A Few News Briefs (updated on 5/18):
1. So called "Reorganization" of the College appears to be underway, a committee of 12 nominally in charge, selected by some mysterious and wholly arbitrary process. The Dean, always compliant, is on it. Their deadline as charged by jacobs is June 10.
Here is the memo sent by Lloyd Jacobs after the fact of its organization:
Committee of Strategic Organization
Organizational structure can be an important tool for the attainment of
strategic goals. Specifically, an organization that promotes interaction
promotes creativity. Formal and informal interaction can promote vibrancy
and excitement which in turn can result in new ideas and ways of thinking.
For these reasons I have asked a group of faculty and administrators to
continue the work begun during the recent trip to Arizona State University
by thinking about our Organizational Structure. They will be benchmarking
with other institutions as well as thinking creatively about ?Organization
as Strategy?. Ultimately, it is my hope that their deliberations will
directly connect with the strategic planning process and constitute another
implementation appendix for our recalibrated strategic plan.
The faculty and administrators involved are: Dr. Rosemary Haggett, Nina
McClelland, Peg Traband, Patsy Komuniecki, Marcia King-Blandford, Jamie
Barlowe, Beverly Schmoll, Miggy Hopkins, Ann Krause, Debra Davis, Charlene
Czerniak, Penny Poplin Gosetti and Kaye Patten Wallace.
lj
2. A number of Department secretaries, >5, have been axed as of Friday, May 15. A list will follow when available.
3. Chair appointments have been delayed by the Dean's office, allegedly, until after the reorganization. Update: New information now has it these appointments are going ahead.
4. The Carlson Library appears now to feature video games rather than books. Also they have been throwing media materials, maps and government documents into the dumpster.
5. The Blade has published University of Toledo salaries on its website. You can see for yourself where the money pours. UT is truly an administratively-centered university. Administrative salaries skyrocket here and elsewhere. Here is the link to the article--which itself links to a salary database:
UT salaries
6. The Independent Collegian ran an article on the irresponsible use of big executive longevity bonuses by the BOT/Jacobs administration, citing as evidence the failure of large bonuses paid to retain Provost Haggett, et al. See:
Fat Stupid Bonuses
7. The BOT on 5/17, according to reporters, OKed a budget that will lay off an additional 36 support people.(Correction, apparently these are 36 people already laid off and approved. Interpretations, however, vary).
8. And no, Bloggie is not making any of this up.
16 comments:
This whole reorganization thing has been undertaken in deceitful fashion by the Arts and Sciences Dean and other administrators.
Shame on all of them.
Does the BOT know that its agents are such big fat liars?
Thanks for posting this, Bloggie. I'm afraid the article might do more harm than good--people who look at it and don't think aren't going to realize it's the chosen few (relatively speaking), most of whom are associated with the HSC or some other aspect of science, that get those huge salaries--they're going to think we all do. I teach here fulltime, and it would take nearly 9 years of my gross salary to equal one year of Lloyd's (who probably has most evenings and weekends freer than I do). I didn't see anything like that mentioned in the article. Nor did I see it mentioned that most faculty who leave are not being replaced, or that staff has been and continues to be cut or demoted--while tuition goes up. Where is the money going?
As someone else already noted in an earlier post, a lot of this is happening now, when many of the faculty are not around. Typical.
I ran across this by chance--look at point number 3, if you don't look at anything else. Is this where the business model is taking UT?
http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/109519/5-ways-to-ensure-mediocrity-in-your-organization?mod=career-leadership
Regarding administrator salaries - does anyone know what someone like the Interim Vice-Provost for Academic Innovation actually does to earn a whopping $143,336.00 per year??
Also, where do I sign up to get on the gravy train?
Note that these numbers include summer teaching remuneration for many 9-month faculty members (They did for me). Plus overload teaching. So the base numbers are considerably lower.
Yes, I looked up my salary for that year and it contained not only summer teaching + overloads, but also a retroactive pay raise for the previous year, for promotion to associate professor, but that had been paid out finally in 2009, thus making it seem that I earn about 30 percent more than I really do in my normal 9-month work year.
Another point is that faculty actually generate income through tuition--I generate much more than is spent on me by the University-- unlike most higher level administrators who merely spend it on their airy programs.
Of course, if Jacobs can dispense with the professorate and substitute "learning coaches" and online prepackaged (canned) online modules, he can then save money on faculty and compete with the low quality degree mills. UT will no longer be a real university, however.
$143,336.00???? Let's hope he's mighty busy.
The 36 are the same positions announced last month. Since that was part of the budget formulation process, the board is only now giving their final approval. The 36 are not new layoffs.
Anonymous 8:41--I'm sure that makes those 36 people feel a lot better.
