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
 
 

FYI Reading Material

The following reading has been brought to Bloggie's attention by a reader.  Thank you. 

It concerns research on no confidence votes and their effects, and is taken from the Chronicle. You will note the accuracy of some of the researcher's findings if you paid attention to events at UT last summer:  

Schmidt,  Peter. (2009, June 12).   How to Fire Your President: Voting 'No Confidence' With Confidence. The Chronicle of Higher Education,http://chronicle.com/daily/2009/06/19892n.htm College faculties often use votes of "no confidence" to try to push out the leader of their institutions. Many do so, however, without giving much thought to what such a vote actually means, whether they are using it appropriately, or how it will affect their institution—and their own future. Mae Kuykendall, a professor of law at Michigan State University and an expert on corporate law, has spent much of the past two years studying the no-confidence vote's origins, philosophical underpinnings, and uses in higher-education institutions and other organizations. She is scheduled to discuss her findings in Washington on Saturday at an international conference on college governance, academic freedom, and globalization sponsored by the American Association of University Professors. The Chronicle asked her to share her insights in an interview conducted via e-mail: Q. Where did the no-confidence vote, as a way to change an organization's leadership, originate? Where is it used? A. The phrase arose in the British Parliament [in 1782, in response to the British surrender to the Americans at Yorktown]. The vote has come to express the loss of support by a group whose cooperation is necessary for a leader's exercise of her duties. Libraries, police departments, public schools, fire departments, universities and their subunits, and various nonprofit groups use the vote of no confidence. Q. How does the vote fit in, or contrast, with other means of trying to remove a leader? A. A vote of no confidence undermines a leader's claim to legitimacy, a feature made evident by contrast with common, but illegitimate, means of trying to remove a leader, such as mutiny, rebellion, work stoppage, mob action, and assassination. … The essence of the vote of no confidence is that the group need not give reasons or a set of charges. It is simultaneously unauthorized and legitimate.  Q. You talk about colleges as "fuzzily governed" institutions. How do they differ from other places that you examined, and how does the no-confidence vote fit into a "fuzzy" governance structure? A. In authoritarian groups, regular members cannot demand a change. At the other end of the spectrum, democratic structures have clear, weighty procedures—impeachment and recall—for ousting their leaders. Universities and other nonprofit institutions sit in the middle of this spectrum. There is consultation to select leaders and to make decisions. Q. Is there a typical response to these votes from college presidents and boards of trustees? A. My research does not support a definite statement about a "typical" response. I can, however, describe one recurring pattern that almost could be said to follow a script. By a circular logic, the leader often claims that the outbreak of opposition is proof of his success: He or she is challenging an entrenched organizational culture that requires bold intervention. The president and his or her allies cite the call for ouster as evidence of stellar performance. The claim verges on a generic defense—one made even when the basis of a no-confidence petition arises from idiosyncratically personal flaws of the leader with no discernible connection to larger political concerns for the advancement of an institutional agenda. This response also serves to stigmatize those voting for removal, suggesting that they have betrayed their institutional trust and resist useful change. … When leaders eventually exit after a period of resistance and denial, the leader and/or the board typically issue bland claims that the exit and the no-confidence vote are unrelated. Indeed, in the archives of official statement, there is virtually no such event as "pressured leader exit." There is merely the change of mood by a leader, who, after a claimed success in one domain, decides to move on to private concerns or new challenges. Q. How effective is the vote? Is it more likely to bring about change in some situations than others?  A. A review of public announcements concerning leaders' exits plainly reveals that no-confidence votes often work. … One hypothesis that I have developed is that votes of no confidence are more likely to be effective in smaller institutional settings than in larger, more-complex universities in which the president is more remote from the faculty and the mission-related concerns of the schools differ. The credibility that accrues to a group that works directly with a leader is not present in larger, more-complex settings. The concern of an institution about its reputation in its relevant audience matters. If a school is willing to forgo the esteem of professional organizations and to risk prospective students' concerns about a leadership under a cloud, the vote of no confidence will fail to drive out a leader backed by a determined board. Q. Can such votes make matters worse for faculty members? A. One can readily find articles urging faculty members to avoid votes of no confidence, on the grounds that less disruptive, mediated solutions are better. … The claim that the vote of no confidence always yields an outcome that is worse than some other imagined state of affairs is not persuasive. Faculty members, who are generally averse to risk, see a vote of no confidence as a last resort in a bad situation. … The risks are real. Opposing the leader and losing can bring about what management theorist [Jean] Lipman-Blumen has called exile or "social death." In addition, a successful effort can have unpredictable effects on group dynamics. … These risks help discipline groups to avoid casual resorts to such votes. Q. Do faculties ever use these votes inappropriately? A. Votes of no confidence are about the values and goals of mission-driven institutions, such as universities. … For this reason, faculties should strive to distinguish between union actions not related to core academic functions and actions animated by a faculty responsibility for the mission of the university. Q. What practical advice would you give faculty members who are contemplating using a no-confidence vote to try to rid their institution of its current president?  A. First, talk with anyone you know in a similar institution that has experienced a vote of no confidence. Second, take with a grain of salt much of what you hear. Look for practical information, not fortune telling. … Colleagues at other institutions can tell you how a no-confidence vote developed, what role accrediting agencies may have played, what techniques seemed helpful, and where the greatest hazards, to collegiality and to the task of making ethical choices, lie. Since there is typically no formally authorized procedure for votes of no confidence, there is no rule book. Every decision is open to critique or high cost. Whether to call a formal meeting and whether to involve the untenured are good targets for second guessing. A vote of no confidence is a statement of fact, not a charge, so don't give a bill of particulars. The constant question for faculty in the midst of making these critical decisions is the one posed by the old Johnny Carson quiz show, with its deficient grammar—Who Do You Trust? One good answer that is hard to beat: Trust yourself. Copyright © 2009 by The Chronicle of Higher Education

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UT Senior Leadership Team

Notice they keep getting smaller.