Category Archives: Administrator Life

“At Forum on the Future, Leaders Dissect What Ails Higher Education Today”

Posted on December 12, 2011 by | Leave a comment

One of the things that I notice about the end of the fall semester is that everyone seems pretty tense and often a little depressed, I suppose because of the stress and pressures of ending the term well combined with stress and pressures of the holidaze, too. So in that sense, it doesn’t surprise me that a bunch of education wonks are dwelling on the negative, according to this CHE piece,  ”At Forum on the Future, Leaders Dissect What Ails Higher Education Today.”

There are two (related, I suppose) issues that came up here that I do think that many of us faculty-types are not of aware of as we should be:  the cost of tuition and the general “economic crisis” that is going on in the world.  Higher Ed needs to respond.  And (to quote):

And James J. Duderstadt, a former president of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, suggested that many in academe may not see a need to do things differently. In a time of cultural and economic turmoil, universities may be “out to sea as a tsunami of change comes through, destroying everything on land.”

The upheaval is felt on campus, he said, as merely “a few ripples.”

I see Duderstadt’s point.  Frankly, I have colleagues who lament a work schedule that requires them (because of meetings and such) to be on campus four days a week, and at the same time, I just heard a story on “Morning Edition” just now about the ridiculously high percentage of Americans who can’t find anything but part-time work.  There’s a disconnect there, right?

But like I said, everyone is a little stressed out….

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Posted in Administrator Life, Faculty Life, In the media..., Student Life, The Market Crash of 2008

“Guest column: Eastern Michigan University has not socked it to students during tough times”

Posted on December 2, 2011 by | 1 Comment

An alert EMUTalk.org reader sent me this link, “Guest column: Eastern Michigan University has not socked it to students during tough times,” which is an op-ed piece by our own President Susan Martin which appeared in the Jackson Citizen Patriot.  For the most part, I agree with Martin:  EMU has done a lot– probably too much, frankly– to cut costs in light of state cuts.  Though I think the money could have been spent better than on the football team and such.

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Posted in Administrator Life, EMU Images, EMU President, In the media...

“Greg O’Dell returns to Eastern Michigan University as executive director of public safety and chief of police”

Posted on November 30, 2011 by | 29 Comments

There has got to be a story behind this one:

According to this press release, “Greg O’Dell returns to Eastern Michigan University as executive director of public safety and chief of police.”  Now, I take this as good news because I think it is true that O’Dell was highly thought of at EMU, but something is amiss here.  For starters, O’Dell took the job as chief of police at the University of Michigan in August– this after being at EMU previously as chief of police and in Ann Arbor in various police administration positions.  To add to this, O’Dell is taking a $20,000 pay cut from his previous salary at EMU and God only knows how much of a pay cut relative to his job at U of M.

What’s up with this?

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Posted in Administrator Life, In the media..., Security and Safety

Kim Schatzel named provost, vice president

Posted on November 2, 2011 by | 12 Comments

Also from Walter Kraft and on the EMU web site comes news that Kim Schatzel will be the next provost.  As I mentioned before, I didn’t see any of the provost candidates, but everyone I talked to said she was the best choice, so good for the powers that be in that choice.

One of my colleagues did a little poking around and found out that she is both on Linkedin and on Twitter, and she appears to be pretty active in both those spaces.  She recently retweeted this post about 10 reasons universities ought to be blogging to attract students, for example.  Perhaps she’ll be more active in this than our previous provost.

I wish her the best of luck, but the track record hasn’t been good.  I might be wrong about this, but I don’t think we’ve had a provost that lasted longer than three years since Ron Collins.  So she’s got to fight the odds to succeed.

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Posted in Administrator Life, EMU Events, Faculty Life

Oh no, not again….

Posted on November 1, 2011 by | 2 Comments

From “Office of the President” comes news of a University Strategic Plan.  To quote the opening lines:

I am pleased to share with you that preliminary planning to develop a five-year university strategic plan has moved forward this summer and fall.  As this process evolves over the weeks and months ahead, there will be opportunities for involvement for everyone on campus – students, faculty and staff, as well as for external constituents who are involved in our success.

Oh Lord.  There are at least five administrator buzzwords in that paragraph; can you circle them?

