within 2 months:

and

  
The full document dump is here – many interesting expense charges and more info on the contract extension. It was obtained in response to this public records request:
Dear Ms Thornton –

In the documents you sent me last week in response to my 4/4/2012 request there was a letter from acting Provost Davis stating in part

 The March 2011 interagency agreement between OSU and U0 clearly articulated the percent of FTE necessary for you to oversee the transfer of undergraduate academic programs at OUS-Cascades from UO to OSU. OSU agreed to reimburse UO for your time from July 1 to December 31, 2011 at 0.5FTE and January 1 to June 30, 2012 at 0.25FTE. It is my understanding the time necessary to oversee the program transfer was underestimated and resulted in an agreement between you and Jim Bean to increase your FTE to 0.5 FTE for the time period of January 1, 2012 to June 30, 2012.

This is a public records request for

a) a copy of that OSU/UO agreement

b) any letters, emails, notes, cocktail napkins, or other public records documenting the side agreement in which Jim Bean agreed to pay John Mosley an additional 0.25 FTE

c) any expense reports submitted by Moseley to UO or OSU or OUS from June 31 2009 to the present.

I ask for a fee waiver on the grounds of public interest. The golden parachute contracts between UO and Moseley involve the expenditure of a lot of UO and now apparently OSU money. They have been the subject of news stories in the Oregonian, Register Guard, and Bend Bulletin. In June 2009 OUS issued an audit report (attached) finding irregularities with Moseley’s previous contracts and travel expenses. The Oregon Politico database indicates that Moseley has been reimbursed for in-state travel since the agreement described in this audit report.

It turns out there is no written agreement between Moseley and Bean for the extra 0.25 FTE salary and benefits that Lorraine Davis is paying special assistant to the provost John Moseley – not even a cocktail napkin. (Davis did write out a contract to legitimize it, after Bean went on sabbatical.) These are acceptable business practices?

A few hours after getting these documents via a public records request, I got this email from Dave Hubin announcing that Interim President Berdahl was revoking the public interest fee-waiver arrangement which Richard Lariviere helped set up. Lisa Thornton of the Office of Public Records had been giving these waivers for the past 8 months, and I used one to obtain these documents.

Less transparency, less trust.

Back for another feeding

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Check the date on Interim Provost Jim Bean’s org chart. His friends are back:

I guess it’s time to ask for more contracts, to see what their pay and perks are this time. These are the people advising Gottfredson? Or are we paying them to do, or not do, something else? Let’s find out. Despite what Randy Geller thinks, that’s what public records requests are for. 8/6/2012.

False statements about Bean. Moseley still on dole, Davis away game deal

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4/3/2012: In a previous post I said that Provost Bean was being paid 60% of his administrative salary and a BMW while he was on a sabbatical to do research in his field of genetic algorithms and operations research.

My statements were false. Bean is not getting a Beamer while on sabbatical, and he is not getting 60% of his salary. He’s getting 75%, or $241,605, plus travel expenses to meet with old friends still active in the field.

Bean’s friend and Special Assistant to the Provost John Moseley is still on the dole too. I thought Lariviere ended that deal when he got UO out of Bend. Apparently Lorraine Davis has seen fit to keep it going:

And of course she’s got a deal of her own: free tickets and travel to away games, for the whole family. What can you say about these people? They are shameless.

Moffitt erases Frances Dyke from org chart

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1/27/2012: Apparently she’s still on the payroll though – as a special assistant to interim Provost Lorraine Davis. Sure is fun spending other people’s money on your friends.

Shades of John Moseley. I don’t envy Moffitt having to do the performance evaluations on the rest of  her crew. Lots of good people – but also cases who will presumably also soon be bought off with fat golden parachutes, filled with tuition money that should have gone to support research and teaching.

ODE on Bend and Moseley

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7/28/2010: Ryan Buckley had a story on the end of Bend a few days back, that I missed. He managed to get both current Provost Jim Bean and former Provost John Moseley to speak on the record:

“The statements that some faculty have made that the program was ‘costing UO $1 million a year’ are nonsense,” Moseley said, “The total cost of UO’s program has been approximately $1 million a year for the past few years (and was even less in previous years), with these costs covered by revenue from the program.”

