Wednesday, July 13, 2016
What Now??
Okay, so we've all had fun at Larry's expense.(see below) The question is what now???? Where does the university and more importantly for my local interests the College of Arts and Letters go? We seem to almost be back where we started organizationally, which is not good. By my count we have more administrators than when we were separate entities. This saves money? We're paying the football coach more than the last guy; we're paying his assistants more. This saves money. I have now taught here for twenty nine years and for practically every one of them I have been told in August (September when we were on quarters) how exciting the year will be; and, oh yes we have no money. We are going to search for a Dean for Arts and Letters. I would like to be the Dean and will do it for less than whomever you bring in. Barring that I want on the search committee. My governing motto: The First Amendment to the United States Constitution. After that everything is open. Design courses, experiment, start centers, have fun and by all means argue logically and sensibly. That is after all what we claim to teach. Should be an exciting year and oh yea we have no money.
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37 comments:
The key being that's what is said ('no money') by the President, BOT, etc each year and it's a lie. Case in point: a few years ago. Remember the economic crisis and how it took a few years for broom sweepers like the Jacobs crew to figure out they could use it as an excuse to 'trim the fat.' Anyone remember when Jacobs announced everyone at UT would have their pay reduced to offset budget shortfalls? Money would be shaved off for "paid" weekends or "paid" holidays or whatever, as everyone knew the state tax revenues were much lower as a result of the economic problems, UT had a huge deficit, the sky was falling, etc. The union threatened legal action, there was a flood of complaints, and, wonder of wonders, UH announced the administrator in charge of recruitment had in fact done a splendid job that year but no one had noticed, enrollment was up more than was initially reported, and the garnishing of wages was off the table. The spinning done by UH was masterful that year - 'no we didn't actually lie about the budget problems we were just incompetent in counting heads and calculating revenue, and in fact our incompetence should be complimented, because it worked in your favor, so "Your Welcome" and stop asking questions.'
David, for the record, it might be more accurate to say that Larry had fun at UT's (considerable) expense. It brings to mind the popular film Independence Day wherein the aliens moved from planet to planet, destroying each world by exhausting its resources. Wherever will they turn up next?
"Aliens" need not be invoked here. Larry and his boss and most of their long-gone pals at UT (Alas! a few hang on) are Toxic Expeditors From Texas moving from public university to public university throughout the Midwest to implement a wicked, wacko, disruptive neoliberal agenda. Here at UT, as everywhere they roam (like to UAkron), their "Let's privatize!" mantra begins the same: "This place is broken and we are here to fix it." What a Koch! (rhymes with crock).
Let's always remember that the only people who were thrown under the bus during the 2009 economic crisis were members of the non-union Professional Staff Association, whose jobs frankly were put at risk July 1,2006, the official date of the damn merger.
It was the people in non-academic support operations like human resources, IT, physical plant and maintenance ,finance, marketing and communication, and police who were sacrificed to create economies of scale, one of unstated purposes of the merger.
Not a single faculty member--not one--were let go from their union-protected jobs.
Worse yet, there never was an adequate recognition of the genuine emotional impact of those layoffs and the real loss people felt, especially those who were deeply committed to UT and MCO and had invested their entire professional careers in the institutions before the merger
I have often wondered how things would have worked if MCO had had economics, history, political science or English departments and how the overlapping and duplicative departments and faculty members would have been structured and governed.
Who would have decided and on what basis which faculty members will be retained and who will be let go?
No doubt, things would have gotten very personal and mean-spirited.
.
Is it time for the professional staff to unionize?
"Not a single faculty member--not one--were let go from their union-protected jobs." What response are you fishing for here? Yes, faculty unions protect their public higher education members from the "business model" shenanigans of greedy, abusive employers. Assuming you are correct and not a single faculty member was let go from her or his job under the Jacobs maladministration, faculty morale was so low that many dedicated, hard-working UT faculty were hired away by other universities. Others took early retirement rather than continue to serve disrespected under Jacobs Inc. The names and frustrations of these departed faculty members are well known and will not be forgotten. Apparently you have already conveniently forgotten them, so shame on you.
