IC Posts 2010 UT Budget

The Independent Collegian has posted the University of Toledo 2010 Budget on its website as a PDF.  Good reporting.  

See http://www.independentcollegian.com/news/view-the-ut-fy-2010-budget-here-1.1764507

Blade Article on Teaching Loads

Article published June 23, 2009
University of Toledo board OKs revised policy on faculty work
Goal is to ensure time in classroom
By MEGHAN GILBERT
BLADE STAFF WRITER
The University of Toledo wants to make sure its faculty is spending time in the classroom and will keep better track of work loads next school year.

The UT board of trustees approved an update yesterday to the faculty work load policy. It requires that faculty members teach the equivalent of 12 credit hours a semester and authorizes the administration to designate what nonteaching activities can offset that amount.

A full-time teaching load of 12 credit hours could be four three-credit classes a semester. But because faculty work includes activities outside the classroom instruction time, not everyone teaches that many courses.

Those activities can include research, advising, supervising clinical students or graduate student research, and participating on committees.

Each college has definitions for what qualifies as counting toward the required 12 credit hours.

President Lloyd Jacobs said the policy is more about legitimizing those other activities than baby-sitting faculty.

"I want to be clear. … In my own belief a great majority, nearly all faculty members, are working hard and being productive," he said.

But UT's faculty union, the American Association of University Professors, has filed grievances over the administration's defining "research active" rather than negotiating with the union for an agreed-upon definition.

The board resolution approved yesterday cites the Ohio Revised Code section that states a university board of trustees will adopt a faculty work load policy and that the board's policy prevails over conflicting collective bargaining agreements.

Dr. Jacobs said the policy exists, but this update is "more specified, more qualified."

Although some may consider it micromanaging faculty work,

it's common in difficult times to centralize, he said.

The state of the economy has led to a policy under which the president must OK all hires, which also is micromanaging, but nobody has argued that, Dr. Jacobs noted.

"It's part of the general tightening up and accountability of our times," he said.

John Barrett, president of the UT Faculty Senate, said faculty members are concerned about the new workload process in part because the details haven't been worked out for individuals and they don't know how it will affect them.

Also, he said, faculty members work with department chairmen, who are knowledgeable about the subject the professors teach and what else they have on their plates. But further up the chain, the dean and the provost office, there is potential for disagreement about what is good use of faculty time, said Mr. Barrett, an associate professor of law.

"There is concern with the way the process has come about in some people's minds," he said.

UT Trustee Carroll Ashley suggested the language in the faculty workload policy be changed to up to 15 credit hours instead of 12, given the difficult economic situation and the chance that the university will have to do more with less if the state slashes UT's budget.

His amendment wasn't supported by the other trustees.

Mr. Barrett said that move would have been more of a show of power and would create ill will when it's not necessary.

"His proposal was premature," he said. "If the state radically changes the budget for UT, who knows what steps we'll have to take to change things. But let's cross that bridge when we come to it."

The economic recession is having an impact on the university's capital projects as well.

During the finance discussion part of the board meeting, the trustees were told that several projects are being put on hold.

Scott Scarborough, UT's senior vice president for finance and administration, listed those as a new intensive care unit, new pharmacy college building, a "digital campus" project to make hospital records electronic, and increasing wireless Internet access on campus.

The planning for the new pharmacy building will go forward, but none of the work to construct the building will be considered until the state budget shakes out, he said.

The trustees also approved creation of an Institute for Vehicular Business and Supply Chain Management and a new bachelor's degree in biochemistry.

The meeting was the last for UT trustees Rick Stansley and David Huey, whose terms expire July 1.

And UT Trustee Marvin Himmelein is resigning from the board for personal reasons.

Contact Meghan Gilbert at:
mgilbert@theblade.com
or 419-724-6134.

Live via the web—but live???

