The University of Austin: Stop it, you’re just embarassing yourself.

 Spotted on Twitter this morning (hat tip to Michael Hendricks):

We got sick of complaining about how broken higher education is. So we decided to do something about it. Announcing a new university dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth::

It offers no degrees. It has no accreditation. This is its physical location:

But they offer “Forbidden courses” where students can have “spirited discussions” about “provocative questions.”

Presumably for a tuition fee. Since this wouldn’t lead to any degree or course credits, not at all clear why would a student do this when they can just have an drunken argument in any bar with “provocative questions.”

Having been through the creation of a new university (in Texas, no less), I can say with confidence:

This is trash.

This is probably one of two things.

One possibility is that it’s a wild mix of huge egos and a cash grab. It will come to nothing besides  separating a few suckers from their money. It reminds me of a “university” created by a former US president that was sued and gave out a settlement of $25 million. 

Or maybe it’s a pure criminal operation. 

Everything about this stinks like the kind of stink that make you involuntarily gag and fight the urge to vomit.

Update: Sarah Jones reminds me:

I’m not convinced this experiment is going to last, but they seem to have money and as a general rule I think it’s wise to take the right as seriously as it takes itself.

This is true. Being badly wrong has not prevented many ideas from having amazing longevity.

The final chapter in the UTRGV mascot saga

When UTRGV was forming, I blogged a lot about the choice of a name for a new mascot. What we got was... something that not a lot of people were happy with at first. In the years since, I guess peopel have made peace with it, because I haven’t heard much about the name since then.

Well, we’ve waited four, almost five years for a mascot to go with the name, and today we got it.

As far as I know, he doesn’t have a name. Just “Vaquero.”

The website lists what each feature represents, although I think a lot of this stuff is so far beyond subtle that nobody would ever guess what it is supposed to mean.

Scarf: The scarf features the half-rider logo against an orange background. Traditionally, the scarves were worn to protect against the sun, wind and dirt. Today, the scarf is worn to represent working Vaqueros.

Vest: The vest features the UTRGV Athletics symbol of the “V” on the buttons, which match the symbol on the back of the vest representing school spirit and pride.

Gloves: The gray and orange gloves symbolize strength and power. They represent Vaqueros building the future of the region and Texas.

Shirt: The white shirt represents the beginning of UTRGV, which was built through hard work and determination. (Couldn’t it just represent, I don’t know, cleanliness? - ZF)

Boots: A modern style of the classic cowboy boot, these feature elements that are unique to the region and UTRGV. The blue stitching along the boot represents the flowing Rio Grande River which signifies the ever-changing growth in the region and connects the U.S. to Mexico.

The boot handles showcase three stars. The blue star represents legacy institution UT Brownsville, the green star represents legacy institution UT-Pan American and the orange star represents the union of both to create UTRGV.

I don’t know. I was never a fan of the “Vaquero” name and this does not win me over. I just feel like the guy could do with a shave. I will be interested to see if this re-ignites the debate about the name...

Update: Apparently the mascot’s slogan is “V’s up!” Which doesn’t make any sense! And demonstrates questionable apostrophe usage! 

External links

Welcome your Vaquero

Why a proposed UTRGV doctoral program will probably struggle

When I took my current job, one of the things that attracted me was that I was told the department would probably have a Ph.D. program, maybe in about five years. It’s been a lot more than five years, but a biology related Ph.D. is finally on the horizon for my university. This should make me happy. It does not.

Last week, the UT System tweeted:

.@utrgv Pres Bailey looks to create PhD in Cellular, Molecular & Biomedical Sciences and Doctor of Physical Therapy programs. #UTRegentsMeet

And yesterday, it was confirmed that the university has the go ahead for preliminary planning for this proposed doctoral degree.

I want to go on record as to why I think this is not a good idea. (You get tenure in part so you can make these kinds of analyses.) For context, I have been the graduate program coordinator for biology at this institution for over a decade. So yeah, I know the backstory here.

First and foremost, the primary issue I have with the proposal for this degree is that it is being driven by institutional wants. Not to meet clear needs in the community. Not students’ interests. Not faculty research strengths. The university is trying to get to ten doctoral programs as fast as it possibly can, so it can meet the criteria for an “emerging research university.” Getting to that number of Ph.D. by any means they can is more important than coming up with a program that has faculty support and that will ultimately serve the students.

