For the Record: 1 Boring Old Man: The academy itself ... (in re #markingson)

“The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be 

what you desire to appear.” (Socrates)

Editor's Note: 

My colleague Leigh Turner has written a piece for Community Voices on MinnPost entitled: "The U of M should thoroughly investigate issues in the Markingson case."

Dr. John Nardo, aka 1 Boring Old Man, subsequently posted the following piece on his most excellent blog.

In the interests of calling attention to both pieces, I re-post below Dr. Nardo's comments, with his permission,  on the original Nelson post:

(Highlighting is mine)

I think many of us thought that the University of Minnesota’s Senate calling for an investigation of Dan Markinson’s suicide would finally bring this decade old case to a proper hearing, a real investigation into this particularly egregious piece of research misconduct. But now this:

Bioethicist Carl Elliot’s twitter post sums it up: "Bizarrely, the ‘Resolution on the Matter of the Markingson Case’ will exclude the Markingson case." The university administration has resisted any serious investigation of this case for a decade, and is making a mockery of the insistence from its own faculty – adding yet another senseless twist to this already convoluted tale [as if it needed any more].

Markingson was enrolled into this volunteer study to avoid involuntary hospitalization. So long as he cooperated and took the assigned medicine, he could stay out of the State Hospital, yet the outcome measure was how long the patients continued the medication [voluntarily].

In spite of the reports that he was doing fine, at the end of six months, his commitment was extended for another six months [the duration of the study]. Not long after this extension, he killed himself in a dramatic way.

Unlike the usual complaints of over-medication and unnecessary restraint, Markingson was inadequately medicated and placed in an environment that did not offer appropriate restraint. The magnitude of his impairment was neglected in the service of the clinical trial – an unnecessary trial of the expirimercial variety. The absurdity is that until he killed himself, he was on the road to being declared a treatment success since he was still taking the study medicine [albeit anything but voluntarily]. In a more reasonable world, one would expect the Sponsor [AstraZeneca], the Principle Investigator [Jeffrey Lieberman, current APA President], and the organization actually running the trial [Quintiles] to have some interest in knowing what went wrong in their study.

If the story is actually as I have just told it, it is an example of clinical neglect leading to a fatality in the service of performing an unnecessary clinical trial for marketing purposes. At this point, only an outside, unbiased investigation can determine the truth. The Study Coordinator has already been censured by her professional organization for her part in the story, but the University administration has hindered any further general probe. This current tack of limiting the investigation to current conditions, leaving Markingson’s out of the investigation, and putting it out for bidding along with office furniture on a request for proposal site can only be seen as deliberate obstruction of the faculty senate mandate – and a direct insult.

My roots are showing here, but the only analogies I can think of that equal the University of Minnesota’s behavior in this case are the antics of some of our southern politicians during the Civil Rights days – people who felt that they could twist the rules and abuse their powers at will. And in this instance, this case has now expanded a notch, from the ethics of human experimentation to include the ethical integrity of the academy itself…

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For the Record: Tuition isn't for bargaining (Minnesota Daily)

from the Minnesota Daily:

Tuition isn’t for bargaining

U administrators have offered alarming speculation about potential tuition hikes.

Minnesota Daily Editorial Board
March 11, 2014

Legislators questioned University of Minnesota administrators about the school’s request for state funding and its impact on tuition, the Minnesota Daily reported last week.

Members of the House Higher Education Committee asked how the University would respond if its $233 million request isn’t fully met. University President Eric Kaler vaguely said tuition would be affected, while University Chief Financial Officer Richard Pfutzenreuter mentioned a 1 percent hike, not necessarily for undergraduates.

This rightfully alarmed some representatives and raised concerns that the University was backpedaling on its two-year in-state tuition freeze, which was a huge part of last year’s request.

“Mr. Pfutzenreuter, it was the University that began the discussion of freezing tuition on the undergraduate level,” said Rep. Gene Pelowski, DFL-Winona. “And one that the Legislature and the governor took extremely seriously.”

We took it seriously, too.

It might be difficult to predict the University’s financial situation in response to low state funding, but raising undergraduate, out-of-state tuition should be off the table. Kaler and Pfutzenreuter’s unwillingness to take a firm stance on this undermines the point of the freeze in the first place.

