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Tuesday, September 16, 2008

First Round Table Meeting

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9 comments:

Diogenes said...

Provost Haggett has finally shared with A&S faculty and staff the "names" of the 33 Roundtable Participants along with a cover letter that states "for your information." This list of names is not very informative. Who are these people? Somebody who knows the answer please quickly compile a short bio of each participant so we can begin to discuss the virtues and vices of the selection method based on who was chosen. Provost Haggett's "list of names" is a mockery of transparency. She persists in her disrespect. She has this information. She chooses not to share it with concerned A&S students, faculty and staff, who have every right to know.

September 16, 2008 at 2:02 PM
sir lawrence said...

Abu-Absi, Kate Program Arts Living and Learning Com
Ajilore, Olugbenga Faculty Economics
Anderson-Huang, L Faculty Phys/Astr, Liberal Studies
Barnes, Sharon Faculty Interdisciplinary Studies
Beatty-Medina, Charles Faculty History
Bopp, Bernard Faculty Phys/Astr, Center for Teaching and Learning
Brady, Thomas Board Plastic Technologies
Burnett, Chris Faculty Art
Davis, Debra Faculty Art, Chair
Fedor, Teresa Community Ohio Senator
Funk, Max Faculty Chemistry
Gaillardetz, Richard Faculty Religious Studies
Gilbert, Charlene Faculty Center for Women
Griffith, Wendell Faculty Chemistry
Haggett, Rosemary Admin Provost
Heberle, Renee Faculty Political Science
Hottell, Ruth Faculty Foreign Languages, Chair
Karbula, Kristina Student Board Representative
Kiser, Marlon Community WGTE Manager
Komuniecki, Patricia Faculty Biological Sciences, Chair
Lindquist, Peter Faculty Geography, Chair
Lingan, Edmund Faculty Theatre and Film
McClelland, Nina A&S Dean
Moorhead, Daryl Faculty EEES
Morrison, Mary Community Ex-development officer
Poplin Gosetti, Penny Admin Vice Provost
Porter, Martin Community Director, Toledo School for the Arts
Pryor, Benjamin Faculty Philosophy, Chair
Randolph, Brian Admin Associate Dean, Engineering
Schneider, Barbara Faculty English, Writing Center
Tiamiyu, Mojisola Faculty Psychology
Tucker, David Faculty Communication
White, Donald Faculty Mathematics

September 17, 2008 at 8:02 AM
Diogenes said...

Thanks Lawrence, but your list is only slightly more informative and useful for the purposes of an informed and penetrating critique than Provost Haggett's original list of names. The Learning Alliance is on campus interviewing Roundtable Participants this week! Today! We The Unchosen have a voice too, and we want The Learning Alliance to hear and understand it before they hightailit back to PA. Please, quit stonewalling against full disclosure. Concerned students, faculty and staff need to have enough biographical information about the Participants to be able to begin to sort the wheat P’s from the chaff P’s. We want to be able to identify the UT Administration's sycophants and toadies from more credible Participants. We want to be able to identify Participants motivated by naked ambition and/or blind ambition from those who really care about maintaining breadth, diversity, and a tradition of excellence in critical thinking in our A&S College. We need biographical information that helps us identify any of that slimey sort of pious profiteering ideology in the Participants that today slimes Wall Street, so we can organize effectively and prevent it from slimeing our College and University tomorrow.

September 17, 2008 at 10:37 AM
sir lawrence said...

diogenes-
i think you are capable of looking up the portfolios of all these people. whatever i or anyone else could provide will not change your sense of slime. you seem dead set on being pessimistic. if anyone on this list has read your comment, they are rightfully insulted. you are welcome to your feelings about the administration- it will take a lot of good administrating to change the views of many of us including myself who are tired of policy without consensus. but the faculty on this list are all very dedicated to the college, and have worked tirelessly to make it better. the community members want a better college too.
so, instead of writing insults without providing your own biography, why not say what you want for the college? here are my easily measurable goals:
a) more doctoral programs across the college, and some MFAs. zemsky was shocked that someplace calling itself a university had so few.
b) a community support system for students around the campus: more fine ethnic restaurants, bookstores, coffee houses with poetry readings, gallery displays, improv theatre, recitals, etc.
c) more outstanding lecture series for the public. hey- come to the McMaster Cosmology Colloquium, by Joshua Frieman from the University of Chicago: "The Accelerating Universe: Ten Years On" at 4 pm in mcmaster hall tomorrow, the 18th. http://astro.uchicago.edu/people/joshua-a-frieman.shtml
d) a strong and happy relationship between the TMA and the university.
and finally, the a&s council will provide ample time before and after the roundtable "events" for all interested faculty to participate in suggestions and analysis.