Second, the proposed program – “Cellular, molecular, and biomedical sciences” – might as well say, “and the kitchen sink.” There is no theme or connection there. There is no department of “cell, molecular, and biomedical sciences.” It seems like the plan is to conscript any faculty member in any department that knows how to use a PCR machine. With no single department to house the program, there will be tremendous problems of organization and cohesion. It will be difficult to instill that intangible but critical sense of community.

Third, there are already four cell and molecular biology doctoral programs in Texas (not to mention broader general biology programs). They are at University of North Texas, UT Austin, UT Dallas, and one of our closest neighbours, UT San Antonio. There is an case to be made that the proposed degree would unnecessarily duplicate existing programs, which the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board warns against.

Lastly, the graph that no administrator has an answer for is this one (from here):

The article has UTRGV president Guy Bailey talking about job growth projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But knowing demand don’t tell you much unless you know the supply. Administrators will ignore the existing backlog in students being trained, and the growth of programs training them.

The Bureau of Labour Statistics lists one biology related occupation that requires a doctoral degree: “Biological science teachers, postsecondary” (i.e., professors). They project a total of 21,200 job openings from 2012-2022. Using 2011 data on doctoral production, the projected 10 year need can be met in less than three years at recent rates of doctorate creation at the national level.

The only other biology related occupation listed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics that requires a doctoral degree is animal scientists (1,200 job openings, 8.8% growth). Again, this need can be met by current levels of doctorate attainment in the United States.

There are not clear projections for how much demand there will be for biology doctoral recipients outside academia, because the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not separate “Life sciences” jobs on whether they require a B.S., M.S., or Ph.D.

I think the students and the region deserve a good doctoral program they can be proud of. Instead, we’re likely to get a rushed, rudderless, “me too” doctoral program that nobody asked for and nobody wanted.

External links

UTRGV gets green light to seek two new doctorate degrees

This better not have anything to do with crayfish

So apparently this happened a couple of hours ago.

I have no idea what “Project C.R.A.W.F.I.S.H.” might be about, despite being the only researcher on this university who actually publishes research about crayfish. It is a little reminiscent of a neuroscience announcement a while back.

Maybe there are no crayfish at all in this thing, whatever it is.

Far too much effort has been put into that acronym, though. Someone is priming themselves for a role in the federal government with that, I reckon. 

Bilingual university plans; more program woes

The Texas observer has a profile on UTRGV focusing on plans to make the university a bilingual institution.

When this has been brought up on campus within faculty, I had heard that there was a law somewhere that said the language of instruction for public universities had to be English. I could not find it, so maybe this was just a rumour. It used to be that the state’s K-12 schools were English only... but that was over 40 years ago.

While I’m here, on top of our institution’s issues with accreditation, the nursing program is under warning.

External links

Inside the Nation’s First Bilingual University
Bilingual education
UTRGV nursing program under warning

New neuroscience – excuse me, neurosciences – institute for UTRGV

This morning, the university announced it received at $15 million gift to start an “Institute for Neurosciences.”

You might think as the only person on this campus remotely doing any kind of research related to neuroscience for years (the better part of a decade, I reckon), I might have gotten some sort of heads up about this. I did not. This was a surprise to me.

It reminds me of when UTRGV created a “School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences.” Probably half my research involves marine organisms, but nobody thought to ask if I wanted to be involved. There is a lot of “left hand knows not what the right hand is doing.”

And by the way, there are not multiple “neurosciences.” It’s a single discipline.

External links

UTRGV School of Medicine receives $15M gift to start neuroscience institute

This bill would be bad for UTRGV students

Not much information yet, but here it is:

H.R.483 — 115th Congress (2017-2018)
All Bill Information (Except Text)

As of 01/24/2017 text has not been received for H.R.483 - To amend title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 to prohibit the provision of funds under such title to institutions of higher education that violate the immigration laws, and for other purposes.

This bill appears to be aimed at punishing universities who provide education undocumented university students. Some of them are called “dreamers,” in reference to the DREAM act.

I think there’s little question that UTRGV has undocumented students. If UTRGV was hit by this legislation, that would mean, I think, no federal research grants. No money from National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, etc. That would seriously affect our chances of becoming an emerging research university.

