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Wednesday, April 29, 2009

His Human Condition!

13 comments:

Professor Demeritus said...

One of the best postings ever. Funny how I could never create my own market value and complain that I was underpaid. Come to think of it, I forgot to spend any of the bonus money that I received during my 35 years at UT. I suppose that it's too late now.

I Live Here said...

What's is wrong with this UT Board of Trustees? Can't they see that this man Jacobs is embarrassing them? He makes them look like fools, and people are beginning to wonder if this is not the really the case.

umbraged said...

Not the same as humane condition.

Anonymous said...

It all fits in with the "top-down" business model that BOT and corporate American have all been cheerleading for years. You are supposed to just shut-up and listen to your betters and well if they get paid a huge salary, and exercise power over you and others without question, well that's none of your business.

Anonymous said...

There were many false notes concerning his self-proclaimed commitment to bettering "the human condition " struck by Jacobs during his so-called "Townhall, " but the ones that really struck me were his exhortation that we must all affirm to doubters that he and his inner circle acted with "benign intent " in terminating the hundred or so underlings eliminated in his new budget and that it is now our responsibility to treat those victims with "benevolence. "

Ted said...

The cartoon remains futuristic, but grows more probable day by day as we stray morally adrift into Summer 2009. Great mischief will be done to UT and the College of Arts and Sciences in the next month or two. Of course it takes more than one avaricious despot of a president to scuttle the University of Toledo. It takes ambitious key collaborators among tenured and tenure-track faculty to make the worst actually happen. Look at this following list of faculty conspirators who are now involved in one of Provost Haggett's fast-track destructive initiatives, the "Keystone" project, which will design and implement a business-sector educational model to deliberately and systematically destroy the 100-year public service tradition of quality and diversity in our A&S College's liberal arts and in its undergraduate and graduate curriculums:

Thomas E. Barden director
Jamie Barlowe chair
Susan Batten STEMM professor
Charlie Blatz director
Kathleen Fitzpatrick chair
Margaret E. Fritz v.p.
Christine A. Habrecht v.p.
Marcia King-Blandford v.p.
Thomas J. Kvale director
Steven E. Leblanc dean
Walter W. Olson STEMM professor
Angela Paprocki director
Sudershan Pasupuleti director
Kaye Patten Wallace v.p.
Steven M. Peseckis STEMM professor
Penny Poplin Gosetti pres. executive assistant
Mary Frances Powers STEMM professor
Benjamin S. Pryor chair
Brian W. Randolph dean and assoc. directer
Jennifer L. Rockwood director
Joseph Russell student trustee
Barbara Schneider director
Mojisola F. Tiamiyu associate dean

What but the combination of crass pecuniary motivation, selfish ambition, fear and rightest ideology explains their lockstep collaboration with the Jacobs regime? Look also closely and critically at the list of willing faculty participants in the continuing Zemsky Roundtable. What motivates them? They are all the same: sellouts to their ambitious self-interests. Are they professional faculty or wannabe ladder-climbing administrators?

President Jacobs claims he is not paid what he is worth to orchestrate the successful creative destruction he is now inflicting on UT, and especially on the A&S College, its students, faculty, staff and alumni. The above-listed faculty collaborators, and the Roundtable faculty collaborators, probably also feel they or not paid what they are worth to betray their profession as public higher education teachers. Yet they collaborate willingly and and are thus conspirators in the sinking and looting of the Good Ship UT. Faculty wedded to administration are the rats in academia that seem to survive their sinking ship to grow fatter elsewhere. Ambition. Greed. Power. Betrayal. Piracy.

jenny said...

Jacobs is a complete embarrassment for the University of Toledo. How long will it take to board to realize this and get a real scholar to run UT?

He has no understanding of a University or Academia background. Furthermore, he couldn't run MCO properly as it's always listed as the bottom of the barrel Medical school. They better do something before UT becomes like low-level/low-skilled MUO. He can spend all the UT money he wants on "University-quality care" commercials...but the numbers still stand....MUO stinks, and UT will soon follow if he isn't ousted soon.

Bloggie said...

Dear Ted:


Fuck You.


Walter Olson

Diogenes said...

Argh! Pirate talk! Clear the poop deck!

umbraged said...

But if you clear the deck of poop, who'll be left to administrate?

Kathleen Fitzpatrick said...