Then this:

The Council is aware that due to past experiences with the strategic planning process, there is some skepticism about the likelihood of completing the process, and of it being an open and campus-engaging process.  It is my firm commitment, along with that of the co-chair of the ISPC, Professor of Economics and department head Raouf Hanna, that this be a dynamic and successful effort.

Skepticism?!?  Really??

Tomorrow, we will get a look at some kind of survey, while today and tonight, we are left only with a web site.

I don’t want to be a hater here because I do think that there is a value to assessment (faculty do it all the time– it’s called grading) and I think as an institution we do owe it to the public at large to explain what it is that we do (though with the “public” being sucked out of higher education, even at places like EMU, there’s a part of me that thinks we owe them a lot less than we used to).

But I honestly don’t think there has ever been a university strategic assessed program review initiative of long-term stakeholder constituency outcomes that has ever amounted to much of anything.  And that’s not just EMU; if you want to get an angry conversation going during a cocktail party at an academic conference among faculty from a bunch of different universities, just say something like “say, how’s your program review going?”

And I should say that this announcement comes out literally the day after the latest round of “Academic Review and Continuous Improvement Cycle” stuff was due.  I’d like to be hopeful that whatever we’re doing next here is not this.  But….

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Posted in Administrator Life, Faculty Life

“Obama Unveils Plan for Student Loan Borrowers”

Posted on October 27, 2011 by | Leave a comment

I heard this story on NPR yesterday, though this text is from the associated press.  And of course, it’s been reported elsewhere.  Here’s a snippet:

Obama’s plan will accelerate a measure passed by Congress that reduces the maximum required payment on student loans from 15 percent of discretionary income annually to 10 percent. He will put it into effect in 2012, instead of 2014. In addition, the White House says the remaining debt would be forgiven after 20 years, instead of 25. About 1.6 million borrowers could be affected.

He will also allow borrowers who have a loan from the Federal Family Education Loan Program and a direct loan from the government to consolidate them into one. The consolidated loan would carry an interest rate of up to a half percentage point less than before. This could affect 5.8 million borrowers.

Student loan debt keeps becoming a bigger deal–according to the radio version of the story reported  the other day, student loan debt is now larger than credit card debt, and it is one of the frequently mentioned complaints by the Occupy Wall Street movement.  So this might help, at least some students.  Though student loans are complicated.

When I was in graduate school, I borrowed money a couple of times (my undergraduate degree was cheap enough that with my parental support and work, I didn’t need to go into debt).  Some of that borrowing was money I really did need to live, but I will freely admit (with a couple decades of hindsight) that some of that money really was frivolous and was the kind of borrowing made by a 20-something who was thinking of the “here and now” and not of the interest rates and the future.  I am pretty sure that the same is true for our current students:  that is, while a lot of (most?) the borrowing is completely legitimate, I suspect that some of it is about supporting a lifestyle rather than an education.

And when I was borrowing money, there weren’t any of these private lenders giving out money in the form of student loans with crazy-high interest rates.  It seems to me that this is another example of bankers gone wild in the last 20 years.

By the way, I finished my PhD in 1996 and I am still paying off the last trickle of student loans.

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Posted in Administrator Life, Budgets, In the media..., Student Life

Budget problems worsen (and I like what BOR member Morris said)

Posted on October 19, 2011 by | 15 Comments

It’s been mighty mighty busy around here with my day job as of late, so I was happy to see a loyal reader send me a couple of links about ongoing budget problems at EMU, notably this annarbor.com piece, “EMU’s budget shortfall expands to $4.6 million.”   Here are the opening paragraphs:

EMU Chief Financial Officer John Lumm told the EMU Board of Regents on Tuesday that the shortfall, which was reported at $1.7 million at last month’s regents’ meeting, had ballooned to $4.6 million by Sept. 15.

When he first reported the shortfall at a Sept. 20 regents meeting, Lumm originally said the gap could grow to $5 or $6 million by the end of the fiscal year, which isn’t until June 30, 2012.

The university is developing a plan to cut back costs and accommodate for the potential deficit, Lumm told the regents Tuesday .

