According to the Eastern Echo, it would appear that the governor signed the deal: “EMU awarded $31.5 million for Pray-Harrold renovations.” This is basically all good and old news, though I’m not sure I agree that we’re completely “done” raising money here. Heck, with the way the markets have been lately, the state might pull some “take-back” scheme or something.
Anyway, I was more interested in something else that comes up in the Echo article:
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In the “where are they now?” category of things: John Fallon is one of four finalists for the job as president of North Country Community College in New York: NCCC narrows presidential search to four. This brief article from the local media in northeastern New York emphasizes Fallon’s past job as president of SUNY-Potsdam, which makes sense since NCCC about 75 miles away from Potsdam in the Adirondack mountains.
Here’s the part on Fallon:
Dr. Fallon began his career in 1973 in a joint appointment role as an assistant professor and consultant at Ball State University in Indiana.
He has served as president of William Penn University in Iowa, the State University of New York at Potsdam and Eastern Michigan University. For the past year, Dr. Fallon has been serving as a senior fellow with the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. He is a graduate of Western Michigan University (BS), Northern Michigan University (MA) and Michigan State University (Ph.D.). Dr. Fallon is married to Dr. Sidney Lynn Miller Fallon; they have four children.
Interestingly, I didn’t realize Fallon went off to that place where university presidents go in an attempt to be rehabilitated from the past, the AASCU. And I have to assume that the only reason why Fallon is a finalist for this job is because of connections he has in the region. After all, he’s the only finalist for this job who doesn’t have explicit experience at a community college.
Well, anyone doing a bit of internet research on Fallon will probably come across EMUTalk.org, so if there are New Yorkers new to this site, a big howdy from me. Oh, and I might suggest passing on Fallon for a variety of different reasons….
As Mark Higbee noted recently, there’s a story in today’s AANews about Pray-Harrold renovations, “Legislature grants EMU request for funding of Pray-Harrold renovation.” Now, not to take anything away from Susan Martin and this new era of transparency, but this request has been in the pipeline for about 10 years. Martin et al pushed it across the finish line, but there were a lot of others– including Kirkpatrick and Fallon, frankly– who did some of the heavy lifting.
Anyways, it’s good news, even if a real start to ground-breaking is years off. Maybe years and years off.
What is the best guess as to when it will happen? No one knows. But just to keep it interesting, I would like to propose a friendly contest.
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Here’s the info from an email Susan Martin sent around this afternoon:
I am pleased to report that the State legislature has passed Senate Bill 511 which includes a $31.5 million capital outlay appropriation for the renovation of Pray-Harrold. The bill now will move to the Governor’s desk for signature and we hope that will occur soon to enact this into law. We are thankful for all of the support from our State legislators and friends who have moved the bill to this stage.
Again, not that this means that folks who teach and work in Pray-Harrold will have to soon pick out new carpet patterns. For one thing, EMU still needs to raise the rest of the money to get the project truly off the ground. But it’s still good news.
Posted in Budgets, Buildings and Grounds, EMU President
As I often do on a Friday afternoon, I was doing a YouTube search for “emus,” and I came across this very old footage of the British comic Rod Hull with his puppet, Emu:
I have vague memories of this from my childhood, and there are actually a number of Hull and Emu videos out there on YouTube, including this bit where Snoop Dogg shoves him over after being attacked.
Who says that emus aren’t dignified enough to be a mascot? Who says that the internets is a waste of time?
Posted in Emus (the bird)
The emus are playing the Northern Illinois Huskies here on Saturday at noon. It’s all part of homecoming week; by the way, what’s with the western theme, anyway? It strikes me as a little weird since the last thing I think about as being a part of this area is anything having to do with cowboys.
Sadly, I won’t be able to attend because of other things going on around the sitedad household, and that means I probably won’t get a chance to see an EMU football game this year. The next home game for EMU is their last of the season on November 28. Unless the weather is unseasonably nice and/or the emus experience a remarkable turn-around to their season, I predict an uncomfortably small turn-out at that one. Oops! read that wrong. EMU is at home against Akron on October 18. Though I still bet the crowd is small 11/28….
Posted in College Fun, Sports
I came across this article from a blog I read on a regular basis that is written by someone who teaches at the University of Illinois: “Beware the Button Police,” from Inside Higher Ed. Here are the opening paragraphs:
Sporting an Obama or McCain button? Driving a car with one of the campaigns’ bumper stickers? You might need to be careful on University of Illinois campuses.
The university system’s ethics office sent a notice to all employees, including faculty members, telling them that they could not wear political buttons on campus or feature bumper stickers on cars parked in campus lots unless the messages on those buttons and stickers were strictly nonpartisan. In addition, professors were told that they could not attend political rallies on campuses if those rallies express support for a candidate or political party.
Of course, this kind of rule is goofy for all sorts of reasons, and it would never ever fly at EMU. I can’t imagine the grievance spasms from the various unions on campus, and with good cause. It seems like a completely unenforceable rule at UI as well.
Having said that, isn’t there a difference between a bumper sticker and button or something else I might take into a classroom? I mean, I have a couple of different Obama stickers on my car (along with many MANY other stickers), but my students don’t generally follow me out to my car. They certainly don’t do that during class. On the other hand, if I sport an Obama t-shirt or button to class, doesn’t that send a different kind of message?
Posted in Administrator Life, Faculty Life, In the media..., Staff Life
This isn’t the kind of thing I would normally post here on EMUTalk.org, but this $700 billion or so bailout that is necessary to save the U.S. and the world economy from collapse is most certainly big news that might hurt higher ed, or, at least according to the opening paragraph of this “for pay” article in the CHE, this bailout might help banks loaning to students and thus help higher ed.
So I thought it might be something worthy of discussion here.
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Posted in Budgets, In the media...
This just in from Pam Young:
EMU’s new e-mail system, EagleMail, will be implemented in 10 days (Oct. 3). Most users will not need to do anything except be sure their password is up to date.
Those who use an e-mail client such as Thunderbird, Outlook, Eudora, Entourage or Mac Mail will need to change a few security settings. Those who wish to forward their EMU e-mail will need to set up forwarding once the new system is live. An update on the system is here:
Clearly, the “contest” for naming the new email system was rigged, and/or the only people who voted for this were marketing wonks who like Eagles. EagleMail is a dumb name, period. Henceforth, I will refer to the new system as EmuMail or– just to simplify the abbreviation and keep everyone happy, “e-mail.”
In any event, for most EMU email users, the system should just work. But it isn’t completely clear to me when this is going to be “turned on” for everyone (wasn’t the original plan to get people onto this new system in stages?), and there are also some things in the “update” document that people should read:
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Posted in EMU Events, EMU Technology
This got forwarded to me via one of the mailing lists I’m on: Judgment Day, a long piece from the New York Times Magazine this past Sunday, Among other things, it quotes a U of M researcher on student evaluations, and it tells the story of a non-tenure-track instructor/professor who was not hired back in part because of some bad evaluations.
Posted in Academics, Faculty Life, In the media..., Student Life
