Do-More-with-Less University (aka KU) president getting 5% pay raise

Happy New Year, President Cevallos.  We all know you earned every penny.  Your leadership has been stellar.  Really. Stellar.

KU president getting 5% pay raise.

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KU Provost Withdraws from Pres. Search – Western Illinois University

Just came across this announcement on the interwebs:

Candidate Withdraws from Pres. Search – University Relations – Western Illinois University.

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yet another busy meet and discuss agenda

Just because the semester is almost over, doesn’t mean the work is.  Today’s meet and discuss agenda is packed once again…and there are several items that may be added under “other” as well.

APSCUF-KU MD 14 Dec 2010 Agenda

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the holiday spirit of giving, but not exactly WikiLeaks

In my most recent post, “between Stalin and squirrels,” you may recall that I referred to a “concept paper” that PASSHE Chancellor Cavanaugh provided to State APSCUF Executive Committee for consideration.  According to APSCUF President Steve Hicks, Chancellor Cavanaugh asked the Executive Committee to review and “approve or not.”  In Hicks’s response to the Chancellor, he indicates that the Executive Committee “could not consent” to participate in the plan called for in the concept paper.  And at the very end of Hicks’s memo, he adds “At lunch you told me the Cal State system was ‘on board.’  I checked with them and the union is emphatically not.”  Good to know.

I have been very interested in reviewing that paper, but our State APSCUF leadership has been unwilling to make the document public.  Given a series of developments on Kutztown’s campus–e.g. talk of “smart growth” and “growing programs without additional resources”–and the Chancellor’s recent memo concerning PASSHE transformation, I have suspected that the Chancellor’s Office has been influenced by that “concept paper” in ways that we are already beginning to see creep into the administration’s language.

As readers of the XChange know, I have been sharpening my focus on the Kutztown administration’s failure of vision and planning.  Given this vacuum of vision, I would bet that whatever the Chancellor has in mind for PASSHE transformation, Kutztown will be a test case.  There is, of course, a track record for this.  For example, “Commonalities” was piloted here.  We were the test case for retrenchment.  Kutztown President Cevallos has also demonstrated a consistent pattern of taking cover behind the mandates from the Office of the Chancellor, the Board of Trustees, or the Board of Governors.  Chancellor Cavanaugh’s “PASSHE transformation” would be a convenient way of plugging the Kutztown leadership vacuum and test out “transformation.” However, as Hicks and Mash noted in their response to the Chancellor’s memo on the APSCUF blog,  the Chancellor’s memo was rather vague.  Big concepts, thin on specifics.  Not surprising, of course.

Well, someone must have been in the holiday mood today.

It seems that “Santa” made a stop by my office overnight.  Upon arriving to work, I was pleased to find a little gift.  Santa gave me a copy of the “concept paper.”  Now, I am in such a wonderful mood that I wanted to join in the holiday spirit of giving.  My gift to you:

Concept Paper on Re-engineering the Undergraduate Curriculum

Given that this document may have a significant impact on the future of our working lives, it seemed to me that it would be a good idea to check out what the Chancellor’s Office is reading.

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squirrel logic for the holidays

SQUIRREL by deepdemocracy
Use Zazzle’s shirt designer

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between Stalin and squirrels

I’ve tried to write this post no fewer than three times.  I’m not having a case of writer’s block; I just haven’t found enough time during these last several days of the semester to tackle the task of connecting Stalin to squirrels.  Actually, it’s not really a matter of connecting the two at all.  It’s a matter of being concerned about failing to navigate what feels like a fairly narrow line of argument.

A little over a week ago, this post had the title “Squirrel Logic.”  Then, as so often happens, events eclipsed the value of that post.  And yet, I still think there is some value in the notion of “squirrel logic.” I’ll admit that I am indebted to a segment titled “Islamophobiapalooza” that Jon Stewart did on The Daily Show back on 9/7 of this year.  Part of the segment focused on the media’s obsession with pastor Terry Jones’s announcement that he would burn copies of the Quran on 9/11.   Here’s how the Huffington Post described the relevant portion of the segment:

Stewart likened the media’s constant coverage of the crazy pastor to the dog from the movie “Up!” It’s like no matter what is going on the world, they will drop everything if they see a squirrel. In this case, the squirrel is an irrational person who thinks burning books is OK.