External links

H.R.483

SACS speaks

SACS, the accreditation agency for UTRGV has released its document about why the institution has been placed on probation. There isn’t much in the way of new information in the document.

From what I have gathered in news reports, one potential issue is that after UTRGV was established in Fall 2015, the University of Texas Brownsville was apparently still “officially” still a degree granting entity. This was done because Texas Southmost College, which had been joint with UTB for some time, had no accreditation of its own, and keeping UTB going “on paper” allowed TSC to keep going. But the question was, “If UTB still existed, why didn’t students get degrees from UTB instead of UTRGV?”

Excerpts:

The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley... was placed on Probation following receipt of self-disclosed information submitted as part of a withdrawn merger application
and receipt of a completed Institutional Summary Form. Prior to the institution’s next review by SACSCOC’s Board of Trustees in December 2017, a Special Committee will conduct an on-site evaluation of the institution’s compliance with the Principles of Accreditation(.) ...

Probation is the most serious sanction imposed by SACSCOC’s Board of Trustees short of loss of accreditation. ... The maximum consecutive time that an institution may be on Probation is two years. In December 2017, the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley will conclude 12 months on Probation. ...

What will happen in December 2017? SACSCOC’s Board of Trustees will consider the accreditation status of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley following review of a Monitoring Report submitted by the institution addressing the standards cited above for non-compliance, and the report of a Special Committee that will visit the institution in fall 2017. The Board will have the following options: (1) remove the institution from Probation without an additional report; (2) continue accreditation, continue Probation, authorize a Special Committee, and request an additional report; and (3) remove the institution from membership for failure to comply with the Principles of Accreditation.

Related posts

UTRGV placed on probation by accrediting agency
UTRGV’s accreditation probation details emerge
“We will...”

External links

Disclosure Statement Regarding the Status of UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS RIO GRANDE VALLEY

UTRGV’s accreditation probation details emerge

Local station KRGV and Inside Higher Ed report on what the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley has done to get into hot water with the accreditation agency, SACS.

And it’s not just the “timing issue” that president Guy Bailey claimed it was.

The SACC Coordinator of Communications Pamela Cravey explained a few.

“For failure to comply with principle 1.1 integrity, comprehensive standard 3.4.4 acceptance of academic credit, comprehensive standard 3.4.7 consortia relationships contractual agreement,” she said.

Inside Higher Ed calls the list of shortcomings “unusually long.”

(T)o judge by SACS's laundry list of areas in which the new institution is falling short of the accreditor's requirements and standards, UT Rio Grande Valley appears to be a work in progress.

A spokeswoman for SACS cited a full 10 major areas in which the new Texas campus had faltered, including such basic things as assuring that it “operates with integrity in all areas.” Other areas of difficulty included complying with federal financial aid audits and ensuring that the institution's degrees are based on instruction it offers itself (rather than by other institutions).

My reaction might be summarized as: “Holy sh*t.” I mean, to be accused of a lack of integrity? Judging from the quote above, it appears to be section 1.1, which would make it literally the first thing on the list that universities are supposed to do. I have heard, but not confirmed, that there is a lower level of concern, “warning.” If there is, we kind of blew past that.

UTRGV is not the only university on the list, as Inside Higher Ed notes. There are nine others, but UTRGV is unusual in that it is part of a state university system, serves the most students, and was launched with very high goals of creating a new research university.

What I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall of the University of Texas System board rooms these days.

At the start of the semester, the UT system was praising UTRGV for its first year, which it called “stellar.”

In the middle of the semester, we learn that the med school isn’t going well and UTRGV mispent millions of dollars.

At the end of the semester, we’re getting warning shots that our legitimacy as an institution is in question.

Update: The campus newspaper, The Rider, has published the full list of ten points of concern:

• Integrity (Principle 1.1)
• Acceptance of academic credits (Comprehensive standards 3.4.4)
• Consortial relationships/contractual agreements (Comprehensive standards 3.4.7)
• Institutional credits for a degree (Comprehensive standards 3.5.2)
• Institutional credits for a graduate degree (Comprehensive standards 3.6.3)
• Financial aid audits (Comprehensive standards 3.10.2)
• Substantive change (Comprehensive standards 3.12.1)
• Advertising, Student Recruitment, and Representation of Accredited Status policy compliance, (Comprehensive standards 3.13)
• Publication of accreditation status (Comprehensive standards 3.14.1)
• Recruitment materials (Federal requirement 4.6)

The Rider also reports the faculty senate will be meeting with the president soon.