While we support the freeze wholeheartedly, tuition hikes are hitting graduate, professional and out-of-state undergraduate students as hard as ever. The University froze tuition in exchange for full state funding last year. That fact doesn’t invite outsized increases for other students, nor does it make leveraging graduate and professional student tuition a viable option for the University at the Capitol.

Ideally, students should represent a shared responsibility for both this institution and the Legislature. However, they can easily become a bargaining chip. Given the tuition increases that the University has discussed, we hope the conversation doesn’t continue in that direction.

For the record: U of M Professor Accused of Child Exploitation Arrested

KSTP/KAALTV 

A University of Minnesota professor accused of child exploitation has been arrested.

FBI Special Agents arrested Woody Dale Branton, 62, of Minneapolis, without incident at his home Friday.

An arrest warrant had been issued for Branton out of the Western District of Louisiana for offenses pertaining to child exploitation, allegedly involving a 15-year-old girl.

Branton made his initial appearance in Federal District Court on Friday.

He has been with the U of M since 1988. He is an Associate Professor of Neuroscience, but has not been teaching this semester.

The university is reviewing Branton's employment status, according to Chuck Tombarge a spokesperson for the U of M.

Minnesota Public Radio News reports court documents say Branton will be kept in custody for a detention and removal hearing set for Wednesday in St. Paul.

For the Record: State of the University of Minnesota 2014 - Dr. Eric Kaler

STATE OF THE UNIVERSITY 2014



Our Grand Challenges


Good afternoon.

Poverty. Social inequality. World hunger. Climate change. Disease. Religious intolerance. Those are among the most serious and intractable problems we face. They are among our world’s Grand Challenges.

Few organizations have the historic mission or the public charge to confront such challenges. Few institutions are allowed the intellectual freedom and curiosity to attack such challenges from every angle—be it cultural understanding, public policy, historical perspective, or science. Few universities have the expertise across a range of disciplines, the resources, or the ambition to solve such challenges.

But we do. And because we do, the State of the University of Minnesota is vibrant, filled with ideas, and fueled by boundless human energy. Our University overflows with unique promise, which drives the economy, culture, and innovation of the state of Minnesota.

The world’s Grand Challenges are ours—all of ours. And I want this University to be known as a leader in meeting those challenges, in our teaching, in our curriculum, in our research, and in our diverse approaches to public engagement.

Students, faculty, staff, alumni, donors, community partners—no matter how different each of our perspectives may be, I believe together we will continue to move this University forward because we share a belief in the principles that underlie our work.

Those principles are:

A limitless ambition in all we do,

An intolerance for complacency in our workplace or our work,

Academic excellence and global impact,

And civic responsibility to be a guiding force to meet those Grand Challenges.

We have every right and many reasons to be proud of the University of Minnesota and to be excited about the future—from Duluth to Rochester and from Crookston to Morris and the Twin Cities. And I’m about to tell you why.

But, first, allow me to acknowledge some key members of the University community. I’d like to thank our Board of Regents for standing strong, accountable, and active in supporting the U and me as, for example, we partnered with the State of Minnesota to enact a two-year tuition freeze for Minnesota resident undergraduates.

Board Chair Rick Beeson, Regents Laura Brod, Linda Cohen, and Tom Devine, would you please stand? Regent Patricia Simmons in Rochester and Regent David McMillan in Duluth, thank you for joining us electronically. You can stand, too, if you’d like! To all of our Regents who couldn’t be here today, thank you for your thoughtful guidance and wisdom. I am lucky to have you as my bosses.

Leaders of the University Senate and the students, faculty, and staff in governance, thank you for joining us here today and for your service to the U. And thank you to the many students and faculty from UMD who have travelled to the Twin Cities for Bulldog Day at the Capitol and for joining us today.

Also with us today are Minneapolis City Council member Andrew Johnson amd representatives from Senator Franken’s and Congressman Ellison’s offices. Thank you for your support of the University, and for being our partner.

And I want those partnerships to deepen.

I’m also delighted to welcome a number of new members of our senior leadership team. Vice President for Equity and Diversity Katrice Albert, Vice Provost and Dean of Students Danita Brown Young, Medical School Dean and Vice President for Health Sciences Brooks Jackson, University of Minnesota Foundation CEO Kathy Schmidlkofer, and University of Minnesota Alumni Association CEO Lisa Lewis are here today.

