Monthly Archives: July 2008

“Ypsi and Austin come to blows over “Whip It”

Posted on July 11, 2008 by | Leave a comment

See markmaynard.com for the story:  “ypsi and austin come to blows over whip it.”  As Mark reports it, the fact that the Drew Barrymore project Whip It! is filming in town (and the local area– I believe they have offices and rehearsal space in Saline) has really ticked off folks in oh-too-cool Austin, Texas.

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Posted in Ypsilanti

What’s wrong (or not) about online classes

Posted on July 10, 2008 by | Leave a comment

There has been some discussion here and here (and this second post includes several comments) about helping commuting students to deal with the costs of driving and gasoline, and one of the solutions that inevitably comes up is online classes. I’ve been teaching online for a couple of years now, and I think it’s fair to say that I’m very much “for” these classes, at least as one option among many for teaching. There are lots and lots of ways in which teaching online works well– different, not better, not worse, and not the same as a face-to-face classes, but they still “work” nonetheless.

But there is also a lot wrong with online classes. Long-story short, they aren’t for all students or teachers, and they certainly are not an automatic solution for high-priced gasoline, parking problems, and/or students who are over-extending themselves.

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Posted in Academics, Faculty Life, Student Life

EMU/Merit seems to be in good company: Stanford chooses Zimbra too

Posted on July 9, 2008 by | 8 Comments

There has been a fair amount of talk here and concern over EMU’s choices to go with Merit/Zimbra for email outsourcing instead of Google– including from me, a loyal gmail user.  Well, it looks like EMU is far from the only institution to make a similar choice.  According to this article on the blog TechCrunch, Stanford– the university that the guys who founded Google were attending when they created that little start-up– is going to outsource its email to Zimbra.  To quote the post:

This is the latest in a series of victories for Zimbra, which includes Georgia Tech, University of Wisconsin, Texas A&M, Cal Poly, and University of Pennsylvania. Zimbra powers the email systems for over 300 universities worldwide. That comes in around an impressive 1.5 million email addresses ending in “.edu”.

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Posted in EMU Technology, In the media...

More on gasoline and online classes

Posted on July 9, 2008 by | 9 Comments

Just the other day, I posted about a Tennessee community college offering more online and one day classes because of the high cost of gasoline for commuting students. The Chronicle of Higher Education either listened to the NPR story or read EMUTalk.org since they published their article, “Gas Prices Drive Students to Online Courses,” the next day.

Actually, the CHE is a bit more cautious, probably rightfully so. Besides the fact that it’s too early to tell what the impact of higher gas prices really is going to be for commuting students, especially come fall, it’s pretty clear to me that online classes aren’t for everyone. Not all students are ready for these classes– I have seen many get in over their head with the online classes I teach– and they are very clearly not for all faculty. But I do have a feeling that online classes are going to be a part of most college students’ and college instructors’ experiences in the near future.

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

“EMU sets record for private gifts”

Posted on July 8, 2008 by | 1 Comment

From Crain’s Detroit Business, “EMU sets record for private gifts.”To quote from the article:

Preliminary figures show the Eastern Michigan University Foundation reported cash gifts exceeding more than $7.1 million, the highest in the school’s history, plus in-kind contributions approaching $800,000.

The total represents an 88 percent increase over the 2006-07 total of $4.2 million.

Go figure– maybe the result of decisive action at getting rid of Fallon? Maybe the result of the foundation actually going out and working hard to raise money? Maybe something else? Whatever the reasons, good for the foundation!

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Posted in EMU Fund Raising, In the media...

“Tenn. College Eyes Squeezing Classes Into A Day”

Posted on July 8, 2008 by | 1 Comment

Here’s a link to an interesting story I heard on NPR’s “All Things Considered” yesterday, “Tenn. College Eyes Squeezing Classes Into A Day.”  It’s an audio story– radio, doncha know– but the basic gist of it is that Volunteer State Community College is responding to calls for changing the way it offers classes since so many of its students commute long distances, a practice that is getting a bit pricy with $4+ gasoline.  Besides offering more online classes, they are also offering more one day a week classes.   In fact, the story describes a program where students can take four classes a term all on Friday.

I don’t think it’s a good idea for most students to cram everything into one day like that, and these same kind of reservations come up in the story, too.  But I do think that any university/community college that has a lot of commuters, including EMU, has got to think more creatively and perhaps more systematically about offering courses in alternative formats– once a week, hybrids, online, etc.  It would be nice to think that $4+ a gallon gasoline isn’t going to last, but I have a feeling it will be around for a while.

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

Does President Martin not like a parade?

Posted on July 7, 2008 by | 16 Comments

One of the new blogs I am sure to be following/linking to from EMUTalk.org is The Ypsi Tattler, which claims that EMU President Susan Martin was invited but declined to participate in this year’s annual Ypsilanti Fourth of July Parade:

Eastern Michigan University’s newest president Dr. Susan Martin was invited to march with Ypsilanti City Council in this year’s 4th of July Parade. Memo’s were sent out and Secret Service security was beefed up for the new prez. But Dr. Martin was a no show.

No idea why Martin dissed Ypsilanti, but she starts work Monday and the Tatler will be there to ask her “What’s Up.”

We did hear that Dr. Martin asked if she really had to move in the the Presidential Palace. Martin said she wanted University House to be used for special events and fund raising. Policy wonks at Welch Hall squelched that idea saying she needed to live there or there would be rioting in the streets, mostly by disgruntled legislators from Lansing.

