Monthly Archives: October 2009

Three of the many reasons why money confuses me

Posted on October 30, 2009 by | 7 Comments

Earlier this week, EMU-AAUP President Susan Moeller sent around an email that said, basically, that EMU is currently running a $5.8 million surplus. “Given that our academic departments are suffering from a terrible lack of funding lets hope that the EMU administration uses some of this surplus,” Moeller writes, “to remedy the underfunding SOON.”

Earlier today, I was talking with a suit-type who I trust who basically said that what Moeller was saying wasn’t completely true because a) a lot of this “surplus” is really about about accounting changes, b) a lot of it is based on federal stimulus money that we all know is going to go away, and c) everyone is pretty sure we’re going to get cut big-time from the state next year.

And just now, a friend/colleague of mine who teaches at Michigan State posted something kind of alarming: “Possible MSU cuts: 30 programs, 2 departments, 600 jobs.”

So, what’s the deal here? Who is spinning the numbers at EMU, Moeller or the administration? How is it possible that EMU’s overall financial picture seems rosier than MSU’s? Anybody know anything?

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Posted in Administrator Life, Budgets, Michigan State U, The Market Crash of 2008

The emus fall to the absolute last place in BCS poll

Posted on October 29, 2009 by | 1 Comment

I don’t know what this says about me as a person, but when the Detroit Lions were 0-15 last year, I mostly did not want them to win that sixteenth game. This is because in not winning that last game, Detroit set a record in badness (whereas had they lost just 15 games in a season, they would have merely tied the record for badness).

So it was oddly satisfying for me to read the Eastern Echo article “Eastern Michigan falls to 120, Alabama stays best in Pool’s Power Rankings.” EMU is not just in last place in the MAC; we’re in last place, period. According to the article, there are only 5 out of 120 teams in the FBS division without a win this year, and, according to the rankings, we’re the worst football team of bad football teams. But with five other win-less FBS teams, it’s going to be tough for EMU to be the undisputed worse team of the year.

Oh, and this weekend, EMU is earning a check by being beaten up by Arkansas.

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Posted in College Fun, In the media..., Sports

“Eastern Michigan University has long-range plan for arts village on campus”

Posted on October 28, 2009 by | 3 Comments

I actually saw this article in Crain’s Detroit Business a while ago, “Eastern Michigan University has long-range plan for arts village on campus.” To be honest, I’m cynical because of some politics I’m not going to get into here, and also because of the “beautiful dream” quality of the project. As the article points out, this is an estimated $80 million project and EMU has not begun the process for raising funds yet. So, given what’s happening with Mark-Jefferson and what will (probably) happen with Pray-Harrold, I am betting that a) this is at a minimum 10 years off, and b) will end up being a much smaller project.

Still, most fund raising begins with a dream and a fuzzy artists’ sketch, and as Alum pointed out in a recent comment (I don’t know how accurate this is or what it’s based on because I couldn’t find the article Alum referenced), EMU raised $30 million in the “silent part” of its capital campaign. So hey, who knows? This might come to something yet.

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Posted in Buildings and Grounds, EMU Fund Raising, In the media...

Pray-Harrold No Smoking “pilot” zone

Posted on October 27, 2009 by | 6 Comments



This was new to me today (mainly because I have been working a lot at home lately): as this flyer taped to the window indicates, there’s a “Entrance Pilot” program at Pray-Harrold right now to enforce a no smoking zone entrance.

My pictures are not that great here for giving perspective, but the zone includes a sign by the trees kind of in the “square” of the southeast entrance area, and this red “line in the sand” (or paint on the pavement).


On the one hand, I applaud the effort.  But how come these same rules don’t appear to be in place at the northeast entrance of the building, the one that is nearest to the College of Education and far busier than this entrance?  I mean, having this southeast entrance a non-smoking zone and the northeast entrance a smoking zone is kind of like being in a restaurant and being sat right on the borderline between the smoking and non-smoking sections.  (Oh, and when is Michigan going to join radical states like North Carolina and ban smoking in restaurants and bars, anyway?)

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Posted in Buildings and Grounds, EMU Images, Uncategorized

The emus continue their perfect season

Posted on October 24, 2009 by | 11 Comments

Losing, that is– Ball State 29, EMU 27. I didn’t see the game or hear anything about it on the radio, but I found this quote from the annabor.com article rather striking:

Ball State coach Stan Parrish, a former University of Michigan assistant, said he never could have imagined winning a game with just a single passing yard.

“No, I couldn’t imagine even being in a game,” he said. “I’m a coach that’s always thrown the ball for a lot of yards. This is a record. We threw for one yard and won.”

Seriously? EMU can’t beat a team it holds to one yard of passing? Huh….

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Posted in In the media..., Sports

“Fix your danged stadium already No. 1: Eastern Michigan University”

Posted on October 21, 2009 by | 21 Comments

This is an interesting piece by Tobi Writes at bleacher report: “Fix your danged stadium already No. 1: Eastern Michigan University.” This is the first in what is promised to be a series of articles about “problem stadiums that haunt programs at the FBS level,” and EMU’s stadium apparently is problem stop #1.

I think Writes raises some serious credibility problems from the start by just assuming that football is a generally revenue generating enterprise; there is ample evidence in a variety of places to suggest that is way WAY off. His ideas for improving Rynearson stadium mostly boils down to getting rid of the track and getting rid of some of the unused seats to make it look a little more “full.” Maybe.

