Monthly Archives: October 2007

Will any academic budget cuts be rolled back?

Posted on October 30, 2007 by sitedad | 18 Comments

As reported in tonight’s Ann Arbor News, “1% hike in state aid for colleges” will mean about $800,000 more than expected to EMU from the state. Certainly that’s good news. Will this mean any restoration to the beyond the bones budget cuts inflicted on academic departments? I’m not holding my breath.

Update:

Just today, I got a copy of this letter (I’m sure many of you did as well, though this was actually addressed to “Steven”) from Freman Hendrix. It’s a little vague to me, but some explanation of where these returned funds are going to go:

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Posted in Budgets, In the media...

News on the Presidental search (and what do EMUTalk.org readers want in a new Prez?)

Posted on October 30, 2007 by sitedad | 7 Comments

EMU-AAUP President Howard Bunsis sent around an email today that covered a number of issues, including some info about the search for a new president at EMU. Here’s part of what he wrote:

In other news, here is an update on the presidential search: The AAUP representative on the committee, Jim Carroll of Physics, reports the following news from the search committee:

The Compass Group (http://www.compassgroup.com/index.html), was chosen to assist the committee in the presidential search.The Compass Group was chosen by the Regents; the faculty representatives on the committee were not involved in the selection of the search firm.

There will not be any public sessions on campus to discuss criteria for the next president. If faculty has any candidates or views of criteria for the next president, we should immediately funnel everything through Jim Carroll or Russ Larson, our representatives.

In addition, the search committee will not conduct the checking of all references once the candidates are chosen. This will be done by the search firm.

A group of concerned faculty (not directed by the AAUP leadership) sent a letter to all the members of the search committee, citing concerns about the search, and asking for more transparency and openness in the process. The Regents on the Committee made clear that such letters should go through our representatives, and not be sent directly to the other committee members. Of course, that does not prohibit the sending of letters to all the Regents

A few thoughts on this and a call to EMUTalk.org readers:

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Posted in EMU President

How outsourcing email to Google might look at EMU

Posted on October 28, 2007 by sitedad | 3 Comments

I came across an interesting article in Inside Higher Ed just now, “Well, if They’re Already Using It ….,” which is one in a series of articles about the Educause conference that was going on last weekend. Basically, the article is about what to do about students who come into college with well-established habits in terms of things like email and social networking sites and the like: should the university force them to use their system (e.g., you must use your my.emich account and your EMU email even though both are awful), or should the university adapt to students?

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Posted in EMU Technology, In the media...

EMU policies — what is the point again?

Posted on October 28, 2007 by Susan Haynes | 7 Comments

I have a question. How come ICT gets to go against university policy (which is wrong IMO) on domain names, viz printing.emich.edu and labstat.emich.edu, while my department grovels and uses the stupid emich.edu/compsci? What is up with this? (see post http://emutalk.org/?p=592)

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Posted in Uncategorized

Kudos to the honors program!

Posted on October 28, 2007 by sitedad | Leave a comment

I had already heard this, but it deserves recognition here: “EMU Honors College wins $1.1 million grant.” According to the article, “The grant will establish a Scholars Program at EMU as part of the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program, which was created to help increase the number of low-income, first-generation college students attaining doctoral degrees.” What I like about this so much is that this is the sort of thing that should be the “core mission” of EMU. So congratulations to all the folks at the Honors College!

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Posted in Academics, In the media..., Student Life

Wear a Huron shirt, get $8 off at a football game

Posted on October 28, 2007 by sitedad | 38 Comments

I was at a function last night (a couple, actually– it was the Saturday before Halloween, after all), and a friend asked “Hey, has there been anything on EMUTalk about the whole thing where if you wear an old EMU Huron shirt you get a discount on getting into football games?” What are you talking about, I asked. Well, this:

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Posted in Faculty Life, Sports, Staff Life, Student Life

The Bias against Spiders

Posted on October 28, 2007 by Abby C | 2 Comments

There is an article about one of my favorite professors at Eastern, Cara Shillington in Biology. She is trying her noble best to dispel the bad press that spiders receive, especially during these Halloween days.

“Spider woman: Halloween anti-arachnid bias bugs biology teacher”

Halloween inspires boo-hoos in Cara Shillington, 39, an associate professor of biology at Eastern Michigan University. It’s not the costumes and candy that get to her; it’s the scary spider decorations, which seem like a smear campaign against her favorite animals. Cara keeps more than 200 tarantulas in her lab and sees every one as “beautiful and fascinating.” A citizen of South Africa, Cara lives in Ypsilanti with her husband.

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Posted in Faculty Life, In the media...

The Search for EMU President

Posted on October 26, 2007 by Abby C | 3 Comments

We now have a search firm, says the Ann Arbor News. The rolling search process, which leads to arbitrary decisions, and the now many times hyped “non-traditional candidate” (or, in other words, a candidate with potentially no higher education experience) does not bode well for a credible process. Continue reading →

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Posted in EMU President

Print Cost Recovery

Posted on October 26, 2007 by cbylone | 14 Comments

From http://printing.emich.edu/ -

Beginning in the Winer 2008 semester, ICT will implement a print cost recovery system. All registered students will receive an allotment of 400 black and white prints. Pages printed beyond the initial allotment will be charged to the student’s account at $0.05 per page. To print beyond the initial allotment, students must consent to allowing ICT to post charges to their student account.

Quick Facts

Printers connected to the ICT printing system, including those in the ICT Labs, the Halle Library and the Marshall 210 Lab, printed over 8.7 million pages between July 1, 2006 and June 30, 2007. That is 43.5 tons of paper! (That is a paper trail from Ypsilanti, MI to Key West, Fla.)
10% of the people who print in these labs account for 48% of the pages printed
On average, over 80% of the students printing in labs print less than 400 pages in a given semester.

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If you are interested in finding out how much you actually print each term you can go to http://labstat.emich.edu/printed/ type in your Emich ID and password, a web page will show up that displays everything you print out in the ICT Labs.

If you go to http://labstat.emich.edu/gauge/ you will be able to see in real time how full each lab is at a given time.

Thoughts?

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Posted in Academics, EMU Technology, Student Life