Since I became President 31 months ago, we’ve seen a remarkable rejuvenation in the University’s senior leadership team, with three-quarters of our leaders either new to the U or their jobs. They bring fresh ideas, new energy, exceptional leadership, and, you should know, lots of opinions! We could not do this work without a great team, and a great team of deans.

Finally, I want to thank my wife, Karen Kaler, who has been trying to make me a better person for 34 years now. I have seen some progress, but I think she’s still waiting!

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Two and a half years ago, in my inaugural address, I urged people to—quote “pick up the pace.” It raised a few eyebrows. It caused a little bit of squirming in seats. I’m happier to say it also triggered many nods of approval among those of you who had grown impatient with higher education’s inertia, in general, and ours, in particular. Change may feel slow here, but we have picked up the pace, and I thank all of you.

For one, we have changed the nature of our conversation with state leaders and the citizens who elect them. The result is a solid reinvestment in this great University after nearly a decade of cutbacks. Besides achieving that historic tuition freeze, we infused new energy and resources into our research enterprise through the Minnesota Discovery, InnoVation and Economy initiative—or MnDRIVE—a four-legged research platform that seeks to solve some of our state’s and the world’s most intractable Grand Challenges.

Internally, we are making significant progress on Operational Excellence, one of my top priorities since taking office and continuing today. Let me tell you, we are aggressively tackling administrative costs. A few months ago we pledged to redirect $90 million from administration to our core mission activities over the next five years. And this fiscal year alone, we’ve achieved cost savings by streamlining purchasing, with energy conservation initiatives, and by increasing administrative efficiencies. We will hit our $15 million reallocation goal this year, and I’m confident that we will also do so in the years to come.

We have had many successes, and I urge you to read about them at Excellence.UMN.edu, and you can also make suggestions there.

On another front, the Enterprise System Upgrade Program is changing work streams across our core administrative areas, including student services, human resources, and finance. I thank the entire ESUP team for its remarkable success around what is truly a complicated set of processes.

Meanwhile, our new employee engagement initiative got off to a great start with a 57 percent response rate from all of you.

That’s the highest response rate ever for a University employee survey. Overall, our employees are highly engaged—you believe in our mission and want to build a career here. But some faculty and staff are frustrated with obstacles in the way of getting their jobs done. Some days, I’m one of those! As we move forward we will remove barriers, improve productivity, and enhance your work environments across the University system. Our goal is to provide the workplace environment that allows you to do your jobs even better than you already do.

We have many other examples of improving and revamping without adding costs. For instance, the new Center for Educational Innovation, which will do exactly what it says. And last month, we created the Office of University Economic Development, to better define our role as the state’s economic engine and to reach out to partners in the business and entrepreneurial communities.

All of these changes—and many others—are driven by our mission to teach better, conduct research more freely, and to engage more effectively with our communities. What else have we accomplished? Lots and lots, and let me quickly mention just a handful.

We broke ground on a new Ambulatory Care Clinic and entered into a new, enhanced partnership with Fairview Health Services that will mean, over time, an additional $90 million for our Medical School and improved patient care. That partnership will be called “University of Minnesota Health.”

As our Extension continues its important work across the state, we have strengthened our relationship with the agriculture and agribusiness communities. We’re intentionally supporting new synergies between CFANS and CBS to support this important industry.

Our students continue to be internationally recognized, such as Katrina Klett, who was awarded a coveted Truman Scholarship this year, an honor that recognizes a handful of undergraduates nationwide who are committed to being “change agents.” Her spectacular achievement? Establishing beekeeping in five rural villages in western China, combining her language skills with her environmental science knowledge.

Katie is with us today, and I’d like to recognize her.

Our system campuses have raised their profiles and identity—all being recognized nationally for their distinctive characters. At Duluth, 22 students made history. They belonged to the first Master of Tribal Administration and Governance class, the only graduate degree program in the U.S. that trains people specifically in the best management practices for tribal governments.

We celebrated Rochester’s first-ever graduating class, and the campus received national accolades in Forbes magazine—believe it or not!—for its innovative approach to teaching and tenure and its unique relationship with the city of Rochester. Crookston was again named to the President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll for 2013, and it was named by U.S. News as the No. 1 best public regional Midwest college. And Morris’s commitment to sustainability and affordability landed it on the list of the Greenest Universities in the nation, and, just this week, was named by Kiplinger's as among the nation’s best values for a college education.