I don’t know who the Tattler is and where this information is coming from. The bit about the house has a ring of truth to me, but as for the parade, I don’t know. It is curious though that I cannot recall any past Ypsi July 4 parades (and I’ve been to five or six of them now) where EMU had any presence– not a band, not a float, not a car with people waving, nothing. Participating would seem to me to be a no-brainer for building better relationships with the community.

Oh yeah, the AANews is running a “first day on the job/we’re still in the Honeymoon afterglow” piece on President Martin and her first days at EMU, “Eastern Michigan University’s new president sees rebuilding of school’s reputation top priority.” Among other things, it features Martin in an EMU t-shirt, apparently embracing a new casual wardrobe for administrators. Perhaps calling them “the suits” won’t work in the Martin administration. :-)

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Posted in Administrator Life, EMU President, Ypsilanti

Martin’s first day on the job is Monday

Posted on July 6, 2008 by | Leave a comment

It won’t be President-Elect for much longer; EMU President Susan Martin starts here job on Monday, July 7. I was reminding about this in an email from EMU-AAUP president Howard Bunsis (an email that was mostly about the budgeting process) and in this somewhat fluffy Detroit Freep article, “Future is EMU leader’s focus: New president aims to get school past old scandals.”

Actually, I think “old scandals” is the least of Martin’s challenges. The story leads with the house scandal, but frankly, that really is old news. And I think putting the scandal of the murder cover-up behind her is work that has already been done by doing an extensive investigation, firing folks, and having an interim administration. I think the bigger story is going to be what also made up the bulk of Howard’s email, even though that message has the subject line of “July 7th is the beginning of the Dr. Susan Martin Presidency:” budgets.

According to Howard’s email, there’s a kind of bad news/good news scenario here (and of course I’m simplifying quite a bit): the bad news is that EMU doesn’t have much money, and the administration still seems to want to make what Bunsis and the union would argue are unnecessary cuts to academics and unnecessary increases in tuition. These are classic differences of opinion between the administration and the faculty. The good news is that there actually was a budgeting process this time around with members of faculty council and and the EMU-AAUP at “budgeting council” sessions with administrators. Bunsis singled out John Lumm, the new Interim VP of Business and Finance, and Michael Bretting, the Associate Dean from the College of Education who chaired the council.

I think this good news outweighs the bad because while we’ve always had disagreements about the budgeting process and EMU has been short on money for a long time, we haven’t always had particularly good discussions on budgeting matters between the administration and faculty. My hope is that Martin doesn’t screw up a good thing. Hopefully, she will offer Lumm the job on a permanent basis and she will keep this process in place. And hopefully she won’t unnecessarily recommend cutting programs or raising tuition.

I presume she has moved into the house, but I haven’t been by there to see moving vans….

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Posted in Administrator Life, EMU President, EMU-AAUP, In the media...

“Higher tuition threatens state education goals”

Posted on July 3, 2008 by | 1 Comment

The story that was probably more relevant ran under the Vick story in last night’s AANews, “Rising tuition threatens state education goals.” It’s a story that I think most faculty and staff and all students at EMU know only too well: college keeps getting more expensive. And it appears to be getting more expensive in Michigan in particular:

While state leaders have paid lip service to increasing the state’s commitment to college education, they haven’t backed it up with significant resources, other than increases in merit scholarships for college-bound Michigan students.

From the 2003 to 2008 fiscal years, average state tax allocations nationally for higher education rose 24.1 percent, according to the annual Grapevine report compiled by Illinois State University faculty. In contrast, Michigan cut its higher education tax support by 5.1 percent during that period. Michigan was the only state with lower aid levels for universities and community colleges than five years ago.

Just to make matters worse, too many students are trying to do what in my opinion is impossible: work sixty hours a week at minimum wage jobs so you can afford to attend school. The story quotes a community college student named Travis Carr who explains the problem here better than I could: “If you’re trying to make money to afford school, you have to spend so much time at work you can’t focus on school,” Carr said. “But if you cut back your work hours, you don’t make enough to go to school.” I see this sort of thing with my students all the time, and it rarely works out well.

The article also reports a “less than fun fact” I already knew, that some students are getting priced “out of the market,” so to speak, and a “less than fun fact” I didn’t know: Michigan public universities have the sixth highest tuition on average in the country. All this in a state where the economy has tanked and the governor continues to provide lip-service about the need for more college graduates. Swell, huh?

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

Vick up for vice-principal job at Ypsilanti High

Posted on July 2, 2008 by | 16 Comments

In the “seriously? wait, seriously, this is really true?” department of things, the AANews is reporting “Ex-EMU administrator Jim Vick in line for vice principal/athletic director job at Ypsilanti schools.” According to the article, the process won’t be official until July 21 when the board votes on it, which begs the question as to how/why it is in the paper now.

Why Vick? Here’s what he had to say:

“The school is right down the street from where I live, my degree is in secondary (education) administration and I was a high school teacher and coach before I came to Eastern,” Vick said. “I have a lot of a lot of administrative experience and I’ve been involved with athletics for most of my life, so it was a good fit.”

First off, this might be more evidence to suggest that Vick was never qualified to be a university vice-president, especially one who had as many responsibilities and as much power as Vick had when he was at EMU. Second, someone in Ypsilanti School District office might want to do a google search for “Vick Dickinson murder” or just do a search of EMUTalk.org for “Vick.” I don’t know Jim, and everyone who does know him personally say he’s a great guy. Still, I would think that Vick’s well-documented role in the Dickinson murder cover-up might be a good reason to say that he is probably not the best person to hire into a position like this.

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Posted in Administrator Life, Dickinson Murder, In the media..., Ypsilanti