UT's Officially Disapproved Information Source and HISTORICAL ARCHIVE. The only source of truth, where Paradox Manifests: Hundreds of thousands of visits. Yet No One Admits to Reading It. Welcome to the "Grey Area" where "Unethical Utterances," i.e., criticisms of administrators, are commonplace. Make U.U. here where genuine civility still reigns, a.k.a., freedom......................... UNIVERSITY OF TOLEDO'S EQUIVALENT TO RADIO FREE EUROPE
Jacobs' arrogance is astonishing
It's the same old, same old at UT
. . . . Either Jacobs is misleading the media or he has misled the Board of Trustees. President Jacobs objected to "the general tone" of the UT-AAUP Newsletter. Many persons on this campus object to the "general tone" of the Jacobs Administration. During his tenure as President, he has introduced an administrative culture of fear and intimidation. . . . A point of logic must be raised here, with all respect to UT AAUP, the conclusions that President Jacobs has (1) misled the media and (2) the Board of Trustees are not mutually exclusive. Both would seem likely given his considerable talent at spinning "visions." |
44 comments:
This may not be the almighty Chronicle, but it's still a story worth noting in my view.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/07/02/toledo
::applause::
Indeed, a joyful time, almost, isnt it?
Welcome back None (insert embrace and two-cheeked kiss)! I have missed you since you destroyed the evidence of your previous postings and bolted. Now you return like Lazarus, bearing new sarcasm. However, you are dead right with this one. None need take joy in the heat of this battle. Brave students in the "We Are UT" unit are risking their necks in public where most of us in other units have yet feared to tread. It is time to roll out some more of our own banners and cassions in support of their splendid charge! There is no falling back now! The July 17th President's Town Hall Meeting is on! (unless lj cancels it -- again).
If he cancels it, we'll still be at the HSC. We have our own reasons and he won't shake us that easily.
Why do you keep deleting comments? It seems as if you have something to hide and you don't want other reading what some have to say. To me that seems a little biased and it's hard to take your arguments seriously about UT when you clearly have something that you are hiding.
I'm not sure what you guys are trying to accomplish with this battle you've started but it rather foolish. While I admire your dedication to the cause it's a petty one.
Dr. Jacobs bring vision to the University of Toledo which it has lacked in years. In the last two years a lot of change have taken place for the better but it seems they have gone unnoticed by the students. The University if a pretty f'd up place as a whole and not every problem can get fixed over night.
I think it's worth pointing out that the little battle that you are fighting is just that, a little battle. It's so insignificant in terms of all the things wrong at UT that it's selfish to bitch and moan so much about your little world.
Other colleges share some of the same problems so perhaps your passion would be better off working together on things like tuition, run down facilities, sloppy information technology, campus safety, etc. These are the things you should bring up at the town hall. They are the things Dr. Jacobs wants to hear and can help with. Stop being so selfish.
I bet you pull this post anyway.
How can you be serious about your poll regarding the worst president that UT has had in the recent years?
Were any of you actually around during the days of the others?
It's clear now more than ever that so many students have been brainwashed by the faculty into regurgitating the same rhetoric.
The faculty hated Kapoor for whatever reasons. He was aggressive and wanted change.
The faculty like Johnson because he was a push over and did nothing.
The faculty hates Jacobs because he come with vision and wants to make UT a better place. This involves change.
Do you see the theme here?
Make up your own mind and fight your own fights. Don't be a pawn in someone else's battle.
I bet you delete this too because you won't want to hear both sides.
Re Sinclair 111's comments. We have not deleted any comments, not even your foolishness. If you look, you will see an explanation "this post has been removed by its author," which means exactly what it says. It is difficult to take your arguments seriously when it is clear you cannot read. And students are not really brainwashable-- if this is your model of education I imagine you have not been very successful at it.
blah blah blah, flame you, flame me, but you posted your response twice.
yes, I did post twice. And now I will delete one of them so I can brainwash you on how the site works.