We continually see our faculty among the nation’s most honored. For example, Jon Foley, director of our Institute on the Environment, won a 2014 Heinz Award and was awarded a $250,000 grant for his work as a pioneer in understanding global ecosystems and land use. That’s just one faculty honor that adds to a remarkable statistic from the last academic year: We at the University stood alone among all American universities in having faculty elected to five of the academy’s most prestigious societies:

the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
the National Academy of Sciences,
the Institute of Medicine,
the National Academy of Engineering and
the American Philosophical Society.
I’d call that an academic quin-fecta, and only we achieved it.

Our Twin Cities College of Design established its “Degree in 3” pilot program, which I encouraged in my State of the University speech two years ago. It lets students earn their degrees in less time, enabling them to enter the workforce or pursue a graduate degree more quickly.

Increasing philanthropy is one of my top priorities and support among friends of the University has been extremely encouraging. In a little over half of our fiscal year, we’ve raised nearly 80 percent of our goal, and we’re likely headed for a record year by our University of Minnesota Foundation. Philanthropy is critical to supporting students and faculty research. And our Alumni Association is implementing its strategic plan to more fully engage all 440,000 alumni—like me and many of you—across the world to be stronger advocates for our students, for each other, and the U.

Meanwhile, we are a month away from reopening Northrop, an iconic structure that stands as testament to our commitment to the arts, humanities, and interdisciplinary education.

Yes, we’ve accomplished much in the past year.

Let me turn now to graduate and professional education. We excel in undergraduate education across our system. But the signature of a research university is graduate education.

One of my first budget actions as president was to invest 6 million dollars over three years to Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships. This has been a success, helping students complete their degrees more quickly and—I dare say—with higher quality. I am pleased to announce today that I am renewing that support for an additional year, 2015. These are critically important fellowships for the next generation of world-class scholars, and I will make further investments consistent with the outcome of the strategic planning work.

The other pillar, of course, of post-baccalaurate education is professional education, and here the University stands alone in many disciplines in providing the state with trained professionals. Our AHC leads the way in interprofessional education for health care providers, where doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and others learn to work as a team to provide care. And our Law School impressively serves the common good in many ways, including the responding to the needs of Minnesota’s diverse immigrant groups through its recently formed Center for New Americans. That was funded with a generous gift from the Robina Foundation.

But make no mistake. Professional schools face enormous challenges in maintaining excellence and affordability. And those challenges are among the most important we face as an institution. As we have done to support our undergraduates, I hope to explore opportunities to partner with the State of Minnesota to educate and retain these professionals, particularly in underserved areas of Minnesota.

CHALLENGES

Which leads me to other challenges we face amid all that we’ve accomplished.

Last week, with the convening of the legislative session, we turned our attention to the Capitol seeking support from Minnesota lawmakers to upgrade our facilities so that students learn and faculty teach and research in 21st-century buildings. The request contains important funding for maintenance and renewal across the system, new buildings for science and teaching in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth, and a wellness center in Crookson. I urge all of you to take seriously our roles as advocates for the University, and to raise your voices, and please be sure to join our Legislative Action Network.

Another urgent challenge is ensuring that our University population mirrors the racial and cultural diversity of our state and nation. Advancing equity and diversity is a priority of mine, but we need to do better. This year we expanded the Presidents Emerging Scholars program that serves primarily first-generation and low-income students, and the offices of Equity and Diversity and Admissions are redoubling our efforts to recruit and enroll more diverse students.

We launched a new initiative—called Retaining All Our Students—to help ensure low-income students successfully transition from their first to second year of college. However, despite this work and our clear commitment, our record is alarming on attracting and retaining students of color—particularly African American men. The number of African American students on our Twin Cities campus is fewer than 4 percent. And among African American men, that percentage is lower. We need to redouble outreach to these students and showcase academic opportunity.

We also know that for many of our students of color on the Twin Cities campus, the environment could be more welcoming. Students have said they sometimes feel singled out as the only student of color in a class, and some feel profiled by others on campus because of their race. To more proactively address these issues, we recently convened senior leaders—from my office, Equity and Diversity, the Provost’s office, Human Resources, University Services, and Student Affairs—to develop new strategies to improve campus climate. Each system campus is also attentive to these issues. With our new Campus Climate Workgroup, I look forward to seeing new initiatives this spring and next fall and I am prepared to provide the resources this team needs to implement their plans.