Ted,

Whoever you are, it is clear that you don't know me, so I'll share a few things. First, I must clarify my title. I am not, nor have I ever been chair of any department. I have declined the opportunity, however. In fact, I'm not even chair of any committee. (so much for my blind ambition)

I'm not teaching summer session, either. (don't have much pecuniary greed) What I do have is an intense desire to be the best teacher I can be and to help my students learn in the most effective way.

In fact, the nucleus of the idea for making connections between classes came from one of my students. In fall,2007, he said: "Mrs. Fitzpatrick, When you go to your next faculty meeting, tell them (that's you, Ted) that students want to see a connection between their courses." That's where my motivation comes from.

Recently, I told this student about our academic journey plans and he thanked me for helping students' voices to be heard. Other students have said: "What took you so long?" That is why I am on this committee.

This committee has worked hard to create a wonderful idea that students will embrace. I believe the members of this committee have the students' interests at heart, and I am proud to be associated with them.

As for you, Ted, all that hatred and negativity must be eating you up inside. Can't be good for your blood pressure either.

OK. That's all I have time for. I've got to go hijack another ship.

Kathleen Fitzpatrick,
Chair of absolutely nothing

Anonymous said...

Lots of Ted's title's are wrong for people. Penny hasn't been assistant to the president for years. Does Ted even work here?

Ted said...

Kathleen. I apologize for identifying you as an administrator (a "chair") and thus positioned to be directly manipulated by higher-level administrators as a member of the Keystone Project. I am demoting you from pirate to stowaway, and attach an updated list of Provost Haggett's handpicked list of original Keystone committee participants:

Thomas E. Barden -- director
Jamie Barlowe -- chair
Susan Batten STEMM -- professor
Charlie Blatz -- director

Kathleen Fitzpatrick -- (update: UT Associate Professor of Applied Organizational Technology)


Margaret E. Fritz -- v.p.
Christine A. Habrecht -- v.p.
Marcia King-Blandford -- v.p.
Thomas J. Kvale -- director
Steven E. Leblanc -- dean
Walter W. Olson -- STEMM professor
Angela Paprocki -- director
Sudershan Pasupuleti -- director
Kaye Patten Wallace -- v.p.
Steven M. Peseckis -- STEMM professor

Penny Poplin Gosetti -- (update: interim vice provost)

Mary Frances Powers STEMM -- professor
Benjamin S. Pryor -- chair
Brian W. Randolph -- dean and assoc. director
Jennifer L. Rockwood -- director
Joseph Russell -- student trustee
Barbara Schneider -- director
Mojisola F. Tiamiyu -- associate dean

Also, thank you Kathleen for your lifetime commitment to classroom teaching, and public service. Your title and specialization does imply, however, that you support applying the business model and implementing online learning systems to transforming the A&S College. But you do not have to be a member of the Keystone Project to teach your in-classroom students how A&S College courses are meaningfully connected to others in the College, and to courses taught across the university campus in other colleges. Every teacher has the obligation to do so on the first day of class. I fear that your collaboration with the Keystone Project will result 1) in the elimination of many A&S College courses in tenured and tenure-track faculty expertise areas (already derided by the Jacobs as "boutique" courses), and 2) the standardizing and "canning" of freshman and sophomore courses for distance learning dissemination, perhaps by private vendors (in Texas, India and so on), employing inexpensive learning "coaches" instead of more highly paid and dedicated teaching professionals with advanced degrees and tenure (like yourself). This trend will eliminate the opportunity for the professoriate to mentor and bond with students during their frequent personal encounters and exchanges in state public higher education campus classrooms. This Keystone project and the Zemsky Roundtable project are disturbingly alike insofar as they aim to justify and promote cost-cutting mergers and measures and thus transform A&S College by implementing an exercise in increased business efficiency. You yourself are part of a project that will soon begin to inflict a lot of collateral damage to the A&S curriculum. Your self-justification for participating seems sincere, but you have been deluded to think your participation will result in the improvement of quality classroom education at UT. The students, faculty, staff and alumni won’t be fooled long by redundant boilerplate justifications that cannot but result in the transformation of UT into a degree mill. The Jacobs administration aims to mass produce diplomas, and its arrogant and unapologetic attitude is "To hell with the liberal arts and the tenured professoriate."