Sinclair. I like your spunk (but I think you are drunk). Those who post comments can also choose to delete them. “None” for example enjoys posting his arguments and then deleting them. Few others delete their posts. As you suggest, the stakes are so small (but that is the story of academic politics, isn’t it). Your statement “you clearly have something that you are hiding” is an oxymoron or something, so I will simply deny that accusation and move on. You perceive our “battle” foolish and our “cause” petty. That just means you are wearing blinders. If you don’t like the liberal arts, just say so. Perhaps you think the A&S college is a hotbed of liberalism? Do you like the First Amendment and are you in support of preserving a democratic society? Such blessed rarities are not born in test tubes. So our battle is not foolish and our cause is not petty. Everybody has vision. Some people have different visions than others. There is the rub. Some people with nearly absolute power, like a hand-picked university president, who shares a vision with some powerful ideologues, is obligated and highly paid to try and impose that vision aggressively upon others. Others attempt to resist that aggression because it is wrong. Concerned students and faculty who have ethical and moral backbone and recognize a wrong when they see it, will rise against it. You further perceive our university is “f’d up.” President Jacob’s used the word “broken.” You are both wrong. We have an excellent university and an excellent A&S college and an excellent liberal arts tradition and are fighting to preserve it. You are a thug. You use the language of a thug to disparage our sincere commitment and our just cause. You are correct that we a fighting a little battle here, but we are soldiering on without wasting any time on bitching and moaning. We concerned students, faculty and alumni are anything but selfish, and are committed to abolishing this new and brute tyranny from our campus. It is a sacred task. All you can seem to do is bad mouth our good motivations and successful tactics and achievements. We hope to see you at the Town Hall Meeting too, where we can hope to resolve our differences with the Jacobs administration and supporters in a peaceful, democratic and productive way.
How many of you are griping because you are old deadwood who got tenure 20 years ago and haven't had anything resembling a research program since then. The A&S faculty has more than half its membership completely devoid of a research program, so they must fill their time with such banalities as faculty senate, a&s council, complaining about the administration, etc.. It's really depressing.
are you for real, concerned8027? faculty governance is a banality? it sounds like you are happy with the chinese communist party, too.
If you are spending half your time teaching and the other half in "governance", whether it be the A&S council, dept. committees, picking textbooks, whatever and if you therefore are producing no original scholarship, you should retire gracefully and let new faculty take your place.
How is picking textbooks a banality? Isn't that the start of scholarship? Research is one part of a professor's job, but teaching is another, and God forbid a professor take a few minutes to decide what book is best for their class. God also forbid that professors try to give input into what department or program needs funding the most during a committee meeting - who cares that the chemistry department needs new safety gear or that the art department doesn't have enough funding for a metalsmithing professor? Certainly not you.
While I would agree that splitting up professors' time into too many areas is not a good thing (it's not good for anyone), all of the professors I know who've been a part of the "irritable" faculty governance you've spoken of know how to manage their time. It's like telling students that higher education is only there for the classes you pay thousands for and not for everything else you get with it, intramurals, clubs, recognition of self, what have you - you're omitting a vital part.
Holy unintended consequences, Batman. We have more attention but the more people learn about this blog the greater the numbers who wonder if it might be the tiniest bit shortsighted.
This should help with the faculty recruitment we desperately need.
Melinda and Lawrence,
I think you are overreacting. I am just pointing out that lots of professors whose muses have run dry so to speak, who no longer have anything resembling a research program, instead fill their time with endless meetings, blog posts, complaining, ad hoc committees, etc... How can they expect to be taken seriously in an academic setting if they are no longer producing scholarship?
ok concerned 8027-
it might be good scholarship if you did not write under a pseudonym. while research is a great human endeavor and ideal for engaging students in open-minded inquiry, it can also be an ivory tower of escape from the real world. and, when your administration decides to withdraw support for YOUR discipline, if you or your "burned out" colleagues from across the campus do not respond, you deserve what you get. sometimes it is more rewarding working on your colleagues and students' behalf, or supporting your spouse's efforts to overthrow the chinese communist party, than writing the next paper about stellar atmospheres.
Says a full-professor who has a "research profile" at
http://www.utoledo.edu/as/physast/facstaff/_People/_Facpages/faAnde.html
listing a single paper in 1989...