I’ve got two ideas for cutting costs right off the bat:  first, travel back in time and raise tuition enough to cover the expenses you knew you were going to incur.  As I said before and I’ll say again:  EMU probably would have laid off people over the summer no matter what, but had we raised tuition by 5% or 6%, we would likely not be in this situation now.

Here’s another idea:  maybe it’s time to fire Lumm.

One of the things that comes up in this article is some of the problem with EMU’s finances has to be laid at Lumm’s doorstep.  And Board of Regents member Mike Morris pointed this out.  Here’s a quote:

EMU has $87.4 million in investments. About 37 percent of that amount —or $32 million— is cash or short-term investments. Another 17 pecent constitutes moderate-term investments and the remaining 46 percent is long-term investments.

Morris contended that the university should more heavily invest some of the money it has in cash and short-term investment, which have low return rates. He highlighted the University of Michigan and Michigan State University invest more aggressively and see greater returns.

“I don’t know why we have so much money in cash and short term investments,” Morris said.

Why indeed.

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Posted in Administrator Life, Board of Regents, Budgets, In the media...

Meet and greet with provost candidate David Dauwalder

Posted on October 19, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Today’s provost candidate is David Dauwalder.  I was going to ask how he would make the transition from a small institution like the University of New Haven, but it turns out that Dauwalder has been some kind of provost or dean at a bunch of different instituions since the late 1980s.  And he might be a kind of interesting fit at EMU since his background seems to be in business teacher education.

I guess the one question I’d have for him is what would he suggest we do about this mess?

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Posted in Academics, Administrator Life, EMU Events

Meet and greet with provost candidate Cameron Hackney

Posted on October 17, 2011 by | 4 Comments

EMU Faculty Senate President Matt Evett sent around an email to faculty urging them to attend the sessions for Provosts candidates visiting this week.  The timing is pretty bad for me because of teaching schedules and the like, but today’s candidate is Cameron Hackney from the University of West Virginia.

I do have two questions for Dr. Hackney (and the search committee, for that matter), and maybe someone can ask it on my behalf.  Hackney has an impressive scholarly and administrative record, there’s no doubt about that, but it is also a record that is exclusively at “Research 1″ and “extension” sorts of institutions– not land grant per se, but with that general theme– and he’s a food science/agriculture sort of guy.  So:

  • Can Hackney adjust to leading a faculty where the emphasis is much more squarely on teaching rather than research, and where our programs are not as connected to food, agriculture, or even “outreach” in general in the same way?
  • If Hackney were to come here and then when he either steps down or is forced out as Provost, what department would he go to?  Dietetics?  Is that really a fit?

And I say when he steps down or is forced out and not if because that has clearly been the pattern at EMU since the late Ron Collins.  I don’t mean to be cynical, bu these are the facts on the ground.  There are ample examples of provosts being in that position for short times, and I can’t think of any situations since I’ve been here where the provost left EMU to go on to a better job someplace else.

Anyway, if someone could ask my questions, that’d be great.  And if anyone has any others they want to share here in the comments, feel free.

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Posted in Academics, Administrator Life

Provost candidates on campus next week

Posted on October 12, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Communications VP Walter Kraft sent around an email about the candidates for the Provost job coming to town next week.  The whole thing is after the continued part, and there’s also a web site about the search here.

When I was an undergraduate, my reaction to news about a Provost search would have been “what’s a Provost?”  Well, if you are/were anything like me and need an answer:  a Provost is typically the “chief academic officer” at the university.  While the President is completely in charge, someone like Martin also has to worry about raising money, other non-academic units (sports, facilities, etc.), and general PR for the institution.  The Provost is supposed to be the person who makes stuff works for deans, department heads, and other academic administrators.

Of course, supposed to be is the operative term here:  if the Board of Regents and/or the president want to control everything, the Provost can be in a pretty tough spot, which is at least one theory as to why we’re searching for a Provost in the first place.

One thing that’s interesting to me about this pool of candidates is they are all from the outside.  I don’t know if that’s an intentional decision– “we need some fresh blood around here”– or simply a result of no sensible internal candidates.  Could be a bit of both.

Anyway, I might be able to attend some of the forums, though to be honest, I’m not completely sure how useful they will be.  And I’m also not sure how much time I have to devote to this in the middle of a busy term.  More after the jump.

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Posted in Academics, Administrator Life