A University of Colorado student paid his tuition in $1 bills……. 30 pounds of them….. in order to highlight the growing cost of education. Note the $65/hour he calculated for class time!
Nic Ramos, University Of Colorado Student, Pays Tuition In $1 Bills VIDEO.
At the Monday, Dec. 6 Senate meeting, VP for Administration & Finance Rose Lee will present the 2010-2011 University Budget report. A&F are to be applauded for pulling this together in time for the December Senate meeting – after all, the State budget was only approved some 6 weeks ago! You can read the budget report here.
Senator Lee’s presentation will concentrate on pages 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9 of the report. Got questions about the report? Contact your Senator(s) in advance of the December 6th meeting.
The University Curriculum & Research Committee has spent much of the past year
investigating ways that the University can enhance support for faculty
pursuit of research, scholarship & creative activity. The committee would like to share
their preliminary recommendations and engage the campus in a discussion about the
recommendations.
There will be two open forums held next week: Monday, November 15, 12-1:15 and
Tuesday, November 16, 12-1:15, both in MLK 225/229. I encourage you to attend, to
hear the committees recommendations, and to give your input and feedback.
Questions about the upcoming forums can be directed to Dr. Marc D’Alarcao, Professor
of Chemistry and a member of C&R, at mdalarcao@science.sjsu.edu
I’m attending a scientific conference for my field in Pasadena this week, a brief respite from University affairs, CSU budget problems, and the national elections. I just spoke with a colleague from University of Western Ontario where a faculty strike was narrowly averted last night. At issue was a plan to have all faculty, tenured or not, undergo reviews by administrators on an annual basis. The faculty see this as the beginning of the end of tenure. The UWO administration contends “[annual] performance reviews are common in all other workplaces.” Of course, the fundamental tenets of academic freedom make a university unlike any other workplace.
In a related story, the Texas A&M administration is now producing what amount to profit/loss statements on each of it’s faculty members, looking for a mismatch between the “profit” from number of students taught and grant funding versus the “loss” from the faculty salary, lab costs, etc. This kind of analysis treats a faculty member as an individual widget; it ignores decisions about types and sizes of courses to teach, distribution of junior and senior faculty, advising, research mentoring, and other factors that departments decide as a whole.
At Monday’s Senate meeting, we completed the process for selecting faculty members for the Advisory Committee to the Trustees Presidential Search Committee (ACTPSC). As Senate Chair, I sit on the ACTPSC Ex Officio. The elected faculty representatives are Jennifer Rycenga, Professor of Humanities, and Lynda Heiden, Associate Professor of Psychology. The Advisory Committee will have an open meeting on November 18th with the Chancellor and the representatives of the Trustees Committee.