Concerned8027 - Stop making unaccountable generalizations and pulling vague quantifiers ("more than half...," "lots of...") out of thin air. And stop denigrating the teaching and service side of things. Those are legitimate and necessary parts of our job, too, for which we are contractually obligated, and for which we are assessed and evaluated. And I would say at a university like UT that teaching should and does rank highly in that assessment, given our mission of being "student-centered." For that matter, curricular issues, part of service, also should rank highly in a student-centered university. Research is important, and it, too, serves the students, particularly when we teach them how to do it, but it is not all we are hired to do. Moreover, each individual faculty member contributes to those three important functions in different ways. And if the senior faculty are too overburdened with service to be as productive in research as might be ideal, that's not their fault, but it *is* a shame. I just got tenure and already I'm worried that my department will start looking to me to be an associate chair or chair too soon, to the detriment of my own research program. And I've already been director of graduate studies since before being tenured.
And that brings me to the point that the future of UT is in its assistant and associate professors, and so far we're a productive bunch, in research, teaching, and service. If you want a concrete example, I'll offer myself: I was just tenured after four years with a book and four articles. I have two more articles currently in progress and I'm developing my second book. (I'm in the humanities -- that's a large quantity on our side of things.) I'm also director of one of our MA programs (service) and one of this year's winners of the university outstanding teaching awards. But even I may not be able to maintain it all if the administration's hiring priorities keep shrinking our numbers and I have to take on more and more service commitments. The same goes for my equally impressive assistant and associate prof colleagues in my department and across the college.
And if the university administration, keeps going down the road it's going, denigrating what we do in the Arts and Sciences, UT may lose most if not all of its most promising young faculty, the ones who are most personally and professionally flexible enough to move. Some have already fled. If that continues to happen, your assertion that more than half of our faculty are devoid of research programs may actually become true, as the lines won't be replaced and the burden of service will become even greater for those who are left.
As for your suggestion that those without research programs should gracefully retire and make room for new faculty -- what makes you think those lines will be replaced? I forgot what tiny fraction of retirements in A&S overall were actually replaced with lines this year, but our department lost 3 to retirement and got back 1.
The problem is systemic, not personal. It's also not limited to UT, but it is being exacerbated by the current administration, who in many ways prevent us from doing our jobs, and who are attempting to drain the biggest college in the university of its resources and centrality.
Ms. Fitzgerald,
I am going to buy your book
The Drama of Masculinity and Medieval English Guild Culture
immediately from Amazon.
Woah, take it easy. There are lots of issues here and I suggest you think them though one at a time:
Faculty productivity: faculty members at UT spend a lot of time teaching and advising, and it is very difficult to keep active research going year after year, particularly in the sciences when newer faculty from well-funded institutions come along and propel things forward. That's not a complaint, it's just true. You will not find an institution with a similar profile that doesn't have the same "problem." But I put problem in quotes because I'm not sure it's a problem. Many students learn a lot from faculty who have turned their attention away from new research to focus on teaching. Enlightened institutions find ways to facilitate this, and there is nothing wrong with it. There is something wrong with pawning off yellowed notes as "cutting edge," but if those notes are interesting, reflective, and get students thinking, what's the harm?
Faculty governance: It's really important and I haven't heard a coherent response from any of those who are mocking it convincing me that it is anything less than valuable.
Filling their time: some of the things with which veteran faculty fill their time are really important, therefore. I'd rather have someone with a sense of history, a commitment to teaching, a long tenure at the institution, etc. running the show. It provides stability for the students and helps incremental changes along. If they're committed to the profession, to teaching, to the institution, well, that's a pretty good resume. As long as someone isn't waving yellowed notes in my face and telling me that my research is bunk, I support faculty who are not on the research intensive track. In fact, this is a big topic among leadership gurus in higher ed, and many institutions are coming up with interesting alternatives to the publish or perish mentality that is so destructive to higher education. (Publishing is very very important. But so is teaching, reading, etc.).
In short, be judicious and think past your evident resentment toward A&S. There are many scholars doing very good work in the college (you also dismissed our scholarship, calling it "mediocre," if you are the same commentator from IHED). There are many outstanding teachers (or let's say the ratio of outstanding to average is no different here than at comparable institutions) who teach very good courses in the college. And those whose research is "cutting edge" and who spend their time in labs rather than in the classroom (which, again, I support under the right circumstances) are really making a name for the college, earning grants and positive attention faster than they can spit.
I did not post anything on IHED.
Can we at least agree that those with no research program should be assigned extra teaching?