In the summer of 2009, Moseley’s contract with the University was the subject of a review by the state’s Internal Audit Division (IAD) following a complaint to the Oregon University System’s hotline.

According to a June 31, 2009, memorandum sent to University President Richard Lariviere from IAD Executive Director Patricia Snopkowski, the investigation concluded Bean had failed to update the responsibilities outlined in Moseley’s original contract to reflect a reduction in workload enacted in July 2008. Moseley’s original post-retirement contract from June 2006 had included work with the Oregon Bach Festival and the University’s Portland campus.

However, at the time of the audit, the agreement continued to state Moseley was being paid for these duties he had been relieved of almost a year earlier, and the IAD instructed the University to amend the contract to more accurately reflect Moseley’s performance.

I haven’t seen any documents supporting Moseley’s claim that Bend broke even. Provost Bean will only release them in exchange for a cash payment, and I haven’t sold enough mugs yet. The people I know who have seen them say they do not include all the relevant costs – most hilariously, Moseley’s own salary, OPE, and travel expenses, or about $200,000 per year.

Regardless, this story is finally over – except for 2 more years of payments to Moseley, and a bit more erosion in what little trust there is between the administration and the faculty. Here’s a simple proposal that might help us move forward with the trust issues: If a UO administrator publicly asserts that something is true, they should be willing to provide the public records that address their claim.

And they shouldn’t charge the faculty to see those documents!

More on the End of Bend:

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7/19/2010: From Greg Bolt in the RG, on the end of Bend:

… Some faculty members who reviewed the budget concluded that the program was costing the university more than $1 million a year beyond what it brought in, draining revenue from the Eugene campus as it struggles with steep cuts in state funding.
But Bean maintains that at least in the program’s most recent years the UO’s Bend efforts were breaking even. “We have gone to minute detail and passed the spreadsheets around, and some people believe them and some people don’t,” he said.
The Bend program also is tied up with another sore spot among some faculty: the post­retirement contract the UO made with former provost John Moseley. After retiring from his full-time provost position at the UO in Eugene, Moseley since 2007 has been working half time as a special assistant to the provost, acting as the liaison for the Bend program on a contract that pays him $124,000 a year.
The large paycheck for part-time work has drawn the ire of many professors. Moseley will continue in his post through next year, which also is when the UO expects to wind down the undergraduate program in Bend.
This program was established by Frohnmayer to provide a retirement job for Moseley. We probably dropped between $5 and $10 million on it. I asked Provost Bean for the spreadsheets mentioned above last year, and I was told I would have to pay to see them. The people who have seen the presentation said they omitted Moseley’s salary and expenses, videoconferencing centers, many of the inducements paid to departments to get them to send people to Bend, and so on. There’s no reason not to be transparent about these costs – is there? Hell, Moseley posts the rates for his fishing lodge right here.

Here’s the info on the OUS auditor’s investigation of Moseley’s expense account abuse. UO also refuses to release further documentation on the expense account payments, unless you pay them. Everything is on the up and up here, right?

What will Moseley do now?

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7/12/2010: Here’s more on the end of Bend, from Sheila Miller in the Bend Bulletin:

HEAT, a committee composed of 22 people, including representatives from Crook, Deschutes and Jefferson counties, was asked to come up with the recommendations in line with the goals of increasing education offerings and opportunities for students in the region, and increasing enrollment at Oregon State University-Cascades Campus.

…. Third, the plan calls for OSU-Cascades to take over all University of Oregon programs currently offered at the campus to simplify the operation and make it run more efficiently. Currently, both OSU and University of Oregon operate degree programs on the campus. Under the recommended plan, OSU would become the only entity on campus.
Students currently enrolled in UO programs would be allowed to finish them, but within two years the university’s role would be phased out. OSU-Cascades would continue offering the four programs the UO currently operates on the campus.
UO programs

“When this campus started, it was important that we use everything at our disposal to try to get the campus up and running,” Johnson said. That included the UO’s programs. But as the campus has grown, having both universities on the same site has been a challenge, with different policies and procedures, faculty promotions and other work force issues. Students can’t currently major in one school’s program and minor in the other school’s program; administrators must know both colleges’ policies, and marketing OSU-Cascades is bogged down with two brands.

