Monthly Archives: February 2009

Stimulus good news/bad news

Posted on February 13, 2009 by | Leave a comment

From today’s CHE: “Colleges and Students Cheer Congress’s Economic-Stimulus Deal.” Sure, maybe “cheer” in general terms, but it seems like a good news/bad news to me. The good news:

The compromise, $789-billion economic-stimulus bill that Congress is planning to try to deliver to President Obama by Monday contains large sums of money for student aid and biomedical research, and would give states billions of dollars to ease budget cuts to colleges and schools.

and…

The plan would raise the maximum Pell Grant to $5,550 by 2010, an increase that legislators said would help seven million students. (The current maximum award is $4,731.) The aid program would receive $15.6-billion from the bill, an amount that would also erase a shortfall in the program’s budget.

A tax credit for tuition would be increased to $2,500, from its current level of $1,800, for the next two years and would make textbook costs an education expense that could be counted toward the benefit. People who do not earn enough money to owe taxes also would be eligible to take $1,000 of the credit.

The bill would also bolster the Federal Work-Study program, providing $200-million. And it would allow families to buy computers with money they have saved for college expenses in so-called 529 plans, whose earnings are exempt from taxes.

In other words, a lot of financial aid and credits to students, which is obviously a good thing.

The bad news? Well, given that Granholm announced some pretty significant cuts to higher education in Michigan the same day that this package passed congress, I don’t think it’s clear that money to help states out of debt is going to trickle down to EMU’s budget for 2009/10.

And the compromise bill does not include “the separate pot of money for campus construction that the House had passed.” So no money from the feds for Mark-Jefferson, Pray-Harrold, or any other project on campus.

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Posted in Budgets, Buildings and Grounds, In the media..., Pray-Harrold Renovation Pool, The Market Crash of 2008

“Congress Reaches Deal on $789 Billion Stimulus Bill”

Posted on February 12, 2009 by | Leave a comment

From the CHE Daily: “Congress Reaches Deal on $789-Billion Stimulus Bill.” This thing is still clearly a moving target and given the pessimism I’ve heard lately about how this will work for bailing states (like Michigan) out of debt, I still think it’s too early to be optimistic. But here’s a couple interesting paragraphs from the article:

The two versions also included significantly different amounts for a “state fiscal-stabilization fund” that would give states money to distribute to public colleges and elementary and secondary schools to help buffer them from budget cuts. The Senate bill allocated $39-billion for that fund, while the House bill included $79-billion.

Several news sources were reporting that the compromise would provide $54-billion for the state fund, including $10-billion that could be used to modernize college and school facilities.

So who knows? Maybe Michigan will get enough to stop the bleeding, and maybe EMU might get some of that $10 billion building money for “shovel ready” projects.

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Posted in Administrator Life, Budgets, Buildings and Grounds, Pray-Harrold Renovation Pool, The Market Crash of 2008

The “stimulus package” might not be so exciting for EMU

Posted on February 11, 2009 by | 4 Comments

I just heard a brief piece on Michigan Public Radio, and the “talking head” expert they had on there said that a lot of the funding to states got “stripped out” of this latest bill. This means, in the words of this budget analyst, it might be a lot harder for the Governor to keep her pledge/goal of not impacting the budgets of schools or universities. A lot of dust has to settle of course, but this little blurb wasn’t exactly good news.

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Posted in Budgets, In the media..., The Market Crash of 2008

Wait– Loppnow is fading into the distance quite yet

Posted on February 11, 2009 by | 1 Comment

Instead, Provost Don Loppnow will spend at least a year as the VP Advancement (e.g., fund-raising). EMU President Susan Martin made the announcement via email yesterday. It makes some sense, actually: Loppnow has lots and lots of community contacts (obviously) and he’d probably be a good person to help find a more permanent advancement VP, someone who is more of a “professional fund-raiser” rather than a local community activist. Martin’s email is after the “Read More” part:
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Posted in Administrator Life, EMU Fund Raising, EMU President

Is the Pray-Harrold project turning into a train wreck?