September 17, 2008 at 6:10 PM
Diogenes said...

Respectfully, Lawrence, there is not a lot of time for Robert’s Rules of Order here. The barbarians and moneylenders are inside the gates already. I have taken your good advice and am compiling portfolios of the 33 Roundtable Participants, searching for significant insights. Here is one: A prominent Roundtable Participant was interviewed by the Toledo Business Journal in 2005, and I quote here from the interview:

“However, my view is that - while valuing collaboration - we must also ask, and allow, the private sector to drive those aspects of our economic development effort which require focused actions, which may not be agreeable to every constituency, and where competition, the free market, and the profit motive are the assets and incentives for success ... One of my greatest frustrations with our economic development agencies, our public agency boards, and our economic development efforts generally is that we consistently attempt to be sure that every constituency is "okay with the plan.” The private sector is driven by results. Since the only results important to a private sector company are future results, private sector leaders hire employees who are appropriately trained and who are able to address future business requirements, and private sector companies target their resources, investments, and strategies to those business opportunities with the highest probability of achieving future results, usually measured by profitability ... We should seek public sector leaders who are courageous enough and creative enough to support business economic development within the private sector, while focusing our public sector resources on building an appealing and business-friendly infrastructure.”

This formula for success seems the brutish road leading to a Fascist kleptocracy, unsuited to shaping our public university and our A&S College in particular. Why should we allow our university and this fine College, given its history of demonstrated excellence, to be measured by outside efficiency experts led by a corporatist economic-growth ideology that obsesses over privatization and profit? We don’t want to be slimed. Many students, faculty and staff who are loyal to the proud tradition of American public higher education are critical thinkers who have moral and ethical concerns about these new “Directions” for our university and thus doth protest their implementation. We do not agree with guru Zemsky (“focused actions”), the Jacobs Team (“public sector leaders”) and the influential Roundtable Participant (“my view”) quoted above, that broad-based collaborative efforts in search of excellence at the University of Toledo need, should or can be driven by private sector values.

September 18, 2008 at 5:58 AM
yo, duh! said...

With all due respect, I think Sir Lawrence is missing Diogenes' point: we, the 'unchosen,' have been given little, if any, background on the people who will be making decisions about our College that may--or may not, wait and see?--bring about resounding changes for all of us. And we--A&S faculty, staff, and students-- have a right to know where those people are coming from, where they see the College going and why, where their loyalties lie, and so forth. Yes, I am sure "... the faculty on this list are all very dedicated to the college"--we in A&S have so many excellent faculty members doing so much excellent teaching, and we are rightly proud of that--and by the way, Diogenes never said otherwise. But not all of the Roundtable members are faculty--and what about them? Some of them will be fine participants, but others may indeed turn out to be slimy--like it or not, no matter how much we'd like to think they're not or how much we'd like to think we can trust them to do the right thing by A&S. And compiling portfolios of the Roundtable participants is not the responsibility of us "onlookers"--it is the responsibility of the group who sent out invitations to compile this and make it readily available to us! Short bios of the participants should long have been at the ready--certainly the chosen were not chosen without this information being available to the committe. All that should have to take place now is take out the bios of those who for whatever reason are not serving, and make the information readily available to everyone who cares.

September 18, 2008 at 12:13 PM
sir lawrence said...