If you haven’t seen the Pixar film Up this will give you an idea of the scene Stewart references:

 

At APSCUF-KU meet and discuss this semester, we have been asking the administration for their plans to mitigate the impact of their decisions to retrench faculty, cut release time (Alternative Work Assignments) for directors of programs, get rid of services for “at-risk” students,” eliminate long-standing programs that have been integral to the identity and history of Kutztown University (e.g. the Early Learning Center), and a host of other moves performed, ostensibly, because of a “fiscal crisis.”  When the Kutztown Administration reported a $227,462 surplus for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2010 at the annual PASSHE Board of Governor’s meeting in October, KU’s administration tried to change its story.  At our October meet and discuss meeting, KU’s Provost attempted to say that the retrenchments were due to “fiscal concerns” but they also had “programmatic dimensions.”  Really?  For over a year the administration has done nothing but cry “the sky is falling.”  Now, they expect us to entertain a new dog and pony show?  SQUIRREL!!!!

The fact is that the current KU administration is suffering from a failure of vision and a lack of any semblance of a coherent plan.  And, frankly, I’m sick of chasing squirrels.  It seems that ever since I’ve been at KU, faculty and staff have been asked to jump in response to one crisis after another.  And, for the most part, we’ve chased the squirrel.  We’ve sucked it up and worked harder.  We’ve put our own research on hold, taken additional precious time out of our family lives, and struggled to maintain the quality of our teaching and service work in our pursuit of the administration’s latest cry of “SQUIRREL!”  The more time I’ve spent working for our local union, the more I am convinced that the real “crisis” at Kutztown is that there is no rudder.  There is no vision that guides the path ahead.  Faculty and staff have jumped and chased the squirrel out of good faith and a commitment to Kutztown University.  We believed in this place.  We believe in our students.  But we cannot continue to dart off into the woods after every snap of a twig because the administration hears a squirrel.

The story of our current “crisis” at KU is a story about the history of this squirrel logic.  It’s not a sexy story.  It’s not as compelling for journalists as the dominant narrative about the economic crisis.  However, even the dominant narrative about the economic crisis is beginning to look more and more like a squirrel hunt.  Just take a look at Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera’s new book, All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis, or if you don’t have the time to read the book because you’re out chasing squirrels, check out this interview.  The story is less about forces of nature as it is about the accumulation of bad practices.

What has become clearer to me over this past year is that this squirrel logic is not consistent across PASSHE.  It happens to be especially prevalent at Kutztown.  And it is perhaps because of my Kutztown vantage point that I had mixed reactions to the most recent post on our State APSCUF blog: “The Great Stalin Plan for the Transformation of PASSHE.” The post is a response to PASSHE Chancellor Cavanaugh’s release of a Board of Governor’s approved plan for “PASSHE Transformation.”  I’ve got a lot to say about that plan, especially how it is in lockstep with the kind of “shock doctrine”/crisis-as-opportunity logic prevalent in higher education right now.  You may recall my post that reported on a “concept paper” by Robert Zemsky and Joni Finney that the Chancellor circulated to State APSCUF last spring (I’d still like to see that document…hint, hint, to all you XChange readers).  However, I have to save that for another post.

While I can fully appreciate what Hicks and Mash were doing in their recent post–and, I think they are dead-on when it comes to what the Chancellor is attempting to do–I find the Chancellor’s memo almost comforting.  That is, at least he has articulated a vision.  As vague as the Chancellor’s statement on PASSHE transformation is, he has at least explicitly articulated a vision for where he wants to take the State System.  That gives us–faculty and staff–something material to discuss and engage.  We can debate the need for “transformation” or we can struggle over the kind of transformation that is necessary to ensure PASSHE’s long-term mission.  I may end up opposing the Chancellor’s plan on its fundamental assumptions about the purpose of higher education, but I can respect the fact that he is willing to put the work into making his plans explicit.  At least he has an argument.

If I am going to be forced to choose a game, I’d rather play against Stalin than hundreds of fictional squirrels.