Posted on February 7, 2009 by | 10 Comments

Where are the Welch Hall suits or President Martin when you need them? Oh, my….

In my role as the English department alternate, I went to a meeting yesterday of the Pray-Harrold advisory committee, a meeting that reminded me a bit of one of those endurance tests on the TV show Survivor.. For those of you unfamiliar with the show: there are frequent “challenges” that involve something like standing on one leg or holding your arm up as long as you can, and the winner/last person left of these challenges receives some sort of reward– immunity from being voted off the island, a cheeseburger, whatever. I don’t know who was the last person standing at this particular meeting since I bowed out at hour three of the four hour marathon session.

Anyway, the last time I went to one of these meetings back in mid December, I came away cautiously optimistic about the budget being large enough to afford some modest building remodeling beyond the mechanical– the HVAC and the electrical systems. After Friday’s meeting, I am now decidedly pessimistic.

EMU and the state of Michigan is getting ready to spend $30+ million dollars and a couple years on renovations, and right now, I think the best case scenario for Pray-Harrold after construction is we will end up with a building not too far from the status quo. Sure, it will probably be modestly better in terms of comfort (air quality, temperature, some lighting, new paint, no plugs in the floors of offices, maybe a few new chairs and desks, etc.). But at best, Pray-Harrold will remain the same in terms of configuration (classrooms, offices, furnishings, etc.), it’s still not going to be possible for anyone with any sort of mobility disability to maneuver in the largely-outmoded lecture halls, and there still won’t be any meaningful “social spaces” for students and others hanging around.

The worst case scenario? Wow, the sky is the limit on that one. It’s easy to imagine a PR nightmare– $30 million dollars, and we still don’t have handicapped accessible rest rooms or lecture halls? It is easy to imagine a new HVAC system not making much difference in the overall comfort-level of the building– that is, you still end up with hot and cold spots because of the fatally flawed bones of the structure. And it is extremely easy to imagine the ripple-effect this project will have throughout the institution, impacting everything from credit hour production, class scheduling, and teaching loads. In short, a train wreck.
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Posted in Administrator Life, Buildings and Grounds, EMU President, Faculty Life, Pray-Harrold Renovation Pool

Shaman Drum Bookshop in trouble

Posted on February 7, 2009 by | 1 Comment

This news from the AANews this morning: “Shaman Drum Bookshop– in danger of closing– seeks investors.” Here are the opening paragraphs:

Karl Pohrt and his Ann Arbor literary institution, Shaman Drum Bookshop, need help.

Pohrt is looking for investors to give the South State Street shop the cash it needs to survive while it waits for its application to become a nonprofit to be processed by the government.

Otherwise, the store could close.

“We are in trouble,” Pohrt said Friday.

“We are in trouble,” he repeated, “as are many stores in downtown, a lot of small, locally-owned businesses. … I suddenly find myself in this unenviable position of having run out of money.”

I think it would be a real shame if Shaman Drum were to close. I buy lots of books online (just like everyone else), but whenever I can, I do buy local and Shaman Drum is one of the great local book stores in this country let along this area. Perhaps it is a sign of the times with the current economic downturn, but I guess the small and local bookstore model has been suffering a slow death ever since amazon.com started making money and proved itself a more viable and long-term business plan.

I don’t have any money to invest (maybe someone out in EMUTalk.org land does?), but I might make a point of at least buying a book there this weekend. And good luck becoming a nonprofit….

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Posted in Ann Arbor, In the media..., The Market Crash of 2008

“Some doubt Granholm’s tuition freeze will aid students”

Posted on February 5, 2009 by | 2 Comments

From Freep.com comes “Some doubt Granholm’s tuition freeze will aid students.” Here are the opening paragraphs:

With tuition at Michigan’s public universities jumping by 26% over the last three years, Garry Mundy says he’s ecstatic about Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s proposal to freeze tuition.

The 18-year-old from St. Clair Shores expects to carry about $60,000 in student debt by the time he graduates from Eastern Michigan University: “I’m trying not to freak out about this stuff.”