Update, 9 December 2016: Local newspaper The Monitor wrote an unusually pissy editorial complaining that SACS should have released all the details of the concerns that put the institution on probation, and demanding more information.

Meanwhile, mark your calendars for 15 December, when SACS is planning on posting more about the issue:

(Pamela Cravey) said her agency will post “a public disclosure statement” on its website on Dec. 15 providing additional insight.

These statements include an update and explanation of actions taken and what it means for the institution, but the violations are not typically listed, based on statements currently available.

Another update, 9 December 2016: The Faculty Senate emailed the faculty today after meeting with President Bailey. They described the situation thus:

The concerns shared at this point in time center on the transfer of UTB students to UTRGV to meet the expectations of the timeline set by Texas legislature. It took longer for Texas Southmost College to gain independent accreditation than expected. If UTB had been abolished on August 31, 2015 (the date UTPA was abolished), all TSC students would have lost their financial aid. This meant that UTB could not be abolished until a later date even though it had no students. ...

We found President Bailey to be very straightforward about the situation. He provided us with detailed documented timelines starting in July 2013 through September 2016. Our institutions had been in communication with SACSCOC consistently throughout this process. He reassured us that there are no concerns with faculty, programs, students or financial aid.

Update, 11 December 2016: Local paper The Monitor has obtained new documents relating to UTRGV’s accreditation issues.

Because UTB would remain an accredited institution after the creation of UTRGV, there were discussions of transferring all UTB students to UTRGV to avoid “teach-outs,” which would be agreements with UTB and TSC to teach bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral programs at UTRGV. The next move would be to consolidate or merge UTB with UTRGV.

“Discussed the benefits of just moving all to UTRGV to avoid teach-out and facilitate the award of financial aid,” the log of a Feb. 23, 2015 meeting states.

This meeting was attended by UTRGV officials Bailey, Brown, Provost Havidan Rodriguez, and SACSCOC’s Armstrong, and Director for Legal Affairs Carol Luthman.

A year later, however, during a conference call between Brown, Donat and Armstrong, the SACSCOC officials seemed confused by what transpired during that Feb. 23, meeting.

“No UTB Students in fall 2015; this was not their understanding from the February 23, 2015 meeting,” states the log of a May 4, 2016 call. “Need to respond by clearly describing our understanding of the February 23, 2015 meeting and provide documentation that had been transparent on how UTB operates.”

It still doesn’t address why “integrity” is concern number one.

Minor annoyance: the story repeats the myth that UTRGV is the first university created this century.

Related posts

Show me what you value
Our med school is not going smoothly
Physics fraud
UTRGV placed on probation by accrediting agency

External links

UTRGV Reassures Students Probation Period Won’t Affect Them
A Watchdog Bites
UTRGV may have violated 10 standards on path to probation EDITORIAL: UTRGV probation questions need specifics
UTRGV probation fears dispelled

Competition

Question and answer originally posted at Quora.

Q: If a university were to be created today, how could it compete with MIT, Harvard, and other top-tier schools?

New universities can’t compete with established universities.

I’ve thought about this question a lot, because the university I now work at may be the newest university in the world. It was established September 2015, so is currently about 15 months old as I write this. It has aspirations to become an emerging research university.

One of a university’s major resources is prestige. Prestige attracts students and faculty. Prestige attracts donors. Prestige attracts attention. Prestige gets you the benefit of the doubt.

You cannot create prestige. Prestige is something others bestow upon you.

People perceive universities as prestigious because they are old and have a proven track record. Prestige has very little to do with the education of students or skills of faculty. I’ve met students and faculty from all kinds of universities, and their abilities and skills are not different enough to explain the huge differences in how their institutions are perceived.

Lists of new universities don’t have a 5 or 10 year window; a university 50 years old is still considered “new” (e.g., The 7 best US universities founded in the last 50 years or The World's Best New Universities).

There is no way a university created in the 21st century can amass the prestige of a university created in the 17th century. Age probably stops mattering when you get a century out from the establishment of the institution.