Sincere&Concern. You Swift Boaters are fouling up the wrong river here. Your own ilk already runs this university (but not for long). Thanks anyway for repeatedly reminding us that you're not so swift after all. A UT liberal arts education would do you a mighty world of good. We could have you quoting Robert Burns in appropriate ways in no time. So why don't you floatsam on back downstream to your talk radio, lame blowhard hosts and tacky Platinum Showgirls ads. Take None with you.
Concerned:
sorry if I attributed a comment to you at IHED that wasn't yours. It was similar in content.
Some faculty not engaged in active research might actually WISH to have extra teaching (and most of them do). The institution must take steps to reward that extra teaching. As things stand, the "extra teaching" route is treated as failure in merit and promotion reviews, and therefore there is incentive to do less teaching and take the hits on research.
I also think that heavy university service is an alternative to a slower research agenda, but this is precisely the thing to which you object. That's for another conversation.
What I object to is poor Christina Fitzgerald up above doing good research, chairing the graduate program, getting early tenure and still making less than $50K /year while some guy ironically named Professor Free in the same department is pulling in $121K per year!
hi again, concerned-
i appreceiate your sentiment, but you seem pretty "free" with names, salaries, and websites that are not your own...
Concerned:
You and I agree on this much: let's get Professor Fitzgerald a huge, well deserved raise.
I think my husband would wonder about my interest in Platinum Showgirls, Diogenes.
You guys started this blog and when I first posted here I said the path you guys are following isn't the right strategic one to get rid of Lee. And your instant response to me was in effect "You're a coward, this is a holy noble cause, disagreement = traitor, weakness"; a general George W. Bush response to criticism, really.
Now, when you finally get some national attention, people read the story, get appropriately mad at the admin for their e-mails and then come here and see that clearly the faculty and the admin deserve each other and the support you were hoping to generate evaporates.
You needed a Martin Luther King Jr. response, dignity in the face of indignity. Instead, you're rioting and relishing in the notion of the chaos you're causing.
And by the way, we can't get raises based on merit in the AAUP. We have to get counteroffers.
"websites that are not my own"? What does that mean exactly, if I Google your name and it brings me to a website where you have a "research profile" posted, that is for public consumption, you posted it, it is not "your own" in the sense that noone should be able to refer to it in an online forum.
As for Christina she posted that she is just got tenure, she's in the humanities, she has a new book out, she runs the graduate program. I typed in Christina into the first name search at utoledo.edu and found out who she is in 1 minute. If she wanted to remain anonymous she should have kept her private info underwraps.
As to the salaries, UT is a public school, they are public record. For instance I see that yours is a lot closer to Christina's then to Professor Free's.
Hi Nonette. Well then, your husband is square. I don't have an appropriate Martin Luther King Jr. quote at hand, but here is something perhaps appropriate from Martin Luther:
"Aus einem verzagten Arsch kommt kein fröhlicher Furz."
You're just about to "mother" jokes, don't stop now Diogenes, you're almost there...
If we can't get Christina a raise at least we can all buy her book and try to get it into the top 1 million in the amazon rankings
http://www.amazon.com/Masculinity-Medieval-English-Culture-Middle/dp/140397277X/
ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215107290&sr=1-2
For the record, I wasn't trying to hide my identity. In fact, I purposely used my real name Gmail account to sign in; I even thought it would come up with my full name. But when it didn't, I figured I'd given enough info for anyone to do exactly what Concerned did. And I'm not worried about Concerned having posted my name and my book's title.
But I wasn't fishing for a raise or praise. I was only using myself as an example because, well, that's the CV I know best. But I can tell you I'm not exceptional among my cohort.
As for Prof. Free, his salary is an outlier, having been inflated by his having been Provost and having been at the university for many years. He really isn't a good example to use for good or for ill.
At any rate, my point was more along the lines of Tully's point, that we have a variety of faculty with a variety of strengths, at various points in their careers, with different loads of responsibility, all of whom contribute to the university. I'm sure my research productivity will wane as I have to take on more governance and service responsibilities -- it's one reason why I'm trying to do as much as I can now. But that doesn't make what I have done as an asst. prof. less valuable and it doesn't make our senior faculty less valuable in their roles. But it does mean that I and my junior faculty peers are more able to leave, and *that*, IMHO, is worth thinking about. Good people, however you define it, have left, are thinking about leaving, and will leave.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure this administration gives a flying fig is a scholar of medieval literature or anyone else in a non-STEM, non-applied field leaves.