PUBLIC SAFETY

One especially big challenge we’ve faced this past fall on and around our Minneapolis campus is an increase in crime.

Over the past decade, public safety here has significantly improved, with incidents dropping by half. However, this fall we saw an uptick in robberies, primarily in the neighborhoods near campus. Let me be clear, the numbers are relatively small, an increase of 7 incidents over an average of 27 for these months annually, with all but three of those total incidents occurring off campus.

We know that our students, their parents, legislators, and the public do not distinguish between on- or off-campus, and neither do I. But it is a huge distinction when it comes to police response, follow-up, and investigation. Our UMPD officers don’t have jurisdiction off our campus. Those are not our investigations or streets to patrol, and yet we need to make sure our students are safe.

To that end, we’ve put into place an aggressive public safety initiative called Safe U. The Board of Regents supported our plan to reallocate $4.1 million to add lights and security cameras, and secure buildings. We’ve hired more police officers and student Security Monitors and have funded overtime hours for our officers. And our partners in Minneapolis have added six additional officers, with a seventh to come soon, in the Second Precinct where many of our students live, and I am grateful for that. Our students have gotten deeply involved in addressing public safety, and I thank them.

Everyone who works, studies, lives or visits our Twin Cities campus every day—all 80,000 of us—must be safe and feel safe.

CITY STRATEGY

This public safety challenge has underscored a pressing reality, and that is a compelling need to be a more engaged institutional citizen and partner with the City of Minneapolis and our neighborhoods. For too long, we at the University have seemed not to care about development surrounding our Minneapolis campus, which I believe has attracted at least some of the crime we’ve experienced.

In the neighborhoods around campus, 7,000 new housing units have been added recently and another 7,000 are in the pipeline. This means a higher concentration of students living near campus than ever before. It means that the distinction between “on campus” and “off campus” has become blurred.

And these changes mean our neighborhoods have different needs today than in the past. For example, walkability, bikeability, and a range of amenities are important to neighborhood livability for our students and they need to be important to the institution. We must be a more proactive, engaged, and thoughtful neighbor. Over the next few months, we will forge a new set of guiding principles for working with the City of Minneapolis and our neighborhoods. I expect to bring our new approach to the Board of Regents for their information in June.

The good news is that this stepped up relationship with our community dovetails perfectly with a key direction of our Strategic Planning process.

STRATEGIC PLANNING

And that’s where I want to turn now. To complete Strategic Planning on our Twin Cities campus is my top priority for this year. It is a plan that will align and be integrated with the directions of our system campuses.

When we launched this effort last summer, I laid some foundational directions. First, I wanted this plan to be bold and focused, to be developed thoughtfully but in a timely fashion, and, most importantly, to be ambitious.

If it wasn’t ambitious, then it wasn’t going to be strategic enough for me. I must tell you, I am very pleased and excited about the direction the Strategic Plan, under Provost Hanson’s leadership, is taking us. For one, it has been faculty driven, and that’s extremely important, but staff, student, and stakeholder voices are there, too, through membership in the Strategic Planning Workgroup, online surveys, a campus conversation, and focused discussions.

With the permission of the Workgroup, I’d like to share with you the directions in which we’re headed.

The group has established a set of four strategic and overarching initiatives, strategies that will establish incentives to empower faculty and staff to excel at what they do every single day.

These emerging initiatives are, frankly, inspiring, and I want to spend some time on them with you.

The primary goal of the Strategic Plan is how I began these remarks: That we as a University become pre-eminent in solving the Grand Challenges of a diverse and changing world. To do that, we will hold ourselves and each other accountable and set the bar high.

This is one of four emerging strategies: that we will support excellence and, with intention, reject complacency.

The University of Minnesota should not be a place to feel self-satisfied with the status quo. There is no room for contentment when we confront critical internal and external challenges.

The faculty and staff on the Workgroup who have driven this strategic planning process want us to be exceptional. I want us to be exceptional. Students and their parents want us to be exceptional. And our community wants and demands that we be exceptional. So let’s set—and then reach—that goal.

Rejecting complacency, however, will only get us part of the way there. Another strategy, therefore, is to recruit and retain field-shaping researchers and teachers. There is no great university without world-renowned faculty, with the highest recognition and whose creative work defines their field. But we also must face this reality. Forty-one percent of our faculty members on the Twin Cities campus are 55 or older. In the next decade or so, we could be saying goodbye to many of our most valued and productive colleagues.

