Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
A MUST READ FOR ALL ACADEMICS! Now on Amazon Kindle. Click on Professor Goat above to be directed to the book.
DON'T BE A SHEEP
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
Search This Blog
NEW!!! Hard Eight by Professor Extreme
HARD EIGHT
Hard Eight: Auto-Ethnographic Essays on Academic Culture Featuring the End of the Arts & Sciences College, University of Toledo, 2010
Daily Koan
Should the newly discovered black hole be named in honor of UT BOT?
Swamp Bubble
Do you agree or disagree that University of Toledo suffers from administrative bloat?
How do you feel about the proposed UT Degree Guarantee program? (Reposted to allow more people to vote.)
How do you feel about the proposed UT Guarantee program?
How would you grade the overall performance of the Jacobs' administration on running the University of Toledo?
COMMENT OF THE WEEK
Bloggie applauds this perspicacious observer:
"The administration is in a panic mode to implement controversial and irreversible structural and curricular changes campus-wide by early February fiscal plan deadlines with only the vaguest notions of their impacts. The plan is, according to an interview with a top administrator published in the most recent Independent Collegian, to cast out many seeds and "see what grows." This experimental garden, as most senators articulated in many different ways, seems a costly recipe for disaster. Utter madness. Stay tuned."
Print Version of Dictionary of Academia Available on Amazon.com
The profound ruminations of the goaty Sage are now available in this 119 page satirical masterpiece. See: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1480292494/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B009RC0SJA&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1JV8N5BYAYY9WC9SJWD2
"Dictionary of Academia" Read it While it's Hot
A MUST READ FOR ALL ACADEMICS! Now on Amazon Kindle. Click on Professor Goat above to be directed to the book.
Comment of the Week
"This is that old tension between the corporate way of doing things and the academic way of doing things. In the corporate world, you sweep everything under the rug to make your b.s. as shiny, pleasing to the nose, and profitable as possible. In the academic world, you operate with a higher moral standard. Veritas and all that."
Comment of the Week of August 13
Re UT academic posers and hypocrites:
Have their checks calculated in units of postmodern theoretical currency and issued in photocopied legal tender notes signed by Walter Benjamin with a photo of Karl Marx and a seal stamped “In Derrida We Trust”.
Comment of the Era
Wow! Ain't that something.
-Anonymous
Comment of the Week
Mention goes to the the anonymous commentator of Feb 7, who, regarding UT President Llloyd Jacob's "Investing in Faculty" letter, stated: "If we could use the same criteria for 'investing in administrators' we could cut most of those positions."
Comments to HLC
Make sure you address your comments to HLC to the email address listed below in the "Higher Learning Commission Wants to Know" post. This may be the only chance you have to be heard. Bloggie hears that UT administration has discussed giving faculty "training" so that faculty members know how to "properly" talk to the HLC folks. How's that for stacking the deck? Does everyone get a little script to read? Make sure you practice before a mirror at being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
Comment of the Week!
Definitely, the Comment of the Week award goes to Anonymous 12:14 pm, Dec 3, under the "Higher Learning Commission Needs to Know" posting by Diogenes. Pithy and pointed!
--Love,
Bloggie
MESSAGE OF THE DAY:
DON'T BE A SHEEP
Independent Collegian Article on Dicey Administrative Spending
IC reporter Casey Cheap looks at bow ties, apartments and movie tickets purchased by UT administrators at university/public expense. See
TO CONTACT BLOGGIE . . .
Bloggie is always glad to consider submissions to this blog. If you have something that you wish posted please send it to:
ascbloggie@gmail.com
Letter and Petition from Foreign Languages Faculty Member
A couple weeks ago, at the beginning of summer break, we in the Department of Foreign Languages were informed that our secretary's position was being eliminated and that while she will not lose her job (she'll be transferred), that position is not to be filled. We apparently will be expected to do our own jobs plus what we can of the secretary's. That is clearly not acceptable, and so one of the steps we in FL are taking against it is an online petition now available for any who want to (including those who for whatever reason--not a registered Ohio voter, not a US citizen, etc.--cannot sign the petition against SB5), to read and sign.
I know not everyone on the blog will be interested in this; I'm not asking anyone who doesn't want to, to sign or even read the petition. I do think that there are many who would be interested and would want to sign it--if they knew about it.
It's scary to post this under my own name; I'm as afraid as anyone of repercussions. But this is simply too important to keep quiet on, and we have to do something! FL is not the first department that this has happened to, and it's almost certain not to be the last if we don't speak up in a way that the administration will hear us and in a way that makes clear that other people are seeing that it's going on.
Here's the link to the online petition:For those who can make it, there will also be an informational meeting--including lunch and petition-signing--next Friday, May 27 in FH 2420, 12:00 - 2:00 p.m.
I know not everyone on the blog will be interested in this; I'm not asking anyone who doesn't want to, to sign or even read the petition. I do think that there are many who would be interested and would want to sign it--if they knew about it.
It's scary to post this under my own name; I'm as afraid as anyone of repercussions. But this is simply too important to keep quiet on, and we have to do something! FL is not the first department that this has happened to, and it's almost certain not to be the last if we don't speak up in a way that the administration will hear us and in a way that makes clear that other people are seeing that it's going on.
Here's the link to the online petition:For those who can make it, there will also be an informational meeting--including lunch and petition-signing--next Friday, May 27 in FH 2420, 12:00 - 2:00 p.m.
Katherine Best
Wave of the Future or Merely Sometime Later This Week?
The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a deeply fascinating article called, "When to Dissolve a Faculty Senate." Apparently this is any time that it becomes "adversarial" to administration.
The online comments to the article are priceless.