 

 

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Carlos Vargas-Aburto – Presidential Search – Western Illinois University

There have been quite a few rumors going around about the Provost being on the market.  In order to move this out of the “rumor mill,” I offer you this:

Carlos Vargas-Aburto – Presidential Search – Western Illinois University.

 

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emails from nowhere and the KU Foundation

Readers of the XChange will recall that in post right before Thanksgiving, I wrote about an anonymous, paper copy of an email I received outlining “problems” in the KU Foundation.  In that email, I said that Steve Schnell and I both thought we had received the email because we were members of APSCUF-KU Exec.  However, at our APSCUF-KU Exec meeting yesterday I confirmed that no one else on APSCUF-KU Exec had received the anonymous envelope.  I have heard second hand now that some other people may have received a copy of the email as well.  It is also my understanding that the administration has also seen a copy of the email.

As I suggested in my original post, the major question I had was why did the person who sent the email not go to the Reading Eagle him/herself?  APSCUF-KU Exec had the same question yesterday.  Now that I know that the rest of Exec did not receive the email, I can only assume that the person who sent it to me and Steve expected one of us to do something with it.

If you have ever had to work with anonymous sources, you know that these kind of tips can be tricky.  On the one hand, there seems to be a “good story” there.  However, as the recipient of the tip you do not know the entire context, which could help you understand the motivations of the sender.  That is, for all I know someone might have an incentive in setting me up or attempting to discredit the XChange as a useful site for information and analysis.  That fact is, I don’t know.  So, what to do?

In my article, “Viral Advocacy: Networking Labor Organizing in Higher Education,” that will appear in a special issue of the journal Reflections, RE: Action: Civic Engagement and Technology, I make a case for “deliberating in public”:

What would it look like instead to embrace the publicness of union communications? In my work on the XChange, concerns regarding “going public” generally fall into two categories: 1) fear of surveillance; and, 2) fear of discursive messiness….

…My response to a fear of discursive messiness goes right to the reason why I am interested in using blogs in my composition classrooms. As I suggested above, we need to learn how to write, speak, and deliberate in public. I’m not just talking about writing for public audiences. I mean, learning the rhetorics of public communication so that our processes of communication are as public as our final statements. Yes, this means that we will say things that are incomplete, potentially wrong, and that we’ll regret. But if you think about it, “private” spaces of communication are subject to these very same problems. The only difference is that the privatized discussion “stays in the family” so-to-speak. All too often, however, those “private” spaces become cover for people to engage in personal invective and unaccountable behavior. We need to practice publicly engaging each other in principled ways. Most people do not have a reference point for what a principled, public conversation over issues that matter looks like. All the more reason to practice in the public.

So, here we are…a rubber-hits-the-road moment.  Practice what you preach.

The fact is, I cannot know the exact intentions of the sender.  Nor can I game out every possible scenario as to what the intended impact of this email was.  What I do know is that it is worthy of deliberation.  I would bet that there are dozens of people out there that have more information about what was going on at the Foundation…and I invite them to join the discussion or send me more information.  I will also be asking for copies of the KU Foundation audits and copies of the paper packets that were handed out at the meeting referenced in the email.  I can’t say what, if anything, we will find.  I am going to reserve judgement until I have more information.

In the meantime, I thought it would be useful to readers of the XChange to see an actual copy of what I received in that anonymous envelope.  A couple of notes about the document.  First, all the items blacked out were blacked out in the copy I received with the exception of the blacked out mark at the very bottom of the email.  The reason I blacked out that last item was because it was the only instance where a specific person could be singled out as the author of one of the posts in the document.  I may be being overly cautious, but in the off chance that someone is attempting to set up one of the board members, I thought it was prudent to delete his/her name as well, especially since the administration will no doubt be reading this blog (howdy folks!).   Second, I am still interested in talking with anyone who has additional, corroborating, or contesting information about what happened at the Foundation.  I think that it is IMPERATIVE that the FULL TRUTH of this matter becomes clear so that all future donors to Kutztown University’s Foundation can trust that their money is being spent as it was intended.

Here is the document:

Subject: KU Foundation Fiasco

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