Jacobs and Co refused to declare a financial emergency which was the only contractual way they could lay off faculty under the collective bargaining contract, including lecturers and TT. Jacobs and Co. did significantly reduce the TT faculty in some departments by simply taking away the lines of retired/departed TT faculty and either not filling the positions or filling them with visiting faculty. And as far as the union protecting its workers, well, that's what its supposed to do, especially when the administration that was getting rid of people was getting rid of them capriciously. The non-union staff that felt the brunt of the Jacobs purges were the most vulnerable and so suffered the most. But cast your eye at Columbus - there's another "Right to Work" bill floating in the pipeline. My suspicion is that Jacobs and Co were and already included the passage of the Right to Work Bill in their secret strategic plan. As it was, Jacobs and Co drained the money from UT-AAUP by taking actions the union took to court, some of which resulted in costly pyrrhic victories (the break up of A&S, for example, which cost the union a lot of money and which it won, only to have the arbitrator rule 'don't do it again.' I haven't seen any figures, but at a guess I'd say the union spent the most money in its history in litigation during the Jacobs reign. And by the way, UT did eliminate a school or college or whatever it was called, at Scott Park, and all the faculty there who were TT were absorbed by main campus departments, or sent to the Honors College, as I recall. Certainly some departments grumbled at absorbing TTs that didn't meet their needs, but I don't recall it becoming "mean spirited."
Instead of begrudging faculty their union, perhaps Professional Staff should also unionize to protect themselves from the BOT.
COCA: 1 Dean, 1 Assc Dean
LLSS: 1 Dean, 2 Assc Dean
CAL: 1 Dean, 1 Director, 3 Assc Dean
Dave how is this "By my count we have more administrators than when we were separate entities"?????
In fact there may be a cost savings if the former COCA Dean is now making less as School Director.
Besides the President said all along this was not about significant cost savings, but optics and perception, especially from outside UT and that this merger of colleges (along with two others at UT) represented net reduction in number of colleges and deans, hence reducing administration.
Low faculty morale due to unpopular administrative decisions has the same relationship to the devastating psychological, emotional and financial impact of losing a job that bullfighting has to agriculture.
The frustrations of the departed faculty (left for other institutions or retired) are not to be forgotten as they left behind in many departments major gaps in teaching, research and student mentoring that may never be filled or for some faculty lines that were replaced years before those faculty have the same roles and experience - impact to many programs and students was significant.
But please lets not compare highly paid faculty still getting paid elsewhere or drawing upon great state pensions, to lower paid career PSA and CWA staff at UT who had dedicated their lives to this institution, many of which lost their jobs and great benefits due budget cuts during the Jacobs reign, while others remain here taking up work for those positions eliminated.
Just for the record, there is now a director and an assistant director. That would make one more administrator. I was also unaware the LLSS had previously had two associate deans. You folks are somewhat correct that the Pres. said this wasn't about saving money, but we were all told that budget cutbacks would be more if we stayed separated than if we merged. I hope we are not just rearranging deck chairs again. I also don't see a grass roots type groundswell to support my candidacy for Lord of the Rings (sorry dean). I am hoping to do better as a committee member but the vote is still out.
Bullfighting is an integral part of the agricultural economy in Spain and circa 2010 was worth €1.6 billion to the Spanish economy annually. 10,000 bulls per year are raised for the rings. That's no bull. No sense making an analogy in this forum of critical thinkers unless it holds water.
"El Toro debe morir!" ~ Gilbert Roland
Anon at 3:19 PM nailed it. PSA took the brunt of the economic warfare Jacobs inflicted on UT.
How can you even compare a faculty member taking early retirement or moving on (up?) to another university to the PSA members shown the door and given a map to the Cherry Street Mission?
Those of us PSA members that survived "The Great Purge" suffered too. The near constant stress of loosing one's job is something most faculty members can't relate to. Further, our workloads dramatically increased, often doubling as one now did the work of two. By fiat I was declared over-paid and did not see a raise, or even a cost of living increase for six years. My actual take home pay decreased as health care costs increased.