“We feel it’s more efficient” to offer the programs through one university, Johnson said. “And if there’s a specialty program or a niche that another school could offer better than OSU-Cascades, they should be invited in to do that.”

Jim Bean, the University of Oregon provost, said it was a difficult decision, but ultimately would be the right one. “At the beginning, it was the issue that no one wanted to talk about,” he said. “This was not a turf war at all. It was an examination of a number of options.” Bean said to help make the transfer process between COCC and OSU-Cascades seamless, the University of Oregon had to step out of the way. “To have the UO there would not make it twice as hard, it would make it three times as hard,” he said. Under the recommended plan, University of Oregon faculty would be offered the opportunity to transition into positions with OSU.

Provost Bean has claimed that UO was making money on the Bend operations, but nobody really believes that, the understadning is that we have been subsidizing this program because former Provost John Moseley wanted us to and nobody had the guts to call him on it. My understanding is that the OUS Board still needs to decide whether to act on these recommendations. It doesn’t seem like John Moseley had any substantial role in the HEAT working group – despite the fact that we pay him $124K to be UO’s “Central Oregon Liason”.

7/9/2010: A reader passed along this Oregonian story by Bill Graves. The OUS board has finally pulled the plug on UO Bend.

The University of Oregon also offers a degree program in Bend, but it will turn its courses over to Oregon State to give students a more efficient and less confusing path to a four-year degree. 

The reader wants to know what we think this will do to former UO Provost Moseley, who is still getting paid 1/2 time at a $248,941 FTE, to – supposedly – act as UO’s “Central Oregon Liason”. In reality, he does jack – from his fishing retreat on the Deschutes. I’m not kidding, you can rent one of his lodges here, for $4300 a week during the high season. Most people think the only reason we ever started this program – on which UO loses about $1 million per year – was to provide a retirement sinecure for Moseley, who’d been buying property over there for years, and hiding that from the Oregon Government Ethics Commission. Apparently this was the running joke at his retirement party.

I think I’ve seen that rug before:

UO pays the dude until the summer of 2012. For the curious, the contract between Moseley and then President Frohnmayer is here. It’s such a blatant attempt to subvert the PERS rules I assume that UO could break it easily. BTW, the OUS Auditor’s anonymous tipline is

OUS Hotline: 1.888.304.7810
Or at www.ous.edu/financialconcerns

we recommend it.

Bellotti’s retirement deal is hardly the only fishy one

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4/6/2010: There will be a lot of attention paid today to the unusual verbal contract which, apparently, Frohnmayer and Kilkenny negotiated with Bellotti with the help of UO General Counsel Melinda Grier – leaving President Lariviere holding the bag.

Here’s another case of the sort of sweetheart deals that have become common among UO administrators:

Former President Frohnmayer’s unusual contract with former Provost John Moseley is here. It seems to be a blatant attempt to subvert the PERS rules. OUS auditor Pat Snopkowski looked into this, and her report forced UO to write this contract amendment, signed by Moseley and UO Provost Jim Bean.

Moseley’s new contract gives him responsibility for only one of the 4 job duties laid out in his original contract. He’s now “Liason with Central Oregon”. He does this from his fishing retreat on the Deschutes – you can rent one of his lodges here, for $4300 a week during the high season. Meanwhile UO pays Moseley 1/2 time at a $248,941 FTE, until 2012.

OUS Board to conduct its own investigation of Bellotti deal

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4/1/2010: From Mike Tokhito in  the Oregonian:

“In light of these circumstances and disclosures, I’ve requested the director of internal audit, Patricia Snopkowski, to review the agreement and the circumstances surrounding its execution, in order to assure that all applicable laws, rules and board policies have been met,” George Pernsteiner, chancellor of the Oregon University System, said Thursday morning at a meeting the higher education board’s Governance & Policy Committee at Portland State University. 