Did anyone’s “UT Update” include the location of today’s Town Hall meeting? Mine didn’t—here’s what was in mine for today:


Town Hall Meeting Today: Main Campus Provost Rosemary Hagget will host a live Town Hall Meeting this morning at 11 a.m. via the web. You can watch and participate live, at http://video.utoledo.edu.

Send questions now or during the event to townhallquestions@utoledo.edu.


I don’t know about you, but when I think of participating live, doing it by video or e-mail is not what I think of.

Well, hey, here’s how to know when and where the Town Hall meetings are—don’t bother with the half-baked "selective" information in the e-notifications they send out; go straight to the President’s site:

http://www.utoledo.edu/offices/president/townhall/index.html

This lists all the meetings scheduled on both campuses from now through the end of next year (2010). Unless, of course, something gets changed or cancelled, with or without notice.

Oh—and, isn’t it Haggett???

Ode

The eternal flame of cronyism still burns bright
And sheds on our works a garish light

We labor with love, to make our own fate
And then is appointed some second rate

Burma Shave?
Or is it "Shave 'em Dry?"

That We May Bask in the Reflected Glory

This UT news release from yesterday says it all...

UT names Dr. Thomas Brady interim dean of Judith Herb College of Education    

Dr. Thomas E. Brady will be recommended to the UT Board of Trustees to assume the position of interim dean of The University of Toledo’s Judith Herb College of Education, at its meeting Monday, June 22, UT officials said Friday. 
 
If approved, Brady, a former member of the board of trustees for the Medical University of Ohio and UT, will assume his new role beginning August 1. His term will run until July 31, 2010 or until a national search process has been completed and a permanent dean selected, according to his letter of appointment.
 
“Tom Brady joins the Judith Herb College of Education at a critical time,” said Dr. Rosemary Haggett, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. “Tom’s experience as a leader and an entrepreneur will be critical to the college’s success as new instructional technologies and higher student expectations force colleges and universities across the nation to adapt as the world changes around us.”
 
Brady said one of his most important jobs when he assumes his new role will be to listen.
 
“I’m incredibly excited by this challenge and honored to have been asked to serve,” Brady said. “This is a college full of brilliant thinkers and powerful minds and I see my role as helping bring good ideas together, helping secure needed resources to ensure faculty and student success and, ultimately, ensuring the next generation of teachers is prepared to educate students in a technological environment very different from the one that exists today.”
 
Brady is chairman, CEO and founder of Plastic Technologies, Inc. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and his master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Dartmouth College.
 
Haggett also emphasized the strides the Judith Herb College of Education had taken under retiring dean, Dr. Thomas Switzer.
 
“From overseeing the capital improvements to Gillham Hall, to helping form a relationship with Judith Herb and her family to harnessing the efforts of the college to a learning-focused pedagogy, the UT community and teachers and students all over the country owe Tom Switzer tremendous thanks for his lifelong contribution to education and for his leadership at The University of Toledo,” Haggett said.

Champions and Chairs

The release of the UT WMW group's White Paper titled "Wrong Directions at the University of Toledo: The Social Pathology of ‘Mass-Customization’ for the A&S College” (see July 18, 2008 on this blog) remains pending, as this university administration has yet to announce or implement the specifics of its “mass-customization” initiatives. However, it is timely to discuss preparation for a response should these initiatives shape up as unacceptable to quality-conscious A&S tenured and tenure-track faculty. In anticipation that departmental chairs in A&S will be pressured by provost and dean to force their faculties to bend over and accept the unacceptable, the draft WMW White Paper recommends that t/t-t faculty in each A&S department informally meet and select a “champion” to represent their shared quality-control interests to each of their respective departmental chairs. Departmental faculty members at present are too politically disorganized to put up a unified resistance to imposed change from above. Ideally, by selecting a departmental champion for the purpose of negotiating a potentially endless array of onerous changes imposed from above with a departmental chair, a typical t/t-t department faculty member’s own time and energy become freed up from everyday academic politics to permit more concentration on professional responsibilities and commitments: the continued pursuit of high quality teaching, research and community service. The departmental champions, while “unofficial” and extra-ordinary representatives of their departmental faculties, will most likely be selected from those few remaining seasoned senior faculty loyal to the UT and A&S traditions, appreciative of the core public higher education commitment to the liberal arts, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and willing to volunteer their own valuable time to help preserving those venerable traditions, especially face-to-face classroom teaching and mentoring of students on a personal scale. It would of course be preferable, according the tentative White Paper, if A&S departmental chairs were officially representing the best interests of the t/t-t faculties of their departments when negotiating change with the UT administration. Instead, the A&S department chairs are administrators themselves, having agreed to take coin to become the official working end of the administrative hammer as applied to their departmental faculties. They may be good people, but have committed themselves to wearing this present university administration's monochromatic structural straitjacket. In sum: Every A&S department with a sense of purpose and integrity, and every quality-conscious faculty member who proudly identifies with intellectual membership in his or her department, yet feels threatened, intimidated and demoralized by this present administration, need more than a Chair to protect and defend in the face of mismanagement, neglect and abuse. They need a Champion!