I respect and admire our faculty. I enjoy working with them on a daily basis, but I can't help but hold them a little responsible for what happened here. PSA, CWA, UTPPA were powerless to resist. The majority of the faculty by and large (whether through ignorance or apathy) were willing to sacrifice us.
I tip my hat to the students and faculty at Akron. *That* is how to run a resistance movement. Our faculty (with some notable exceptions) pretty much put their heads down and said, "This too shall pass". Until they came for them...
My understanding was that the merger was to result in no additional costs or administration, so perhaps the new School Asst Director is not getting paid more, remains on 9 month contract but is getting teaching load reduction (many of the larger academic departments here at UT have had Assc.Chairs who have similar arrangements). I serious doubt the new School Asst. Director is 12 month administrative appointment.
A&S had at one point four Assc Deans (Sciences, Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences), after breakup the four went with their respective new colleges keeping in mind that of the three new colleges LLSS had the largest number of departments, programs, faculty and students. Plus we all know that the A&S breakup was not about costs or savings, or higher profile or recruitment opportunities via the new colleges (when no new funds were provided in fact net college budget was cut), but an attempt by Jacobs and the Board to separate and silence faculty including the large and vocal A&S Council which was more critical and vocal than Faculty Senate was regarding the UT administration.
And in all the public comments and meetings I am aware of with the President, I never once heard the "threat" of more budget cuts if LLSS and COCA stayed together, but perhaps that was a message sent to COCA or their Dean expressed it.
Lets be real here it was not the actions of Akron faculty and students that got SS removed but the reality their Board faced with a huge decline in enrollment and fund raising. I applaud the Akron community for taking on SS and raising the political and public awareness of the harm his actions were causing, but truth of the matter is that budget and funding crisis from the resulting enrollment drops cost him and LB their jobs at Akron, without that they would still be there to this day. All the votes of no confidence did not remove SS nor would have had the UT Board considering removing Jacobs at any time, in fact many of us here at UT felt that a faculty non confidence vote would only entrench the Board and direct direct budget cuts to academic departments and cutting of vacant faculty lines as punishment. UT Board had Jacob's back all the way to the bitter end, even adding and extending to his contract to the terms of $1 million to get rid of him and it was not because of UT faculty, but the continued bad financial decisions and questionable ethical actions involving individuals he hired. And thankfully someone, likely on the Board, got to SS to the point where he knew he had no chance to succeed LJ.
11:08 ~ Your cock-sure rational-choice explanation of the events described is uninspired and fails to give credit where credit is due. Let us rejoice instead in the wisdom in Psalm 37, which offers a much more inspiring interpretation of how a mostly meek faculty at UT defeated the evil of Jacobs Inc.: "Do not fret because of the wicked; do not be envious of wrongdoers, for they will soon fade like the grass, and wither like the green herb. Yet a little while, and the wicked will be no more; though you look diligently for their place, they will not be there. But the meek shall inherit the land, and delight themselves in abundant prosperity."
Anyone else notice that the two most recent Deans hired received salaries at levels tens of thousands less than their predecessor? Perhaps there is some effort at reducing administrative costs after all? Not saying these alone are evidence or will make a huge difference, but could reflect more careful thought about administrative costs than we ever saw with previous President and Provost.