While their loss will be real, it is also a great opportunity for renewal. We need to be proactive about attracting faculty of the future and be mindful that the world’s best young scholars will only come to a university that is vibrant, cutting edge, and diverse. So we are committed to hiring, welcoming, nurturing, and promoting the best faculty—faculty who will lead this institution into the future.

Another emerging strategy for the Strategic Planning Group is to ensure that the Twin Cities campus embraces what the Workgroup is calling “a culture of permeability.” I call it, simply, leveraging our location. The Twin Cities campus is in the 16th largest metro area in the nation, with one of the country’s best economies, in a region regularly considered the healthiest to live, in a place with 19 Fortune 500 headquarters, in a theater, arts, and culture mecca, and with one of the world ‘s great rivers that flows the entire length of the country. This is an incredible place to live. This is an incredible institution. Better leveraging our location simply makes sense, for both us and our community.

Pragmatically, it means, among other things: more internships and eventual employment for our students, and even more research to tackle the state’s and metro area’s achievement, employment, and opportunity gaps.

And that’s just the beginning. At its core, we seek to educate, cultivate, and empower leaders to foster institutional and societal change. And to do that, our curriculum must change. We should lead in developing courses and degree programs that equip our students to tackle the Grand Challenges that rarely fall in a single discipline.

So, let me tell you a story about what could happen here in the future.

GRAND CHALLENGES

A young woman grows up in Wayzata, surrounded by neighbors in banking, finance, and non-profit management.

She thinks she wants to follow in her parents’ footsteps and lead a company. She is a very good student, so she’s admitted to the U and the Carlson School, but among her freshman classes is English 1401-W, “Literatures of the Third World.” In this class, she is introduced to authors she didn’t know, stories she’d never heard, and ideas she’d never considered.

Something clicks. She’s realizing she really must improve her writing, all the while learning about ways of knowing and being that she had never considered. She’s learning that being a business leader isn’t just about balance sheets and income statements. It’s also about clear communication, critical thinking, leadership, and curiosity.

And she discovers that—even more deeply in her sophomore year—when she takes a class at the Carlson School called Management 1005, “Corporate Responsibility and Ethics.” She is assigned the essay question—and this is not imaginary, but an assignment in 1005 this very spring—“Copper Nickel Mining in Northeastern Minnesota.” She becomes fascinated by the ethical issues that impact job creation, the environment, human rights, and regional economic development.

She talks to her Carlson professor. “I want to be a business leader,” she says, “but these courses have made me want to work through the connections between environmental issues and the economy. How do I pursue that?”

“A-ha,” says the professor. “You can now take one of our Grand Challenges minors, which intentionally explores issues in those two disciplines.”

She sees a Grand Challenge across disciplines, across colleges. Multiply that story by 7,500 graduates each year, and that is the impact this great university can have on the world. And that is the evolving vision for a new Grand Challenges curriculum, and that is how our Twin Cities campus Strategic Planning process is unfolding. And I thank the Workgroup members for their exceptional work so far.

They’re not done … yet. A final plan should be in place by the end of September. This is bold. This is relevant. This is invigorating, and it’s the kind of critical thinking and engaged learning and research that our graduates—and their future employers—are seeking.

I do want to close with this thought. As we continue to change and evolve, we must not ignore the lasting legacy this University owns across the state and around the world. We should celebrate the incredible potential we hold in our hands because of this coalition of scholars, community leaders, and the thousands of young people with dreams and solutions. I want this University to have a Grand Ambition and apply that against our many Grand Challenges.

Let’s do that work together.

Thank you.

For the Record: 17 yr Old Killer Diagnosed as Risk to Society, Not Treated

INVESTIGATORS: Clerk killer diagnosed, not helped

Transcript of Channel 9 Investigative Report

The Michael Swanson people remember is laughing at the news photographer who tripped taking his picture, and it was chilling to see a 17-year-old boy arrested on murder charges acting so giddy.

"These families in Iowa deserved better," Kathy Swanson, Michael's mother, told the Fox 9 Investigators. "We deserved better. Michael deserved better. Nobody deserved this."