Library Purge Accompanies People Purge

Bloggie says, "Think Fahrenheit 451."  No more books in the administrator-centered university!

The following report was forwarded by a reader.  

Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:47:59 -0400
From: "Martin, Juan"
To: "Thompson-Casado, Kathleen S." ,
     "Emonds, Friederike" ,
     "Dick, Warren H." ,
     "Semaan, Gaby " ,
     "Lepeley, Oscar C." ,
     "Cheng, AnChung" ,
     "Hara, Joseph" ,
     "Hottell, Ruth Ann" ,
     "Martin, Juan" ,
     "Rouillard, Linda"
Subject: Carlson evaluation of monographs

Dear colleagues,
 
In the last couple of weeks I have been meeting and in contact with the
librarians concerning the revision of the library collection. The process
is going to be different from what we were informed some months ago. The
process will be as follows.
 
The collection is being evaluated in its entirety for the first time. The
librarians envision a core circulating collection, that is, items used
repeatedly and extensively for classroom assignments and research. They
have decided upon a basic policy ? if an item has not circulated in the
past 9 years, then it is evaluated for placement at the Northwest Ohio
Book Depository or withdrawal. Before an item is ever withdrawn from
the collection, they check for existing copies at the Depository, for how
many copies are available via Ohio LINK and if the title exists on a
standard core collection list. These standard collections are based on
the 2002 Best Books for Academic Libraries and the 2007 RCL: Resources
for College Libraries ? some of our librarians have contributed to the
latter. I have some reservations about this process (for example I could
not find a section on linguistics in the 2007 RCL: Resources for College
Libraries, we the instructors know what we are going to need in the
future for our classrooms, etc.) and I have asked for the lists to be
evaluated by us too.
 
The evaluation is starting with sets (titles that have multi-volumes such
as, vol. 1, vol. 2, etc. ? because they appear to have little to no
circulation). I have attached the particulars regarding the sets
evaluated to date. There are two lists: one of sets to be sent to the
Depository and another one of sets to be withdrawn. Please examine the
list and let me know if any of these sets should be kept at the library
or not withdrawn. Please consider the criteria that they are using (see
above) in your evaluation. As soon as they send me more list I will be
forwarding them to you.
 
A second and even more important issue is the budget freeze on new
acquisitions. I have noticed that none of the books that I have requested
to be purchased for the library in the last months have been acquired.
The librarians have confirmed this action. (They have assured me
that  the budget freeze on new acquisitions is across all disciplines.)
The situation is not clear at this point for next fiscal year, and they
told me that they will keep us informed. Anyway I consider this is very
serious. If the university cannot purchase up-to-date materials for our
research and teaching how are we going to fulfill our mission? I think
that this issue should be discussed by the Executive Committee of the A &
S Council, Linda, as we talked, and may be other venues.
 
Please send me your evaluations, comments and reactions. Thanks in
advance.
 
Juan