Christina you need to go on the job market, get off the ship now before it goes down!
I just added Tina's book to my shopping cart, where it will have to wait for my purchase of Bach Cantatas (#7 from Gardiner's series), Trilling's "The Liberal Imagination" (gotta catch up on my classics), Lombardo's translation of the Iliad, and of course three new books in my area of specialization that I'll never have a chance to read until December.
NONE:
I share your desire for if not a "hero" (you erased that comment, but I still remember it), then for a tone of civility and a focus on the issues. You have often mistaken outrage and candor for bad behavior, though that does not mean that there has not been bad behavior here and there. In the interest of collegiality, perhaps you can lead by example and propose alternatives to what some--but certainly not all--commentors and contributers to this blog propose. You did start the name-calling, and if you want it to end I suggest you take the lead.
I agree that the admin and some in A&S "deserve each other," but as Lou Reed says, "in fact, that's why they got married." It's a bad marriage desperately in need of some counseling. I DO think that the admin has to own up to its atrocious behavior in the last two years in order to get the ball rolling. But really, for either party to spend too much time in therapy rehashing all the old slights will be counterproductive. For good measure, here's one of the best. Dr. Laura herself on how to rescue a marriage:
Treat your spouse as if you loved him or her with your last breath - - no matter how contrary to that you might feel at any one moment.
Think hard every day about how you can make your spouse's life worth living.
Be kind to the person you would want to love, hug, come home to, and sacrifice for."
Not exactly Martin Luther King, but hey.
Watch this guy, Christina. He is an anaconda giving you a "big squeeze": His sarcasm is even more transparent than Nonette's -- and much, much darker.
The harder we push Jacobs, the longer the Dean will stay put. Those e-mails proved how Machiavellian he is and so should be our response. The dean is gone as soon as Jacobs can say it was his decision and he wasn't forced into it. I'm not saying Jacobs is great, I'm saying he's predictable and his response to the tenor of this blog and similar efforts is predictable and exactly opposite what is best for A & S.
If faculty insist on never giving an inch, they are up against a man more similar to them than I imagine they are comfortable with. Kennedy didn't diffuse the missile crisis by saber-rattling the Soviets more, he chose to accept a calmer letter even after a more insulting and provacative one was later sent. And guess what... Kennedy's side ultimately won, without having to go nuclear.
The problem is that, in Bill Clinton's words, "wisdom and strength are not mutually exclusive". The faculty here are so set on looking strong, they keep wounding themselves with their own weapons and are too pumped up on their own adrenaline to notice.
Those of us who believe in your goals but not your methods... we notice... as we dig out the shrapnel you keep hitting us with too.
Oh good lord, I really didn't mean to make this about me. I was just using myself as an example because, well, ya gotta write what you know. Really. Flood my e-mail box with advice about my career if you really, really want to (please don't), and buy my book if you like (thanks!) but, um, yeah, can we drop me as the subject here, please?
TF: I spoke to the good lord and she agreed it's not about you and you just had the idea to NOT be anonymous, which is way more than any of us are willing to do, which is it's own interesting problem.
None:
I entirely agree, but remember that JFK was supported by a population that was rabidly anti-communist. I'm really not sure this blog has much impact, though it is a fun outlet. Putting this blog or its authors in JFK's shoes and Jacobs in Kruschev's might exaggerate the blog's stature. Faculty leaders are in a position to change not only the tone but the substance of the conversation, and I hope they will (even if this blog keeps up its ribaldry).
There is a momentum building here with (finally) a real opportunity for change at The University of Toledo. I do hope positive change for the institution occurs and those at all levels focused on power and personal gain are removed once and for all. This started long before Jacobs, and many of those directors in the Kapoor administration are making the day-to-day decisions. This is not to excuse Jacobs, but to suggest the problem is more deeply weaved in the fabric of the UT system.
Technology is not "evil," the rationale for use and those who control the learning technology should be investigated. A detailed audit on operations and hiring practices will tell all. So much for a "state" institution!
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