That said, you can certainly do a better or worse job of establishing a research university. You do that primarily giving faculty resources (particularly doctoral students to provide cheap labour) and keeping them as far away from undergraduate students as possible. Professors at research intensive universities might teach a class or two a year; colleagues in my university are typically teaching three courses a semester. This means research universities cannot admit lots of undergraduate students, meaning they are more selective, further feeding into the perception of prestige.

Physics fraud

Well, this is an interesting reveal on the eve of UTRGV’s big flagship science and technology event, HESTEC. The physics department in the legacy institution, UT Brownsville, committed fraud with about $2 million worth of federal research money.

Not a good look, considering that the agencies they ripped off, like NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Defense, have traditionally been big partners in HESTEC. Indeed, NASA is an official supporter of this year’s event.

And this is not a low-profile case, either. It’s part of the team that was involved in the discovery of gravitational waves. And that’s one of the biggest findings in physics in decades.

The Monitor reports:

An audit from the UT System Office of Internal Audits found at least six federal research grants were overcharged for a total of $1,957,547.27 for the partial or full payment of salaries of faculty who were mainly teaching and not conducting research, a critical violation of grant conditions that could have potential impact on future grant considerations.

“Salaries were charged up to 100 percent of the federal grants even though their workload reflected a full teaching load in Physics,” the audit states.

These funds came from research grants awarded to the Center for Gravitation Wave Astronomy by National Aeronautic Space Administration (NASA), the National Science Foundation-- two institutions that helped fund the center in 2003-- and the Department of Defense.

UTB notified the UT-System of at least three faculty members who were identified as being paid up to 100 percent of their salaries from research funds for multiple years, which was not part of the grant agreement.

“Center for Gravitation Wave Astronomy knowingly overcharged multiple research grants,” states the notification sent by UTB to the UT System Office of General Counsel. The department, referred to by audits as CGWA, was part of a recent national announcement in which gravitational waves had been detected, which is considered a huge scientific advancement in the field of physics.

The investigation revealed CGWA overcharged on six federal research grants from 2009 to 2015 to partially or fully pay the salaries of more than eight faculty members and some students. The investigation also concluded that the head of this department, CGWA Director Mario Diaz, was aware of the overcharges.

Of course, our institution’s president won’t promise that he will do anything about this:

When asked whether Diaz would keep his job, Bailey said he could not comment on personnel matters, but UT officials are still conducting an investigation and will send UTRGV officials the findings. Only then will any appropriate actions be taken.

After the creation of UTRGV, many administrative roles changed and some officials even retired, Bailey said. His main goal was to move forward and fully implement procedures that prevent these things from happening, especially now that the university is seeking more research funding.

“It was not under UTRGV’s watch,” Bailey said. “It’s important to us that we make sure that we have all of the processes in place so that it doesn’t happen again.”

My take is that Bailey seems the sort who subscribes to the “Do nothing and hope the problem goes away” school of university administration, and that he will be more concerned with preserving the institution’s image than whether or not anyone is made to pay for this blatant misuse of money. I expect he will try to wait this out and hope it blows over.

Oh wait, there’s more.

There’s another $3 million that the legacy institution has to pay back.

“We concluded that UTB’s benefits expenses for UTB and (Texas Southmost College) were incorrectly calculated and reported,” the audit states. “As a result, it was determined that the APS 011 reports needed to be recalculated for each institution separately.”

That second half is bad, although it isn’t as relevant to me personally as the first half. Faculty in my college, at my institution screwed up managing federal research money. I’ve gotten money from NSF before, but I think it just got a lot tougher. If I were at one of those agencies, I would be ready to blackball the institution.

And that money was probably going to be used for faculty pay increases. So because someone else misused money, I might be kissing my chance for a raise anytime soon goodbye.

External links

UTRGV forced to repay $5 million in funding on behalf of UTB

Our med school is not going smoothly

Earlier this year, the UTRGV medical school had its dean step down for reasons unknown.

Now, one of the communities is backing out of its financial commitment to the medical school, making it the second local city to do so.

And one of the university’s prominent supporters, a Texas senator, says the medical school is, “Not okay.”

“The medical school is not okay. I don’t think people really realize how much money it costs and how complicated it is to create a new medical school,” Hinojosa told the Rio Grande Guardian. “The type of equipment that it needs, the type of infrastructure support that it needs to be successful. We cannot do a top-notch job unless we get support and help from the community.”