But beware, say national experts and Michigan university officials. Granholm’s plan is certain to trigger resistance from the universities, and it’s not clear how much it would really save students.

A short-term freeze, they also note, would not address long-term problems such as rising health care costs that fuel the rising cost of a degree.

The other problem with the tuition freeze– or at least the promise of one right now– is the money has to come from somewhere. If the state cuts funding to EMU and the feds (through the stimulus package being debated right now) doesn’t make up for the difference, then how are institutions like EMU supposed to pay its bills?

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Posted in Academics, Budgets, In the media..., Student Life, The Market Crash of 2008

“First annual Ford Lake frozen leap”

Posted on February 4, 2009 by | 1 Comment

The folks at emYOU! magazine sent me the info below the “Read More” part a while ago– sorry I’m just getting around to this now: “emYOU! The Magazine and Lake Shore Apartments will team up for the 1st Annual Ford Lake Frozen Leap at Lake Shore Apartments on 2500 Lake Shore Blvd. in Ypsilanti on Feb. 14, 2009, in an effort to raise money for the American Heart Association.”

I gotta say the last thing I’m likely to do is jump in a lake around here in February. But it sounds like a good cause and perhaps fun for someone.
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Posted in College Fun, EMU Events, In the media..., Ypsilanti

“It’s Culture, Not Morality”

Posted on February 3, 2009 by | 7 Comments

From Inside Higher Ed comes “It’s Culture, Not Morality,” which is an article about Susan D. Blum and her book, My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture. It sounds like a really interesting book and it is one of those topics near and dear to my own heart as a composition and rhetoric specialist. In fact, we’re going to be talking about this sort of thing in my graduate course next week.

Here are a couple of interesting quotes:

What if everything you learned about fighting plagiarism was doomed to failure? Computer software, threats on the syllabus, pledges of zero tolerance, honor codes — what if all the popular strategies don’t much matter? And what if all of that anger you feel — as you catch students clearly submitting work they didn’t write — is clouding your judgment and making it more difficult to promote academic integrity?

These are some of the questions raised in My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture, in which Susan D. Blum, an anthropologist at the University of Notre Dame, considers why students so frequently violate norms that seem clear and just to their professors.

and…

Those who want to understand the ideas in the book may want to note the title; it’s no coincidence that Blum wrote about college “culture,” and not “ethics” or “morality.” And while she did use “plagiarism” in the title, she faults colleges and professors for failing to distinguish between buying a paper to submit as your own, submitting a paper containing passages from many authors without appropriate credit, and simply failing to learn how to cite materials. Treating these violations of academic norms the same way is part of the problem, she writes.

If you find yourself thinking that Blum is advocating surrender, that’s not correct. Her book doesn’t advocate waving a white flag, but a new kind of campaign against plagiarism. And in an interview, Blum said that she includes warnings against plagiarism on her syllabuses, has devoted time trying to track down evidence against a student she was convinced had copied work, and has felt anger and betrayal at students who turned in work that wasn’t original.

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

“The Drive to Go From the Factory to the Classroom”

Posted on February 2, 2009 by | 7 Comments

It’s not every day that the Wall Street Journal has anything to say about EMU, much less a flattering story about an EMU faculty member who started her adult work career as an auto assembly line worker. “The Drive to Go From the Factory to the Classroom” is a feature story of sorts about EMU College of Technology professor Pam Becker. Here are a couple of quotes:

Pamela Becker spent 13 years assembling Buick Skylarks, all the while studying part-time for two degrees as she looked for a way off the General Motors factory floor. Now, 29 years after starting her studies — and at the height of the crisis in the auto industry — Ms. Becker is a college instructor helping displaced Michigan auto workers reinvent themselves.

and…

Meanwhile, Ms. Becker is pushing for more programs like hers, something she sees as critical as the auto industry continues its decline. “So many jobs are connected to manufacturing cars in Michigan,” says Ms. Becker. “It’s important to be prepared, and I’m happy to help people go through the tough transition that I did.”

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Posted in EMU Technology, Faculty Life, In the media...