In November 2010, Michael Swanson stole a car, some guns and ran away from his parents. After leaving the Twin Cities, he robbed two convenience stores in Iowa. At each one, he shot a clerk in the face. Both died.

"I don't know if you ever get over it," Kathy Swanson said.

Kathy Swanson says it was a "completely preventable tragedy."

"What I want to happen is: I want the truth to come out," she said. "I think it's important for people to know what really happened."

Weeks before Michael Swanson went on his killing spree, a psychiatrist wrote the following warning:

"I am concerned he poses a risk to society if un-medicated, and even if medicated, he is still somewhat unpredictable."

The Fox 9 Investigators began reviewing the police interview of Michael Swanson, which took place just hours after the killings. When an officer asked Swanson when he slept last, the teen replied, "Four days ago. Sometimes I can't sleep at all."

Michael Swanson also told the detective he'd been hallucinating.

"I'd be driving and I'd just keep looking out the window," he said. "I thought there was somebody there."

When asked if he'd ever hallucinated before, the teen said, "It happens when I don't sleep."

The inability to sleep for long periods of time can be a symptom for someone living with bipolar disorder, a mental illness that causes dramatic and sometimes explosive shifts in a person's mood and energy level.

During the interview with Michael Swanson, police asked if he was taking any medication -- and he shook his head. When asked if he had been diagnosed as bipolar by a doctor, Michael Swanson replied, "Yes."

Swanson told police he was diagnosed about a month before his arrest, and said there were talks about giving him medication; however, he added, "They don't want to make the jump right now."

A month earlier, Swanson was confined to the Hennepin County Home School, a correctional center for troubled teens. It was his last stop after years of disturbing behaviors that made him a familiar face in the juvenile justice system.

"There's like two Mikes," Kathy Swanson said. "There's my Mike, who's this nice, well-behaved young man -- and then there's this other who you just don't know what he's going to do."

There was a period just before Michael Swanson went to the Hennepin County Home School when his mother would sleep with a stick because she feared the "other Mike" might attack her in her sleep.

"We, at times, would find hammers, wrenches, knives in the house where we would wonder, 'Is this kid thinking about killing us?'" she recalled.

In fact, Michael Swanson had previously admitted to having thoughts of killing his mother and his aunt. The family tried getting him help, and although he'd be hospitalized for a time, their insurance ran out and he was released.

"We didn't know what was going on with him," Kathy Swanson said.

In the summer of 2010, a judge ordered Michael Swanson to spend up to 120 days at the Hennepin County Home School. It was punishment for stealing a car and causing a hit-and-run crash while drunk.

Records show Michael Swanson behaved himself at the school and was scheduled to get out early until staff found some bizarre writings in his room.

"All about death and violence and darkness and blood," Kathy Swanson said of her son's writings.

The teen claimed they were just lyrics from rap music, but the staff was so concerned they ordered a psychiatric evaluation.

"To be just writing and writing this weird crap tells you he was in a very weird state," Kathy Swanson said.

Dr. Jonathan Jensen, from the University of Minnesota, was under contract to provide psychiatric services for the school. Jensen summarized the evaluation findings in a report that was not shown the family until after Michael Swanson committed murder.

Jensen diagnosed Michael Swanson with bipolar affective disorder, and said treatment with the drug Abilify might help prevent future mood swings. Jensen even wrote, "There's a real concern about his use of force."

"It would seem to me that likelihood of his repeating the theft of guns, robbery of people is probable and that without anti-psychotic medication, he may carry out these behaviors," Jensen found.

Three weeks after the evaluation, Jensen met with the Swansons and social worker Dan Lehnherr at the Hennepin County Home School. It was the Swansons' belief that the purpose of the meeting was to discuss their son's diagnosis, get him started on medication and figure out a treatment plan. Notes from Lehnherr indicate he had similar expectations, but the Swansons say -- to their surprise -- Jensen did none of that.

"He told me, 'I can't talk about the evaluation. I didn't do the evaluation,'" Kathy Swanson said.

According to the Swansons, Jensen said he couldn't prescribe medication for Michael Swanson because he didn't know anything about him. What he did do was recommend the teen be enrolled in a research clinic at the University of Minnesota.

The Swansons have made the same claims in sworn depositions taken when they were sued by the families of the shooting victims.

"He did not want to answer any of our questions," Kathy Swanson said.

After the meeting, Michael Swanson was released to move back home with his parents. 