But I think Writes is most on when he says this:

EMU is only seven miles away from the University of Michigan, which draws 110K per game. Even though the Wolverines are not a pro team, they might as well be. EMU is playing in what I have named a “Killzone.” They are competing against a football business that dominates the public’s football entertainment dollars in their area, just like NFL teams do in NFL Killzones.

EMU is also a bit of a commuter school. That hurts attendance as well.

These factors strongly suggest EMU will not draw a consistent 25,000 to Rynearson at any point in the next 20 years, no matter how competitive they are on the field.

By the way, someone was telling me the other day that way back when, the EMU football stadium used to be more or less at the corner of Oakwood and Washtenaw in the space that is now a large parking lot. I’m assuming that was a long LONG time ago, but if that was the case, what a shame that the move was made.

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Posted in Buildings and Grounds, College Fun, In the media..., Sports

University Presidents everywhere: what’s the deal with your houses?

Posted on October 21, 2009 by | Leave a comment

An alert and regular reader sent me this article from last weekend’s New York Times: “Furor Swirls Over College Chief’s House,” which is about a controversy about the President of North Dakota State University’s new house that is strikingly similar to EMU’s infamous house controversy. The opening paragraphs:

Education officials in North Dakota called Friday for an audit on the construction of a house built for the president of North Dakota State University, who resigned last week amid mounting questions about the project’s huge cost overrun, to a total of more than $2 million.

Joseph A. Chapman, president of the public university, in Fargo, announced Wednesday afternoon that he would depart in January. In a telephone interview, Dr. Chapman, 67, said he had long planned to step down by the end of this academic year anyway, adding of his role, “It’s just not as much fun as it once was.”

The short article is interesting reading only in that the circumstances at NDSU are remarkably similar to the way things were here at EMU: the house is enormously over budget, it’s called “far outside the values of people” for being so grandiose, the president initially said it was the foundation’s idea, not his, but then it came to light that president was more involved than previously thought, etc. Heck, Chapman’s wife was even a “paid ambassador” for the university! The only difference is that Chapman seems to have done a heck of a lot more for NDSU than Kirkpatrick ever did for EMU.

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Posted in Administrator Life, In the media...

C’mon out to the National Day on Writing stuff in the EMU Student Center!

Posted on October 20, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Yours truly will be busy doing computer stuff and God knows what else at EMU’s part of the National Day on Writing, which will basically run from 9 am to 4 pm, mostly in the EMU Student Center Ballroom. The Eastern Echo ran this nice story about the event, and our gallery of writing will be our web site, which is at http://emuenglish.org/ndow.

Linda Adler-Kassner and Cathy Fleicsher, the main organizers of this event here at EMU, have done a great job of making EMU’s event one that is being recognized nationally by the National Council on Teachers of English (the national group hosting this), and we’ve also received tremendous support from the EMU marketing folks and a bunch of area sponsors. So it really ought to be pretty cool. Come on out and say hi!

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Posted in College Fun, EMU Events, In the media...

EMU to break ground for indoor sports facility on Tuesday

Posted on October 19, 2009 by | 5 Comments

I’ll be curious to see if this gets a lot of attention on the EMU homepage and other places promoting “Education First” here: “Local news: EMU to break ground for indoor sports facility.”

Oh, and while the first story I came across was in the Detroit Freep, here’s a link in the Eastern Echo with a few more details.

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Posted in Buildings and Grounds, In the media..., Sports

Butler University sues student blogger

Posted on October 19, 2009 by | 1 Comment

I guess this has been going on for a while now, but I just caught wind of it last night when browsing through various things in my news feed: from Inside Higher Ed, University sues student blogger. Here are the opening paragraphs:

Butler University has sued an undergraduate student for making libelous and defamatory statements about administrators on a blog he kept anonymously.

Details of the case became public last week when Bill Watts, an English professor at Butler, wrote a piece (pdf) in the student newspaper and sent an e-mail to the university’s Faculty Senate in which he questioned “the practice of suing our own students for their utterances.” The e-mail provoked a written response (pdf) from Bobby Fong, Butler president, who defended the lawsuit Tuesday at a Faculty Senate meeting, noting that “academic freedom does not provide protection for defamation and harassment.”

Jess Zimmerman, a junior at Butler, created “TrueBU Blog” in October 2008 to chronicle happenings he deemed of import at the institution. Though he managed the blog anonymously under the tongue-in-cheek moniker “Soodo Nym,” he has recently come forward publicly. In addition to posts by Zimmerman, the blog also featured “reports” from other anonymous faculty and student “correspondents.”

The TrueBU Blog is defunct, but Zimmerman has another blog now where he is writing about the ongoing lawsuit, “I am ‘John Doe.’” Having read through the article, a lot of the comments, and a bit of Zimmerman’s latest blog, the whole thing seems pretty crazy to me. There’s a lot of “insider stuff” going on here because Zimmerman himself is related to a couple of faculty at Butler, too. Zimmerman claims he is the first student to be sued by a university that he is attending over a free speech matter. And I have to say that at first glance, it sure seems like the Butler University administration has over-reacted big-time.

Oh, and for what it’s worth: every once in a while, someone asks me if I’ve ever received any pressure from EMU officials about this space one way or the other. The answer is “no,” and I’m pretty confident that EMUTalk.org is regularly read in Welch Hall and among members of the Board of Regents– well, it used to be more regularly read when there was more drama on campus a couple years ago, but you get the idea. In any event, I salute the EMU powers that be for not acting as dumb at the Butler University administration, and I hope I don’t get sued by Butler for saying that.

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