Basically, there is wrangling about taxes to support the medical school, and there is a vote on the November ballot about it.

Yeah. The new medical school was supposed to be the jewel in the crown of the new university. It’s not looking so shiny right now.

External links

Feud over hospital district prompts Mission to pull support for UTRGV medical schoolFrancisco Fernandez leaving leadership role, will remain on school faculty
Why is McAllen reneging on funds to UTRGV School of Medicine?
Cigarroa: Healthcare Districts are ‘an important piece of the puzzle’
Hinojosa: UTRGV medical school is not okay

Show me what you value

My dad used to have an expression: “Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” - Joe Biden

Press releases, liked budgets, are often uncomfortably honest revelations into what institutions value. With that in mind, consider this tweet from UT System about UTRGV’s first year:

Philanthropy: Up 530%
Research expenditures: Up 56%
Student applications: Up 21%

Based on this, the UT System values money above all.

This is consistent with comments UTRGV president Guy Bailey made to faculty last year. He said he was often asked about what problems the new university was facing. He said, roughly (not a direct quote) that he told people, “I don’t have any problems that money can’t solve.” And indeed, the rest of his presentation talked about how UTRGV could get more money from the state by optimizing patterns of student enrollment. The main times I have seen our president in the news have been when he’s accepting money from donors.

The longer press release is a bit better. The first bullet in the list is student retention rate. That is indeed something to be proud of, considering that retention was something the legacy institutions struggled with. But the next two items on the list are about money.

Realted posts

What does an institution brag about?

External links

UTRGV off to a stellar start in historic first year
UTRGV receives largest donation in RGV higher education history, names business college in honor of Robert C. Vackar

The cages we scientists make for ourselves

 
“We need to change incentives!”

Ah, how many times I have heard some variation of that phrase in describing scientific publishing.

With the creation of UTRGV, my department was forced to create new evaluation documents for annual review, for merit and tenure, and so on. Creating policy documents sounds dull, but I was quite excited by this. You don’t get many opportunities the scrape away all the junk that accumulated over the past few decades that nobody could be bothered to change. This is not an opportunity that comes along every day.

I argued to change our department’s incentives structure. I had a few things I wanted to accomplish.

• I wanted us to reward open access publication and data sharing.
• I wanted to broaden the range of things that could be considered scholarly products to include more than journal articles.
• I wanted our evaluation document to reflect that the current world of scientific publishing is largely online.

My arguments did not convince my colleagues. Mostly.

People voted in favour of rewarding people for editing a book (which was previously missing from our list), or getting a patent. Progress!

People did not vote in favour of reward sharing datasets (e.g., on Figshare) or computer code (e.g., on Github), although those votes were close. Promising.

The discussion over rewarding publication was revealing.

Previously, we had given multipliers for whether a paper was published in a regional, national, or international journal. I proposed that instead, we give more weight for an open access journal article, and less weight for an article that appeared in a print only journal (e.g., not available online).

There were two arguments against rewarding open access papers.

The first was “But it costs money.” I pointed out that many open access journals charge nothing, or have fee waivers. I was also not sure why “I have to pay” was seen as a problem, since one of the legacy departments has long rewarded people for each scientific society they belong to, and that’s an out of pocket expense to get a reward, too.

The second objection was prestige. I provided links and papers to support the arguments of the benefits of open access, the pitfalls of Impact Factor, and that reprint requests don’t cut it compared to genuine open access. But they were not swayed.

Ultimately, it felt like asking my colleagues to image a world where a PLOS ONE paper was worth more in an evaluation than a Nature paper was like asking them to picture a reddish shade of green. They just couldn’t imagine it.

The department voted against the new multipliers.

So the next time you hear, “We just have to change incentives for scientists,” remember that these existing incentives are often ones that many scientists actually want. They are in a cage of their own making and could leave at any time, but won’t.

Photo by Amber Case on Flickr; used under a Creative Commons license.

And the cycle repeats

Today is the last day of class for the Spring semester, which kind of means it’s the end of the first regular academic year at UTRGV. Okay, sure, there is summer session, but really, most of us faculty have a nine month salary, so our pay stubs say this is the end.