"Gender parity" achieved at last??
Committee of Strategic Organization
The faculty and administrators involved are: Dr. Rosemary Haggett, Nina McClelland, Peg Traband, Patsy Komuniecki, Marcia King-Blandford, Jamie Barlowe, Beverly Schmoll, Miggy Hopkins, Ann Krause, Debra Davis, Charlene
Czerniak, Penny Poplin Gosetti and Kaye Patten Wallace.
You have to justify big salaries and big bonuses with something you can point to on a piece of paper and say "See, look what I did!" So, taking apart a college, throwing out the parts you deem unnecessary and adding new parts that suit you qualifies. How else can you move up to a higher paid position? Whether the changes are good or bad, or in the long run possibly hurt the human conditions of students, taxpayers, and employees is immaterial in that respect. What counts in the short run is change for change's sake and administrators improving their own human conditions.
I found this article on the corporatization of higher education very interesting:
http://studentsolidarity.blogspot.com/2005/03/degrees-of-influence-corporatization.html
Note to A&S College Forum blog editors: You may want to front-page this post as it pertains to important broader issues. Thanks.
A brief meta-analysis of UT’s Committee of Strategic Organization
Committee of Strategic Organization members are: Rosemary Haggett, Nina McClelland, Peg Traband, Patsy Komuniecki, Marcia King-Blandford, Beverly Schmoll, Miggy Hopkins, Ann Krause, Jamie Barlowe, Debra Davis, Charlene Czerniak, Penny Poplin Gosetti and Kaye Patten Wallace.
Note the committee is comprised entirely of women – so at least we don’t have to worry about any “testosterone-fueled” rational thought.
Diversity? Gender equity? Hmmm…
In any case, the committee is made up of: a) the Provost and assorted Provost’s Office subordinates – i.e. the A&S Dean and several Vice and/or Assistant Vice and/or Interim Assistant Vice Provosts; b) various other representatives from health sciences; c) a few remaining representatives specifically from the arts, humanities and social sciences.
The fact that the professional, intellectual and academic background of the majority of the committee members is heavily weighted towards science, health science and alternative education methodologies is not necessarily a bad thing. The realities of the 21st century pretty much demand this emphasis.
But those remaining committee members with specifically non-science, health science or science teaching backgrounds are: Barlowe, Davis, Gosetti and Wallace.
These four presumably represent the specific interests of A&S faculty in the humanities and social sciences on the Committee of Strategic Organization.
But the essentially pseudo-academic background of these remaining committee members can be succinctly summarized as follows: Women’s and Gender Studies, Education, Marxist-Feminist-Postmodern Art and Literature.
Any serious A&S teachers and scholars working in serious non-pseudo academic areas may have good reason to find this breakdown of their “representation” on the Committee of Strategic Organization very troubling.
There can be but one reason that this Committee of Strategic Organization (CSO) suddenly came to be constituted at the onset of our summer break.
Jacobs it seems must act with urgency during the temporary absence of students and faculty in order to hastily merge healthy, productive, independent and free-thinking A&S College academic departments to become meaningless mash-ups of "schools" with funny names. These shotgun weddings presage an era of intellectual sterilization at UT. Under that darkening cloud compliance of the unruly will be systematically assured by instituting a climate of castration.
The membership of the cherry-picked Committee of Strategic Organization comes as no surprise to most of us. Its movers and shakers are well known to be notorious Jacobs sycophants. The CSO will quickly finish their cost-cutting dirty work without any pretense of transparency and before students and faculty members begin to return from summer break.
Over the span of these three summer months more secret deals will be concocted involving promotions, bonuses and golden parachutes all paid for by tuition increases, outsourcing, continued layoffs, and furloughs, for "misers and liars bargain quickly.”
There can be but one reason that this Committee of Strategic Organization (CSO) suddenly came to be constituted at the onset of our summer break.
Jacobs it seems must act with urgency during the temporary absence of students and faculty in order to hastily merge healthy, productive, independent and free-thinking A&S College academic departments to become meaningless mash-ups of "schools" with funny names. These shotgun weddings presage an era of intellectual sterilization at UT. Under that darkening cloud compliance of the unruly will be systematically assured by instituting a climate of castration.
The membership of the cherry-picked Committee of Strategic Organization comes as no surprise to most of us. Its movers and shakers are well known to be notorious Jacobs sycophants. The CSO will quickly finish their cost-cutting dirty work without any pretense of transparency and before students and faculty members begin to return from summer break.
Over the span of these three summer months more secret deals will be concocted involving promotions, bonuses and golden parachutes all paid for by tuition increases, outsourcing, continued layoffs, and furloughs, for "misers and liars bargain quickly.”
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