Jacobs had sold the BOT on the idea that UT's faculty and staff had become lazy and unproductive and overpaid. His evidence included what he considered the abuse of Merit Pay, workload, sabbaticals, etc. Merit Pay, despite still being in the contract, has been, basically, eliminated. Workload was, for a time, micromanaged from UH, sabbaticals, for a time, were all but eliminated. These and other examples reveal the strategy that Jacobs used to convince the BOT to give him more and more freedom to reorganize and micromanage and to use public funds to fight for his actions in arbitration and court: the current faculty and staff pool, he declared, is full of malcontents (I suspect he used posts from this blog in his powerpoints), who can't even manage their own departments much less help to manage the university and hire the best new faculty; they game the system, they are unproductive, etc. Given his success with the BOT, the Republican governor and legislature, the union determined that actions like lack of confidence votes would be counterproductive. Now, in hindsight, I think it's fair to say the union was correct. Scott S left UT for a higher position at Akron. Brief though it was, he was promoted, which means Akron's BOT, Columbus, etc all regarded his work at UT as successful. Jacobs was promoted sideways not because of anything most here are ranting and raving about but because of bad publicity. And UT is still a 'sideshow of a sideshow.' Jacobs was just the local manifestation of forces working nationally to reshape academics, and particularly universities like UT, which many states want to turn into degree factories.
The departure of Jon Strunk from communications is a tremendous loss for UT, and I wish him much success in his new endeavors. He was a superb writer and I always enjoyed reading his well-crafted articles in UT News. His comments to the media always appeared well-measured and appropriate for whatever crisis he was being asked to address.
However, what is troubling about his departure is whatever institutional knowledge about the pre- and post-merger eras at UT has now completely disappeared. The new cast of characters in University Hall—the president, her vice presidents, including the new, I-just-got-into-town vice president for advancement who I hope did not push Jon out the door, or many deans on Main Campus—lack any institutional knowledge of UT and MCO before the merger.
Ten years after the merger and multiple presidents, provosts, and college deans, it feels like” Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” The departments are all the same, the same lack of institutional urgency is still in place, but the people act differently.
The informal, people-based institutional knowledge that is so critical to organizational effectiveness seems to have little or no shelf life at UT. Organizational memory is an important asset for any institution. Jon’s untimely departure puts that memory at risk.
Merit? One dean was apparently created (rewarded) for helping divide and attack faculty. They are failures at entrepreneurship, fundraising and pragmatic leadership. Get new people. From outside if necessary. Someone who actually made something grow, not just kept dividing it into smaller and smaller parts and more thoroughly bureaucratized.
“It was an amicable and mutual departure. He had worked very hard for us over the years,” Mr. McCrimmon said, adding that Mr. Strunk’s employment at UT amounted to a “long time to be anywhere.” -- “UT spokesman leaves school,” The Blade, July 15, 2016
Sam:
Next time you have the insensitive urge to pass judgment on the longevity of UT employees and their commitment to the institution, please bite your tongue.
People stay at UT because they are loyal and find meaning, fulfillment and reward in their jobs. Their lives are deeply intertwined with the university and its mission. It’s sad if this sterling virtue is now out of place in the Gaber administration.
Do I dare bring up the educational legacy of the late Don Reiber, associate professor of communication who spent his entire 40-year professional career at UT and left an indelible mark on thousands of students?
Or how about retired law professors Susan Martyn, Robin Kennedy and William Richman?
Drop by the office in Memorial Field House of English professor and former provost and once acting president Dr. William Free sometime, a UT fixture for more than 40 years.
For a guy with a couple of professional degrees and a six-figure salary, your comment above was incredibly insulting. Let’s try to do better, OK?
Yes, UT has had many good people and perhaps even more rotten administrators.
So is the Gaber administration going to renounce this philosophy that long-term service to the university is looked down on or do we move forward knowing that this is now informal policy.
Perhaps on behalf of our staff brethren faculty senate leadership could raise this matter with the president and recommend clarification be sent to the campus. I can scarcely think of a more effective rallying cry for professional staff to bargain collectively to secure their rights than the administration informing them that there is a stopwatch on their value to this great organization to which they have dedicated their careers.
What say you president Gaber? How long is too long to serve this university you profess to speak so highly of?
The comments by anonymous 10:34 are right on the mark and well articulated.
For a change Faculty Senate, do something that is meaningful and relevant. Please raise the issue.
seems like some people are taking an innocent well intended comment as a new philosophy when no one else is reading it that way - good luck getting anyone on Faculty Senate to address that.
Who was David Leigh Root and why is the bridge on Stadium Dr. named after him?
