The Chronicle: Texas Tech Faculty Members Challenge Report’s View of Their Teaching Time
A controversial growth plan at Texas Tech University took center stage on Wednesday as faculty members challenged a report, commissioned by the chancellor, that concluded that one of the reasons tuition was rising was that faculty members weren’t spending enough time in the classroom.
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Posted in Working conditions
The Chronicle News Blog: Judge’s Ruling in Copyright Case Lets College Off but Not Lecturer
It’s a case that has some copyright scholars scratching their heads. A judge exonerates a university that is accused of infringing the copyright of a company’s research report. But the judge rules that an employee of the university might be culpable of the same activity.
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Posted in Legal issues
Queen’s University: Principal Hitchcock announces resignation
Dr. Karen Hitchcock has announced her decision to withdraw her request for reappointment to a second term as Principal and will be stepping aside, effective April 30, 2008.
In an email to faculty, staff and students this morning, she indicated her wish “to ensure a smooth transition” and conveyed her gratitude to the Queen’s community.
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Posted in Administration
Globe and Mail: A matter of principal grips Queen’s
‘Unprecedented’ controversy surrounds decision on reappointment of university’s leader
Construction cranes dot the spring sky in Kingston.
Queen’s University is on a multimillion-dollar building binge that is set to last until long after current undergrads collect their degrees.
This weekend, as the countdown to finals begins in earnest for students, the clock is also ticking for the university’s principal, Karen Hitchcock. A special committee is expected to decide early next week whether she will stay for a second five-year term. The outcome of that meeting has the potential to send as big a shockwave through the tight-knit Queen’s community as the blasts required to move the limestone for the new recreation centre.
Dr. Hitchcock, in an interview this week, would not discuss her reappointment or the comments of her critics. “There is nothing to respond to,” she said. “This is a confidential, personnel matter.”
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Posted in Administration
Inside Higher Ed: A federal magistrate has ruled that the Professional Staff Congress, the faculty union of the City University of New York, violated the rights of some faculty members by making it too difficult for them to pay only partial dues and to calculate the required dues. The ruling concerns employees covered by a collective bargaining agreement who wish not to pay for anything the union does that is not strictly related to collective bargaining. The CUNY union was found to have made such employees restate their objections each year, which was found to be unfair to these employees. In addition, some of the union’s spending was found to be inappropriately included in categories that would be covered by the collective bargaining contract. A spokeswoman for the union said that it has already changed procedures to comply with the ruling.
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Posted in Unions
Avalanche-Journal: Tech Horn professors tell Hance of concerns with growth plan
Some of Texas Tech’s most prestigious professors are concerned about their chancellor’s drive to increase the student body from 28,000 to 40,000 by 2020.
They especially are concerned about his assistant’s recent suggestion the university could save millions if officials cut back the number of hours faculty are excused from teaching to pursue scholarly activities and simultaneously enrolled more students in more classes.
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Posted in Working conditions
Inside Higher Ed: Obama and Clinton on Affirmative Action
Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton expressed support for affirmative action in higher education in their Pennsylvania primary debate Wednesday night, but with broader definitions of who should benefit. Obama reiterated his view that economic factors — not just race and ethnicity — should count. Obama said that “the basic principle that should guide discussions not just on affirmative action but how we are admitting young people to college generally is, how do we make sure that we’re providing ladders of opportunity for people?” Asked about minority children like his own, who grow up in relatively advantaged circumstances, Obama said: “So if they look at my child and they say, you know, Malia and Sasha, they’ve had a pretty good deal, then that shouldn’t be factored in. On the other hand, if there’s a young white person who has been working hard, struggling, and has overcome great odds, that’s something that should be taken into account. So I still believe in affirmative action as a means of overcoming both historic and potentially current discrimination, but I think that it can’t be a quota system and it can’t be something that is simply applied without looking at the whole person, whether that person is black or white or Hispanic, male or female.” Clinton, asked if she supported such a view, said: “I think we’ve got to have affirmative action generally to try to give more opportunities to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds — whoever they are.” But she then shifted away from affirmative action to list of her education positions. “That’s why I’m a strong supporter of early childhood education and universal pre-kindergarten,” Clinton said. “That’s why I’m against No Child Left Behind as it is currently operating…. That’s why I’m in favor of much more college aid, not these outrageous predatory student loan rates that are charging people I’ve met, across Pennsylvania, 20, 25, 28 percent interest rates. Let’s make college affordable again. See, I think we have to look at what we’re trying to achieve here somewhat differently. We do have a real gap. We have a gap in achievement. We have a gap in income. But we don’t have a potential gap.”
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Posted in Diversity
Reno Gazette-Journal: Glick fires UNR whistleblower professor
A professor who reported animal abuse at the University of Nevada, Reno and who also was accused of plagiarism and mishandling funds has been fired and banned from the campus.
“I was fired by President (Milton) Glick and escorted from my office by campus police as if I were a criminal,” Hussein S. Hussein said Monday.
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Posted in Ethics
The Chronicle: Scientists May Be Putting Their Own Names on Papers Written by Companies
Papers that bear academic scientists’ names as authors, but are ghostwritten by for-profit companies, may be disturbingly common in medical journals, a new study indicates. Some of the scientists accused of being involved in that practice deny any wrongdoing, but journal editors are already outlining measures to prevent future breaches of academic integrity.
