From: "Nathan Tublitz" (tublitz@uoneuro.uoregon.edu)
To: Peter B Gilkey (gilkey@darkwing.uoregon.edu)
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 20:23:24 -0800
Subject: RE: iifs: Govenor's budget and the OTM

Peter:

Thanks for your note. You have my permission to bring a copy of the letter to the IFS meeting and also to post it on the IFS website under the letters section. Thanks for asking ahead of time this time.

Nathan

Dear fellow IFS senators:

Unfortunately I am unable to attend this weekend's IFS meeting. I therefore share my thoughts with you about this weekend's meeting, and specifically the OTM motions. The take home message of this email is that I believe the IFS should vote against the OTM because 1) we have been hoodwinked; and 2) it is the beginning of a very nasty slippery slide towards academic mediocrity.

My reasons for this position are stated below.

Firstly, we have been hoodwinked by our own administrators, the State Board and the Governor. We were led to believe that the OTM would help us develop a working relationship with the board which in turn would result in a better outcome for OUS financially and academically. Today's announcement of the Govenor's budget for 05-07 puts that view in stark perspective. Higher education is the ONLY state agency that will be cut next biennium. Other agencies all show increases, so that any cuts to their proposed budgets will still result in a net increase over last biennium. Higher ed however will see a real cut.

The Governor's budget today is the latest in a long line of backtracking by this Governor. As our IFS president stated in one of his emails today, first we had a promise of significant reinvestment, then a promise of no more disinvestment, then a promise of less than normal disinvestment and now this. We are being buried in the a large pile of empty promises. Let face the truth - the Governor and his staff are not going to help higher ed. The fallout from the governor's budget announcment has already started and leading the outcry is K-12 with good reason. Do any of you think that higher ed will get *more* funds after the legislative dust has settled? There is a greater chance of me getting a sunburn on the Oregon coast in January.

Meanwhile we faculty are poised to pass a resolution supporting the OTM. This is the same OTM that serves very few students, that does nothing to improve academic quality, and which is being pushed by the Community Colleges rather than our OUS institutions. With all due respect to all those in and out of the IFS who have worked hard on this issue, the OTM serves no other purpose than to move students though the system faster. There is no improvement in academic quality in the OTM. This is not better, only faster. Efficiency is now the name of the game, not quality.

The IFS was strongly encouraged by the Chancellor's office, the State Board and the Governor's staff to take the initiative on the OTM. And the IFS did this marvelously well. But we did this with a good faith promise that our Universities would start to receive adequate funding for staff, for faculty, for support services, and for buildings new and old ot name but a few. None of this has come to pass. We are now told that significant faculty salary increases - the board's MOST important priority - is not going to happen because of budgetary issues. We were hoodwinked plain and simple.

The second issue that worries me even more than the first is that the OTM is the first of several initiatives that will water down academic quality across the OUS institutions. The MBF workgroup, headed by CC president Schutte, has been supporting the OTM as the FIRST step of several that will allow students to move through and across the system more quickly. The next step is to develop a lower division common core for every major across the OUS system. Sounds far fetched? Don't be too sure - read the statement issued by the CC presidents last August (http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~ifs/dir04/GETM- CCPresAug04.html). Read the statement by the Council of Instructional Administrators on the OTM (http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~ifs/dir04/GETM- CIA4Nov04.html) Do you read anything about quality?

It is time for us faculty to start saying what we see and feel - that our institutions are going downhill and that we will not endorse any state or board initiative that does not improve academic quality. If you carefully look at the materials sent to you by our own IFS president summarizing the meetings at our institutions, you will find that many faculty at all campuses said the same thing - that quality is paramount and that the OTM does nothing towards that goal.

For these reasons I suggest that you consider voting down the OTM - send a message to the board and the govenor that the faculty will not stand idly by and watch our institutions become mediocratized into oblivion.

Enjoy the meeting - sorry I cannot be there.

Best wishes,

Nathan

************************************
Professor of Biology Institute of Neuroscience
University of Oregon
Eugene, Oregon USA 97403
phone: 541-346-4510
fax:: 541-346-4548
************************************