Pat Snopkowski is very familiar with UO’s funny employment rules – she wrote this audit report on Frohnmayer’s unusual contract with former Provost John Moseley, here. It’s a blatant attempt to subvert the PERS rules. New AD Lorraine Davis got a similar deal from Frohnmayer when she retired as VP for Academic Affairs. Snopkowski’s report led to this contract amendment signed by Moseley and UO Provost Jim Bean. While Moseley’s new contract gives him responsibility for only one of the 4 job duties laid out in his original contract, he is allowed to keep the entire 0.5 FTE in his original contract. BTW, the info for Ms Snopkowski’s anonymous tipline is

OUS Hotline: 1.888.304.7810
Or at www.ous.edu/financialconcerns

they will never stop looking after their own

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9/14/2009: What is it about UO administrators. Do they take a blood oath to defend each others’ paychecks til the bitter end? We’ve written before about the OUS audit which found current Provost Bean had cut former Provost Moseley’s retirement contract job duties without reducing his FTE, and was letting Moseley charge UO for weekly trips to his vacation home on the Deschutes – whether or not there was any UO-Bend work to do over there. We thought this situation had been resolved, but it turns out Provost Bean has pulled a fast one.

After an anonymous online tip alerted her, OUS auditor Pat Snopkowski wrote this July 31 audit report to UO President Lariviere, in which she states:

“University Management has agreed with Dr. Moseley that he will not receive reimbursement for his expenses associated with his assignment.” (p 3).

Seems pretty clear. However, the contract amendment for Dr. Moseley, signed by Moseley and UO Provost Jim Bean on Aug 20, says exactly the opposite:

3. Moseley and UO understand that as a result of his changed assignment, Moseley’s expenses for his work in Central Oregon will be paid as if he were a UO employee whose workstation and tax home is at the UO Bend facility.

What’s the difference? The OUS agreement with President Lariviere says Moseley is not to be reimbursed for travel to his vacation home. But the contract Bean signed with Moseley allows him to continue charging UO for one trip a week. Additionally, while Moseley’s new contract gives him responsibility for only one of the 4 job duties laid out in his original contract, he is allowed to keep the entire 0.5 FTE in his original contract. When questioned about this, Provost Bean reportedly said

“Look, you know Moseley. Do you really want me to give him a job here in Eugene?”

Good point Jim, but do we really have to pay him to come visit every week? For the curious, the contract between Moseley and then President Frohnmayer is here. It runs for 2 more years – but it’s such a blatant attempt to subvert the PERS rules I assume that UO could break it easily. BTW, the info for Ms Snopkowski’s anonymous tipline is

OUS Hotline: 1.888.304.7810
Or at www.ous.edu/financialconcerns

we recommend it.

Bend

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9/11/2009: The Bend Bulletin editorial board writes:

Although it’s difficult to be gleeful in light of the big picture, supporters of the Oregon State University-Cascades Campus must be at least hopeful today. Alone among public higher education institutions in Oregon, it may well see its finances improve in the coming year. That, at least, is what the State Board of Higher Education’s finance and administration committee will recommend to the full board when it meets early next month in Klamath Falls.

Overall, the picture is bleak. … Thus, that OSU-Cascades may get any increase at all is something of a miracle. It could see its state funding rise to a total of $9.3 million a biennium, a 2.4 percent increase from 2007-09. The added money will make a big difference, according to Becky Johnson, OSU vice president for the Central Oregon campus. …

Assuming the board accepts its finance committee’s recommendation, Central Oregonians can expect to see a stronger branch campus, one less likely to become the target of lawmakers as it was earlier this year.

Rumor has it that UO President Lariviere will soon make the call on whether or not UO will continue its own programs in Bend, which graduate 50 students per year at a loss of $20,000 per student. UO set this up as a sweet retirement and expense account scam for former UO Provost John Moseley, just appointed by current Provost Jim Bean to the new position of “liaison UO to Central Oregon” (sic).