Dang, I keep getting updates about this; for example, from Geoff Larcom:
The President’s Holiday Party will be held today, Dec. 6, from 3-5 p.m. in the Student Center Ballroom. This the year, the party will feature the “Eastern’s Got Talent” employee talent show, presenting your colleagues in a variety of fun and impressive acts. Hope you can come by!
Sadly, I can’t today because of other commitments. Who’s talent will be on display, anyway?
Posted in College Fun, EMU Events, EMU President
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.
Posted in Administrator Life, EMU Images, EMU President, In the media...
To take folks into the weekend, I thought I’d share this video from a story about Freeman Hrabowski that was on 60 Minutes last weekend. Here’s a link to it if the embedded video doesn’t work.
Hrabowski is the President of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, which is a university sorta/kinda like EMU in some ways– both are regional institutions with a history of working with “at risk” and otherwise non-traditional students, commuters, etc. It’s an inspiring piece about the ways that he’s leading innovation there. Anyway, one of the things he talks about in this interview (albeit briefly) is football. From the transcript:
Hrabowski: We need hands on experiences. We need to be encouraging that curiosity. And people cannot– should not be allowed simply to sit back and be bored.
Students can also get jobs and internships at one of 76 companies located on campus. Most are technology startups. They get help growing their businesses and tax credits, along with access to students and faculty. One thing you won’t find at UMBC…
Pitts: You had a chance to get a football team at UMBC, right? And you said no?
Hrabowski: People talk about that. Right. I mean, well– well, first of all, it takes a lot of money for a football team to win.
Hrabowski prefers to win on different playing fields. Incoming freshman Francois Rice noticed right away.
Francois Rice: It seems like everything’s flipped. Where, you might go to another university and the football team might be top dog. Here, it’s the chess team that’s top dog. And it’s–
Pitts: The chess team?
Rice: Yeah, it’s cool to be smart.
Rice is part of the 23rd incoming class of Meyerhoff Scholars – a program that recruits high achievers in math, science and engineering who are aiming for graduate degrees and careers in research.
Oh, if we had only put our money into the chess team. Or academics, or something.
Posted in Academics, Budgets, EMU President, In the media..., Sports
I missed this the other day (it’s been a busy week with the day job): As reported in annarbor.com, Susan Martin went rappelling with the ROTC folks last week. She did it “to show her support of the program.” And the PR ain’t bad either.
An alert EMUTalk.org reader sent me a link to this freep.com article, “Kenneth Burnley, former head of Detroit Public Schools, dies in Alaska.” Burnley, who was a candidate for the job of president of EMU when we ended up hiring Susan Martin, had become the superintendent of a school district in Alaska and died of complications from knee surgery. He was 69.
I noticed that the Eastern Echo has rolled out a poll on Facebook about the tuition hike. Here’s a link to it; I think this should work to click on and then to vote, but I’m not positive. Anyway, the question and answers are:
How do you feel about EMU’s 3.65 tuition increase?
Well, that’s the headline on annarbor.com at least: “Eastern Michigan University will save $5.4 million from layoffs, attrition.” Here’s a quote:
Eastern Michigan University will save $3 million from the layoff of 38 employees and $2.4 million by not filling about 30 vacant positions.
The university laid off 38 employees last week, including 28 unionized workers and 10 from administrative positions as a result of the budget approved by the Board of Regents June 21, said Walter Kraft, vice president of communications.
Like I said before, if the rule of thumb notion that a percentage point raise in tuition raises a million dollars, then this merely confirms that these firings and layoffs– or at many of them– were avoidable.
There is some dispute about the number of people losing their jobs: Kraft said there was 12 PTs laid off and the number in the union press release was 14. I am sure someone who knows will chime in on that sooner than later.
It would appear that the administration’s/Board of Regent’s layoffs have settled out– that is, we seem to know the scope and reach of them. A few thoughts I thought I’d share:
In addition President Martin was not around as the lay offs were occurring. She went out of town after announcing the layoffs at the Board of Regents Tuesday meeting. A real leader would have stayed and personally handled the layoffs to explain the decision to keeps millions in athletics and lay off 40 employees. She should be willing to explain to her employees why she did this.
As EMU presidents come and go, Sam Kirkpatrick is remembered for the University House mess, John Fallon is remembered for lying about a student’s murder, and Sue Martin will be remembered for needlessly laying off employees and making Athletic’s First at EMU not Education.
Time will tell how Martin’s legacy is impacted by this, of course. I blame the Board of Regents more than her and this is not the first time employees have been laid off at EMU, but I see Moeller’s point.
I’ve heard from two different sources today that President Martin (and I presume some other administrators) met with leaders from the unions representing clerical workers, food service and janitorial workers, and professional-technical folks. There are going to be more meetings today and tomorrow about all this, but basically, it sounds like somewhere just shy of 40 folks will get fired tomorrow and/or Friday.
I haven’t heard anything about AP positions yet, but don’t bet on it.
Just to think about the lack of necessity in all this for a moment: let’s say that the average pay and benefits for these positions was $80,000 a year– and I think figure is kind of high. That’s around $3.2 million. The general rule of thumb I have heard before is that a one percent rise in tuition is worth about a million dollars, give or take. So had we raised tuition 6.6%…. But never mind that.
Anyway, to the future laid-off: I think it would be useful to put some names and faces with these decisions so that folks in the administration and on the board know exactly what they’ve done and to whom. So if any of you want to share your stories here, let me know– I’ll be sure to make it available on EMUTalk.org
Here’s a link to President Martin’s statement, the one where she choked up a bit about firing people. There has been some good news– and/or “news” of a different sort.
First off, EMU has received its largest gift in its history ($3.2 million) to establish the Delores Soderquist Brehm Center for Special Education Scholarship and Research. Here’s a link to the press release. That’s pocket change money to the like of U of Michigan, but hey, it’s good for EMU. And as Martin pointed out, we’re almost at the $50 million fundraising goal of the “Invest Inspire” campaign, so that’s good.
Then there’s the Education Achievement Authority, which I think is mostly “news,” both good and bad. It’s good, I guess, because it is acknowledging EMU’s leadership in all things education. But I’m not so sure how “good” it is to be tied to some of the controversies around the Detroit Public School system and the “Emergency Manager” stuff that has come out of the state. I’m not so sure it’s clear how this is going to be paid for, and, as I understand it, there were speakers at the board meeting from the College of Education yesterday who were complaining that no one clued in any of the faculty over there about this project. So we’ll see how that works out.
In other “good news” (or maybe just news), one of my colleagues spoke at the meeting and reported that her invitation to board members to visit her classes was well received. We’ll see how that plays out, but I do think it might (maybe?) make a difference. It certainly couldn’t hurt.