Ask a silly question, you know what you get at UT! In 1961, plans were drawn for a new traffic and pedestrian bridge over the Ottawa River connecting the north and south areas of campus. This bridge is located on the eastern side of campus between Savage Arena and Health and Human Services Building (formerly the College of Engineering). A well ‐ known billboard company owned by David Root had numerous billboards displayed throughout the city, one of which was on the corner of The University of Toledo’s campus. As a result of a negotiation, the unsightly billboard on campus was removed and the new bridge was named after the owner of the billboard company.
Good Question! David Lee was the Father of the Ottawa River that flows through the main campus today. Before the University was built there were two feuding pioneer farming families that owned the properties where the campus now sits. They had a property dispute. Clive Beernut, patriarch of the Beernuts shot Mother Mable Mankiller, the half-Cherokee matriarch of the Mankillers. Mother Mable survived the rifle ball that took out her right lung, but had to quit smoking the native jimsen weed that once abounded between the Maumee River and Oak Openings. President Jackson in Washington D.C. heard of the dispute and considered it a threat to the growth of the canal-building and boat industries around New Orleans of the North (now Perrysburg) and so sent David Lee Root and a Regiment from the Corps of Engineers to establish an indisputable property line between the Beernuts and Mankillers in order to end the feuding that was holding up Manifest Destiny in Northwestern Ohio. Root considered building a fence between their properties and making the local Native Americans pay for it, but Jackson, who was famously a champion of Native American rights nixed that plan. So Root and his troops built a deep ditch between the Beernut and Mankiller properties now called the Ottawa River. As an afterthought he filled the ditch with alligators confiscated behind Jackson’s back from the Seminole Native-American Nation in Florida. Since a canal from the mouth of the Maumee to Florida had not been built yet, a wagon route was built to transport the alligators, and that wagon route is now known as I-75 (aka the “cocaine highway”). So when the University of Toledo main campus was built and the Ottawa River passing through campus was bridged, they named it after David Lee Root. At first it was a toll bridge and UT students had to pay a quarter to cross the river to move their cars from parking lot to parking lot between classes. The proceeds from the Root Bridge toll were used to found the Mankiller Center for Women on the main campus (now the Eberly Center). In 1850 the entire Beernut clan moved west to Bloomington, Illinois and founded Illinois Wesleyan University and a brewery next door. They also built a factory to manufacture snacks for the students to accompany their beer and set up the Clive Beernut Foundation for recovering alcoholics. The alligators all died in the blizzard of 1840 except one, which they killed anyway and used as a sand cast for an iron sculpture which is now located in the weeds near the back gate of the Toledo Zoo..
I've heard of the Root Canal. Was that also named after David Lee?
David Root owned a local billboard company who had one installed on a corner of UT campus blocking view of campus, in early 1990s UT made a deal with him to remove the billboard sign in exchange for naming the Stadium Drive bridge after him. I understand new bridge will keep name and the plaques from the old bridge. Now you know the rest of the story (and the true one).
"When the legend becomes fact... print the legend".
Wow!
UT really sold its honor for peanuts on that deal.
honor? it is just a bridge, and one most people are not even aware is named (and none of the other bridges on campus are named). If you are willing to make a donation, or aware of a donor, worth making a donation for naming rights please let the UT Foundation know.
Excuse me, Anonymous of July 22, but everyone I've spoken with who read Sam's comment interpreted it as both insensitivity and a likely personal view of longtime employees. At the VP level, a view like that readily translates into unofficial policy.
August 2, 2016 at 1:20 PM - Not quite. It was named after the billboard company's son who was killed. I believe he was a UT student, but am not positive about that point. I think it was a fair trade since the billboards were an eyesore. Now we just have the one at Secor/Dorr which usually has UT athletics' schedules. A big improvement.
David Root was the owner/CEO of Root Outdoor Advertising that owned the billboards on the corner of Dorr/Douglas, but I have no idea if the bridge was named after him or son of same name (or if the son was UT student that died).
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