Where are we with UTRGV? Ugh. It’s still in beta testing. There are still many weird, unsettled (and unsettling) things going down for my liking. There’s an obsession with instant growth, and a lot of parachute candidates for administrative positions. Could it have been better? Sure. I suppose it could have been worse, though.

Meanwhile, speaking of education, Texas is set to review its science standards again. Slate has the story. Notably, author Zack Kopplin writes:

Via public records request, Slate obtained the full list of 545 applicants. Many seem up for the task, including the employees of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, scientists from Houston’s energy industry, the president of the Micropaleontology Press, science-assessment specialists from the textbook publisher Pearson, and hundreds of K-12 science teachers or college professors.

I was one of those hundreds of educators who applied, by the way. I’ll let you know if I get picked, but I think the odds are long. As the article says:

Members of the Texas State Board have full discretion over whom they want to appoint to the review panels—and history shows they often pick creationists.

In other words, here we go again. At least because this is happening in summer, I should have time to blog about it.

And it’s also Star Wars day! I won this glass at the pub last night during trivia.Thanks, Grain to Glass! They made both Light Side and Dark side glasses. Only Dark Side glasses were left, but I would have picked that one anyway. I’m definitely a Sith.

I won it knowing what “AT-AT” stands for. (Gloss for the non-Star Wars fans: The AT-ATs were these things, introduced so memorably in The Empire Strikes Back.)

“AT-AT” stands for “All Terrain Armored Transport.”

External links

Scientist vs. Creationist: Who will get to update Texas’ science standards?

Beta testing UTRGV

Grades were due today, marking the official end of UTRGV’s first semester.  How did we do?

Well, we kept the wheels on the bus. The university did not grind to a screeching halt, and students took their classes.

But it’s been a rough semester.

After all the “We are one” pep talks at the start of the semester about the distributed campuses in Edinburg, Brownsville, and so on, I saw a whole lot of people who didn’t get that memo. There didn’t seem to be a lot of work into building bridges between the campuses. Quite the opposite: I saw efforts that seemed designed to insulate people at one campus or another.

When UTRGV was pitched, one of the selling points to the politicians and state administrators would be that UTRGV would be less expensive than UTB and UTPA because the number of administrators would be halved. Instead of a president, provost, and college deans at two universities, there would only be one of each.

Instead of streamlining administration, there are clear signs of huge administrative bloat. While it is true that there is only one dean for each college (for example), what wasn’t factored into the discussion was the rapid proliferation of vice provosts, assistant deans, deputy administrators, and sub-vice deputy positions. So far, I haven’t seen any cases of these administrative positions adding any value to the tasks I need to complete. So far, the only power these individuals seem to have is the power to call meetings.

The first semester was like the beta release of UTRGV. Functional, but buggy and glitchy. I think Beta testing will be continuing for at least one more semester.

Picture from here.

Texas A&M expected to announce local campus

With the formation of UTRGV this month, it is a little surprising to see that Texas A&M seems poised to announce plans for another university in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

I wonder if this region has the population (and maybe the infrastructure) to support two major universities.

I was planning on abandoning the “new Texas university” label for posts, but I guess I can keep it going for a while yet.

Update: Confirmed!

External links

Texas A&M University plans to open McAllen campus
Texas A&M to open campus in McAllen

UTRGV makes the news

It’s almost the end of week two of the fall semester, and I’m behind. So this will be quick.

First, we have a syllabus from one of my colleagues on this campus who asked students not say say, “God bless you.” This news story says this went viral, but weirdly, I didn’t see it in my social media.

Professors already have this image of being anti-religious atheists (see the urban legends of atheist professors getting comeuppance here and here):

Likewise, "the atheist professor" is a figure common to a number of urban legends and anecdotes of the faithful: he gets flung into the mix where there's a need for someone to play the role of Science Vanquished in Science-versus-Religion tales. But he is not inserted merely to serve as an icon of learning to be humbled in tales that aim to teach that faith is of greater value than provable knowledge; he is also woven into these sorts of stories for his lack of belief. Just as the villain in oldtime melodramas had to have a waxed moustache, a black cape, and an evil laugh, so too must the bullying professor of such stories be an atheist: it would not be enough for him to be merely an insufferable, over-educated git arrogantly attempting to stretch the minds of his students by having them question something deeply believed. No, he must instead be someone who rejects the existence of God, an assignment of role that re-positions what might otherwise have been a bloodless debate about philosophy as an epic battle between two champions of faith and denial and sets up the action to unfold as one putting the boots to the other.