hi yo,duh-
on the other hand, diogenes does not say anything good about the faculty either- when he asks "to identify the UT Administration's sycophants and toadies from more credible Participants - We want to be able to identify Participants motivated by naked ambition and/or blind ambition from those who really care about maintaining breadth, diversity, and a tradition of excellence in critical thinking in our A&S College", he can only be talking about faculty. putting that description on the community participants who are totally independent is equally insulting.
be that as it may, "compiled portfolios" of the participants are not likely to address sliminess, now are they? when was the last time you saw the word sycophant in a vita or even a letter of recommendation? sliminess is in the eye of the beholder, and becomes apparent more from personal interaction than from written documents. so, i don't think the documentation you are requesting will make the diogeneses of the world any happier.
You also say "Short bios of the participants should long have been at the ready--certainly the chosen were not chosen without this information being available to the committee. All that should have to take place now is take out the bios of those who for whatever reason are not serving, and make the information readily available to everyone who cares." sorry, there were no bios. you seem to be asking for the same degree of examination as takes place in a faculty hire. this assessment is only a conversation, for gosh sakes! it will not set the path of the college for the next 100 years. i hope it plays a role in the next 10, but if we allow ANY single conversation to fix our path, we deserve what we get.
i think i explained in a previous comment (or a letter to the faculty) how the participants were chosen. we each came to a meeting with a list of 10 names. we went around the table listing our names one by one, with personal rationale. we ran out of spaces at about the same time as we ran out of names, with 10-12 alternates in case original choices refused for one reason or another. faculty were chosen from all ranks and we tried to be as diverse in culture and gender as possible. we chose master teachers and strong researchers. we chose the relatively quiet and relatively outspoken.
the fact that 25 or so faculty were chosen by a committee consisting of one board member, two administrators, one interim dean designate, one faculty chair, and a silly astronomer, says a fair amount about the attitudes of the non-faculty members. tom brady, the board member on the steering committee (and the author of the quote diogenes provides), was very open and receptive. when he suggested community names, he suggested people with community leadership roles, not simply CEOs or other business executives. he may have particular views on the role of the university- that is OK- everyone has a right to their own views. i think if you read his article carefully, you will also see that he wants employees and managers who can think for themselves in a rapidly changing business environment. he recognizes the importance of dialog and consensus, and is willing to be educated. i hope all of us are so willing. take his paper into your classroom and ask your students to write their own thoughts. send the results to brady. It might be the start of a good conversation.
please consider that administration participation in the roundtable consists of only 4.5 people: brady, haggett, poplin gosetti, randolf, and morrison (the 0.5 since she has recently left UT). randolf is there in his role as associate dean of engineering, in charge of evaluating the service courses taught by A&S for engineering (we probably should have had a pharmacist too). indeed, these administrators are the ones most directly involved with our college. i wish there were more, so more would hear the stories of so many good faculty.
i know there are many MORE great faculty out there who were not "chosen". but i also know that most, if not all, of the faculty who were chosen have some or all of the same misgivings that those of you writing on this blog have. they are, however, willing to move beyond complaining and confrontation to try to affect real change in administration attitudes and in the quality of our college. maybe you are too, but i don't know who you are.

September 19, 2008 at 8:03 PM
Diogenes said...