In the new issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association,four scientists have published the results of a search of court documents related to the anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx, which has been withdrawn from the market because of concerns about its safety, and which has been the subject of hundreds of lawsuits.
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Posted in Academics
Salem-News.com: Faculty at Portland State University Declare Impasse
Both parties now have 7 days to submit their final offers in writing to the state mediator, who will make them public.
(PORTLAND, Ore.) – After more than one year of contract negotiations, the Portland State University Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (PSU-AAUP) has declared impasse.
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Posted in Uncategorized
BBC: Lecturers are to join teachers on a one-day strike next week
Further education college lecturers have voted for a one-day strike over pay on the same day as school teachers.
The University and College Union says lecturers in more than 250 colleges in England will strike on 24 April.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
The Chronicle News Blog: New Mexico State U. Professors Receive Racist Letters
Four professors and a graduate student at New Mexico State University say they found threatening, racist letters in their offices when they came to the campus on Monday. New Mexico Public Radio reported that two junior faculty members who had recently been denied tenure were among those who told the police they had received the offensive letters.
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Posted in Tenure & Promotion
Los Angeles Times: Marxist professors or sensitive students?
Students complain about indoctrination by professors. Professors complain about vendettas, surreptitious taping and smear campaigns from students and ideologues. Who is right? All week, Michael Shermer and Greg Lukianoff debate academic freedom.
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Posted in Faculty
Inside Higher Ed: Hunger strike at U of Florida
ive students have consumed only water for five days, and several others are on forms of hunger strikes at the University of Florida, as part of the Students for a Democratic Society push for changes in the institution’s investment policies. The students say that the university has failed to consider the ethical implications of its ownership of shares of companies. “Call Bernie Machen [the university’s president] himself and let him know what you think about his refusal to put UF’s money where its mouth is. Ask him if the possibility that our university is profiting off of war, environmental destruction, and human rights abuses is OK with him,” says the students’ Facebook group. Machen wrote the students last month, expressing admiration for their ideals and noting that there are circumstances in which the university would not invest in certain companies. But Machen said he didn’t favor the students’ demands for a campuswide committee to discuss investment choices because of the responsibilities of trustees for financial management and the difficulty of achieving consensus among the entire campus on such issues.
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Posted in Protests
Inside Higher Ed: Margaret Spellings, Where Are You?
Walking from meeting room to meeting room at this week’s annual conference of the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, and scanning the program, it was impossible not to be struck by the fact that a good half of the hundreds of sessions have embedded in their titles the words “student outcomes,” “assessment,” or “accountability.”
Granted, that may not be surprising given that, as noted by Steven D. Crow, the commission’s departing president, the theme of the meeting was “Finding Common Ground: Accreditation, Assessment and Accountability.”
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Posted in Accountability
Targeting Women and Nurses in Attack and Stalking at Homes
In the wake of a brutal attack on a labor conference in Michigan Saturday night by staff of the Service Employees International Union, the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee Monday called on SEIU President Andrew Stern to “renounce the use of violence, and stop targeting women, nurses, and working people for threats and harassment.”
By their own admission, quoted in an SEIU press release after the event, SEIU said it sent 800 people to the event to confront CNA/NNOC Rose Ann DeMoro, the scheduled banquet speaker that night, and other female CNA/NNOC leaders who were at the conference.
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Posted in Unions
The Chronicle: Defending the Property of an Anti-Property Marxist Scholar
Guy Debord, the Marxist and French philosopher who died in 1994, may be rolling over in his grave.
A lawyer representing his widow has threatened Alexander R. Galloway, an associate professor of culture and communication at New York University, with legal action. Mr. Galloway said the lawyer sent him a letter demanding that he cease and desist from distributing his online war game, claiming it infringes on the copyright of the Debord estate. The philosopher had created a similar war game.
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Posted in Intellectual property
The Chronicle News Blog: Boards Need More Student Voices, One Student Trustee Says
Boston — Judging by the attendees at this week’s national conference on trusteeship, students don’t have much of a voice on boards. Of the more than 1,000 trustees registered, only a few are students.
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Posted in Governance
AP: Gaza Universities Closed After Fuel Cut
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — The Gaza Strip’s four main universities shut down Monday after officials said students couldn’t get to class because of critical fuel shortages.
University officials said attendance rates were down by at least 60 percent Monday, prompting the closure. It affects more than 45,000 students and will last until Thursday.
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Posted in International
The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee tonight condemned a brutal assault by busloads of purple cloaked staff of the Service Employees International Union who smashed into a conference of union members Saturday night in Dearborn, Mi. and physically assaulted women and union members who stood in their path.
“I am deeply concerned about this heightened attack on women and nurses, directed by SEIU President Andrew Stern,” said CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro, who was scheduled to speak about the campaign for genuine healthcare reform at the banquet.
DeMoro cancelled her appearance at the event to coordinate support for CNA/NNOC leaders in California after Stern and SEIU began sending roving bands of staff to the homes of CNA/NNOC RN board members in California Thursday and Friday, stalking and harassing them.
“There is an ugly pattern here of physical abuse and tactics of intimidation that have no place in either our labor movement or a civilized society,” DeMoro said.
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Posted in Unions