Nemeth on Mammon in IC
David Nemeth's most recent tour-de-force
Professor Nemeth has another fabulous and timely article in the new and increasingly wonderful Independent Collegian. See http://www.independentcollegian.com/forum/the-kraken-attacks-1.2340091
Nemeth Does it Again
See the forum article in The Independent Collegian at:
Nemeth's New Article in Collegian
The Independent Collegian has run another of Professor Nemeth's fine and provocative articles in its latest edition. This one discusses the double-talk by mouthpieces for the current UT administration concerning the effects of and reasons behind so-called strategic reorganization. Make sure you get the latest version of Newspeak 5.1 if you want to decode what UT administrators are really saying.
UT Ranks 13th Nationally on Administrative Bloat
See Appendix B of the Administrative Bloat report posted on 8/28 for evidence, but UT now has a higher proportion of administrators to students than all but 12 public universities in America. President Jacobs has finally put University of Toledo in the top tier. With Strategic Organization he may be aiming for number one.
This Blog is a free and independent information source. Contributions and comments are welcome. Contact: ASCBloggie@gmail.com WARNING AND DISCLAIMER !!!! This blog is entirely non-official!! People may express opinion here, exercising freedom of speech and association.
Recent Letters from The Blade
Jacobs' arrogance is astonishing
Recently, President Lloyd Jacobs of the University of Toledo stated that bonuses were justified because his administrators "took all the risks."
As a professor at UT, I am outraged that President Jacobs claims that administrators take all of the risks. What risks do they take that the other faculty and staffs on campus do not?
Administrators are protected by state and federal employment laws and by their contracts.
When ex-President Vik Kapoor was terminated, he remained a professor with a salary near what he was paid as president.
As president emeritus, Dan Johnson retained a salary greater than his pay as president.
In the recent layoffs, exceptionally few administrators were terminated. It seems to me that low-level personnel at UT have far more risks because the greater proportion of the layoffs have come from their ranks. And they did not have continuing salaries.
President Jacobs' answer to questions on two occasions regarding relinquishing part of his bonus was to the effect that he earned his bonuses and what he did with them was his business.
Administrators do not risk their personal money in their duties: they use taxpayer money and funds collected through donations and grants to the university.
Administrators take home salaries in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and then add bonuses for longevity and whatever else the president decides is fitting for their contracts.
However, the lower-level personnel have much lower salaries and no such bonuses. Where is the risk?
It seems to me that these bonuses are convoluted: The lower-level personnel are taking the greater risks with no bonuses while the administrators with very rewarding jobs with little risk receive large bonuses.
Am I missing something here?
WALTER W. OLSON,
Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing
Engineering,
University of Toledo
It's the same old, same old at UT
I could hardly believe the arrogance of Dr. Lloyd Jacobs, president of the University of Toledo, when a reporter asked if he would be willing to forgo his bonus in light of the layoffs, raise in tuition, etc.
His comment was that he worked for it. Is that to say that the ones being laid off did not work for their pay?
All I can say is, business as usual at UT. Some things never change.
SANDY FLICK
Rose Acres Drive
UT also has checks, balances
In response to letter titled "Professors must focus on teaching," I would like to point out that the University of Toledo operates on the basis of shared governance.
This means that faculty members participate in the administration of the university.
A focus on teaching requires faculty to address administrative issues such as policies, procedures, and yes, finances, because these all affect classroom outcomes. A university with solid and equitable finances benefits everyone, including and especially the students. Just as the U.S. government is constituted to have checks and balances, so is our university government.
The UT-AAUP is one of those checks against UT administrators who most recently have displayed more concern for their own profit rather than a concern for the common good.
LINDA M. ROUILLARD,
Associate Professor
of French,
University of Toledo
Quote of the Year (so far)
The following is excerpted from the recent UT AAUP newsletter concerning the official university response to news of the bonus scandal:
. . . . 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." |
How to Contribute
The Blog is now under new management, a consortium of ASC faculty who pooled their longevity bonuses to purchase it from its original owners. Your comments are still welcome but look for some changes. Contact: ASCBloggie@gmail.com. Your contributions might include new posts, images, comments to existing articles/posts, concerns about process and substance at UT's College of Arts & Sciences. This blog is entirely non-official, for which you can be thankful, unless you enjoy reading self-serving bureaucratic propaganda, and is intended as a discussion and commentary forum for UT A&S faculty and community.
Another Claim and Disclaimer
A blog is a blog is a blog. Information, comments and opinions found here don't represent official views, instead they represent truthful and sincere ones. If you want the official line on things go elsewhere. This is a discussion and comment page. You may even read things here that you disagree with, and then, maybe not.
ASCBloggie
Google News for "University of Toledo"
Google News for "Higher Education Ohio"
Blog Archive
-
▼
2009
(143)
-
▼
April
(21)
- UT Student Protest of April 29 (Photo by Holly Lay...
- Loyalty
- His Human Condition!
- Townhall Synopsis on April 27
- Implementation
- A look back
- Stewardship?
- You've Got to Carry That Weight!
- More education in less time
- A&S Horse Whisperers Work Miracle Transformation!
- A Modest Proposal from Dr. Swifty
- just a thought
- Jacobs Tweaks Dickens, Wreaks "Stewardship" Across...
- Blade: Brady to resign BOT, seek deanship
- Fox in the Herb House
- President Jacobs and BOT Member Tom Brady Propose ...
- Questions
- More meeting stuff
- Round Table Report
- Report Upcoming on Roundtable
- A Moving Comment
-
▼
April
(21)
Links
13 comments:
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.
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.
Not the same as humane condition.
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.
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. "
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.
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.
Dear Ted:
Fuck You.
Walter Olson
Argh! Pirate talk! Clear the poop deck!
But if you clear the deck of poop, who'll be left to administrate?
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
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?
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."
Post a Comment