Thanks SL for responding at length to our concerns. We continue to respect your moderate voice and peaceful leadership on behalf of the A&S Council's Executive Committee and A&S Council Representatives. However, your post here demonstrates that you do not yet entirely grasp the urgency of the issue at hand nor acknowledge the insidious threat posed by the Zemsky Investigation to the traditional integrity of our excellent A&S College and the continued vitality of its diverse offerings in the liberal arts, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. We, concerned students, faculty and staff, represent a loyal if occasionally irreverent opposition to the implementation of the "Directions" document and the untenable assumptions that prop it up. We know from reading the Zemsky et all book that President Jacob's "Directions" fit Zemsky's enterprising ideology hand in glove. This is the same ideology, impoverished by its lack of ethical and moral concerns that achieves its corrupt pecuniary goals by manipulating the public trust with endless spin. We are asked to trust the UT Board of Trustees and its hand-picked administration to "do the right thing" where the A&S College is concerned. Why should they? They have no stake in its non-profit educational mission which we ourselves hold dear and to which we are loyal. Anyone loyal to the fine traditions of our A&S College and once informed by reading the "Directions" document and the Zemsky book (that reveals the dangerous ideological underpinnings that drives the Learning Alliance investigation) should be appalled and share our concerns. You should, too. But instead you write here "this assessment is only a conversation, for gosh sakes! it will not set the path of the college for the next 100 years. i hope it plays a role in the next 10 ..." At this morning's President's Town Hall meeting President Jacobs made clear that the results of the Learning Alliance experience will play an important role in mapping the direction of the A&S College for the next 100 years. Our Interim Dean was in the audience and can verify the President's clear intentions regarding the Zemsky Report (due as commissioned in February, 2009). Why are you dissembling about the importance of the Zemsky Investigation and its benchmarking mission when so much is at stake? Why do you write that the carefully selected 33-person Roundtable is comprised of only "4.5" administration voices and 22 faculty when even the biographical scraps you have thrown to us here on the margins reveal that numerous chairs and directors are also members of the Roundtable, and thus are not “authentic” faculty voices but in-the-first-instance voices in the direct employ of the Jacobs Administration and voluntarily removed from faculty bargaining unit at increased pay and reduced teaching loads? A skeptic might assume they have all been vetted by the BOT watchdog on the Roundtable because of their perceived willingness to “go with the flow” (Zemsky’s market-smart mantra that "change is inevitable") no matter how ethically and morally polluted the River of Change becomes over time. What this Roundtable Participant body really represents is the SILENCED MAJORITY of our campus community, including its faculty. Most students, faculty and staff act in ways intimidated by this administration. What is it that scares the majority on our campus afraid into silence? This: their matriculations and promotions and jobs as UT students and employees are perhaps at risk if they exhibit any more "bad behavior." I have read that exact phrase in print used by both our irate Provost and President. If this were not so, then the student representative on the Roundtable would be one of the well-informed, concerned and dedicated A&S students who risked raising their voices at the President's Town Hall meetings and stuck around the university over the summer to successfully protect our A&S College from opportunistic administrative hijinks. My bet is that their names came up, but their participation in the Roundtable was nixed by You Kow Who. Please correct me if I am wrong. The Zemsky special forces are here to mop up what is left of the concerned sf&s resistance to two years of hard-fought battles with this powerful administration, which has resulted in low faculty morale in the A&S College, increasing resignations and now the prospect of mass early retirements. Who (what) will be left? Market-smart A&S robots designed by Zemsky entrepreneurs to mass produce more spin that sells degrees at ever increasing speeds to anybody with a pulse. We concerned sf&s realize that speaking out in protest against our "Directions" is not good for business in an institute of public higher education that is being rapidly re-shaped to fit an inhumane business model. Yet we protest. We are not a “business” and even the word "enterprise" which President Jacobs used repetitively at his Town Hall Meeting today is an affront to those who support the venerable traditional educational mission of American public higher education. The Zemsky Investigation serves mainly the interests of the Jacob's administration's corporatist, managerialist ideology. I hesitate to conclude irreverently that UT seems to be fast becoming a circus run by mercenary clowns whose commissions are paid by popcorn sales and profits -- and where The Brady Bunch is at this moment composing the marching music for Alexander's Ragtime Band.

September 23, 2008 at 11:23 AM
sir lawrence said...

wow, diogenes-
thank YOU for a cogent and complete description of your concerns! finally something people can respond to, with, i hope, equal intensity. i apologize for my inability to ferret it out from previous postings that were more sarcastic.
i do not understand why you write anonymously; what you write is a valid and reasonable viewpoint. the administration can react in one of two ways:
a) interesting- let's talk to this guy to see how we can come to a certain commonality, or at least an agreement to disagree, or
b) ah ha! this is the gal we have to sideline somehow.
my experience is not enough to know with any certainty which route it would take. you are arguing from past experience (i assume), and certainly others in council have expressed the same reservations from their experiences.
now, up front i admit my naïveté and optimism in the current process.
i cannot argue against your reservations (nor do i necessarily want to)- however, what little interaction with "the brady bunch" that i have had indicates to me that administrator perceptions are actually fairly fluid. there seems to be some evolution in, for example, jacobs’ views (wait! i am not apologizing for him; only saying my thoughts). for one thing, he seems to have finally given haggett a project of her own. as far as i can tell, he has backed away, other than to make the statements that you refer to in his town hall meeting. i could certainly be wrong, and i will remain alert, i assure you. i will continue to listen to others' evidence such as you might have. i do prefer to hear from you as a real person, though.
i know that you will be represented well on the roundtable, and you were represented (even by me) in the setup interviews with the alliance team.
i agree that there are certain constituencies that are not well represented. i will say that your "bet" is misplaced- no name that came up in the steering committee discussion was nixed. unfortunately, as i mentioned before, both students and staff were mentioned but not taken seriously enough essentially until too late. i take my responsibility for that mistake. all i can say is that i, and i know many of the other faculty, will do our best to bring them into the conversation virtually.
i do see my role as a facilitator of conversation between disparate views; i have a history of that, and i think that is why i was elected chair of council. i plan to insure that the administration hears our part of the conversation, but i also want all of us to hear and discourse on their part while they are listening. i know that our students are doing a good job of "illuminating" the administrative positions and holding their feet to the fire. i hope we faculty do the same, but i also hope we look carefully at our own positions to see what is best for the college.

September 23, 2008 at 6:17 PM

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