This incident feed right into that stereotype and doesn’t help professors’ image. I’ll place a bet that this ends up on national television on the Fox News network. If it hasn’t already.

The most charitable thing I can say about this was that it was a remarkably tone deaf thing to put on a syllabus. I just don’t understand why anyone would put this in. Maybe the idea was to keep the sound level down after someone sneezed.

But the syllabus has been changed already, and it looks like everyone acted quickly and appropriately.

Second, a few former professors are suing UTRGV because they weren’t hired back. I’ll be interested to see the outcome, since this was exactly the sort of worries that some faculty had in the planning stages.

Third, the crazy first week of UTRGV got covered in this story.

Fourth, Fridays are a fricking ghost town around here. Remember I showed this picture of parking on opening day?

Compare that to this picture from about the same time and about the same place today, this Friday:

I hate our current class schedule, which slots the vast majority of classes into twice a week 75 minute blocks. (One set on Monday and Wednesday, one set on Tuesday and Thursday.) Concentrating the classes on a smaller number of days had made the already bad parking situation worse.

Update, 14 September 2015: As predicted, the story is making its way through the national media. Interestingly, Inside Higher Education seemed to think UTRGV is the same as UT Austin:

They since corrected the tweet.

Update, 15 September 2015: More coverage, which generally transforms a polite request (“Please refrain...”) into something more strident (“outlaw”, “ban”, “prohbited”). This story made its way to Russia, in the Pravda website. Probably the first and last time UTRGV will be mentioned in Russian media for a long while.

The Chronicle of Higher Education says the UTRGV was created in 2013, which is... not exactly accurate. The law was passed then, but the university didn’t exist.

The Daily Caller took the time to call UTRGV an “unwieldy” acronym. Thanks for tossing in a dig there, guys.

One writer had a different take:

I can personally attest to students exclaiming loudly “(GOD) BLESS YOU!!” in class and during exams when someone sneezes, and it’s plainly obvious the intent was to be funny (actually annoying to everyone), not polite to the sneezer.

Of course, there are many other things with which students can interrupt, so I can see how this syllabus, as written, does appear (religiously) exclusionary.

External links

UTRGV professor asks students to resist saying ‘God bless you’ in class
Professor: Don’t say “God bless you”
College Syllabus: Please Refrain from Saying 'God Bless You'
Gesundheit, Not 'God Bless You'

More UTPA professors file suits against UTRGV, UT officials

UTRGV, day two

Let’s check in with how things are going at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley now that all the big ceremonial “We will make history” moments are over from day one. Down to business, right?

We have a student who was forced to have a class outside.

Two classes booked in the same room. This might explain why some classes were moved between day one and two.

And we have cancelled courses and changes of professor.

Well, that went about as well as could be expected

A brief visual summary of the first day of UTRGV:

While administration and politicians said all the expected things about this being a new day, a great opportunity for region, a historic moment, and on and on, the reality was that I didn’t even make it to 90 minutes before getting a phone call from a (rightfully) upset student.

A search for “UTRGV” on Twitter revealed students complaining about parking (eh, like the weather, it’s what everyone likes to whinge about), long lines (sort of to be expected, but worse than usual), not getting phone calls answered (uh oh). Registration is a mess for a lot of students.

This was the scene a week ago...

And this was the scene at about the same time this morning.

And the day ended with this:

MONDAY, AUG. 31, 2015 – Due to severe weather, all of tonight’s classes that started from 5 p.m. on have been cancelled on the UTRGV Brownsville Campus only.

I hope everyone stays safe.

Even so, despite all the problems, there is one thing that I think will go right:

When it’s me and students in the class. Those are my day one, class one group of Neurobiology students. And I’m looking forward to working with them, and all the other folks in my classes.

It’s exciting. Even if it’s the kind of excitement that you normally get by being in the middle of a forest fire with a small bucket of water.

External links

McRaven: UTRGV will change the fabric of the Rio Grande Valley
UT Chancellor McRaven attends flag-raising, proclamation celebrations for UTRGV’s first day
UTRGV begins history-making journey
System opens UT-Rio Grande Valley campus