There was no prescription, no medicine for him to take. The family made an appointment at the university's clinic the next day, but it would be 6 weeks before he could be seen.

Twelve days after leaving the Hennepin County Home School and while his parents were sleeping, Michael Swanson stole his mother's Jeep and took off.

The first time the Swanson family saw Jensen's report was 4 months later when the teen's lawyer got a copy for the upcoming trial. It wasn't until then, they say, that they were aware Jensen was concerned their son was a "risk to society if un-medicated."

"I couldn't believe it," Kathy Swanson told the Fox 9 Investigators. "How do you write that and, in that meeting, tell me you don't know anything about that kid? You don't know anything about him, but you can write that and you let us take him home knowing we're afraid of him -- knowing this."

Was Jensen obligated to tell them his concerns?

"There'd be no reason not to share that," Dr. Rodney Reid, a former staff psychiatrist with the juvenile justice mental health program in Los Angeles, Calif. "It does seem appropriate that, if you had that level of concern about a child being a danger and their danger of not being on medication, that -- at a minimum -- you would communicate that with the parents."

Why didn't Jensen tell his concerns to the Swansons? Why didn't he write a prescription right after the evaluation? Remember, Michael Swanson remained in the home school for another three weeks prior to being released. Why did he want him enrolled in a research clinic at the university?

"I believe his role was to recruit patients for clinical trials," Kathy Swanson said.

Kathy Swanson put that accusation in writing and sent it to the Hennepin County Attorney's Office to ask for an investigation. She got a response that the alleged conduct does not appear to violate any felony law.

The U of M told the Fox 9 Investigators that there were no trials at the time that Michael Swanson would have been eligible for, and a colleague of Jensen said the clinic was not seeking Swanson for a drug study. Instead, the colleague claims he was being offered follow-up care.

Michael Swanson and his parents signed a release allowing Jensen to discuss the case with the Fox 9 Investigators; however, he replied with an e-mail that said, "I will not talk with you." After following up with a list of questions and asking him to respond in writing, a one-word answer -- "No." -- was returned.

"I think the doctor should go to prison," Mary Weiss, an outspoken critic of the University of Minnesota's Department of Psychiatry, said. "I mean, her son is as good as dead to her."

Weiss sued the university after her mentally-ill adult son killed himself while enrolled in a drug study there. She claimed doctors coerced her son into the study and then benefited financially. The case was dismissed on the grounds that the university was immune from being sued.

"She's helped me," Kathy Swanson said.

Kathy Swanson reached out to Weiss after her son was arrested, and she sat with her during the murder trial.

"I felt sorry for her," Weiss said. "This wasn't her doing."

Weiss is currently recovering from a second stroke, and Swanson is haunted by a number of unanswered questions.

"Who knew what? What were they doing about it, and what happened?" she asked.

Kathy Swanson asked Fox 9 Investigator Jeff Baillon to review her son's juvenile corrections file.

"I'm hoping there's some notes between Dan Lehnherr and the probation officer," she said. 

"I have this feeling Dan Lehnherr must have questioned why this kid wasn't taking this med. I questioned this."

She found no answer in the file. Perhaps a meeting with Lehnherr himself could shed some light.

"I'd like him to confirm what happened in that meeting that we had with Jensen," she said.
She knocked on the door and he opened the blinds, looked her straight in the eyes and then closed the blinds without saying a word.

"I just have to feel that has to be driven by a lot of his own guilt. If he had nothing to hide, if he felt like he did everything he could have, he'd talk and be open," she said. "

Michael Swanson is now serving a life sentence for murder. For the first time, he's also being treated for his mental illness and is on multiple medications. A prison official told the Fox 9 Investigators, "He's got a pretty firm grasp on reality. He's pretty stable." The "nice Mike" is the one who calls his parents several times a week to check in.

The Fox 9 Investigators shared the results of the investigation with the families of the two women who were killed by Michael Swanson. The husband of Sheila Myers questioned why the teen was let out of the home school if a doctor was concerned he could be a risk to society without medication and the sister of Vicky Bowman-Hall called the information "troubling."
"I just think there's been a failure somewhere," she said.


Read more: INVESTIGATORS: Clerk killer diagnosed, not helped - KMSP-TV http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/story/24811285/investigators-clerk-killer-diagnosed-not-helped#ixzz2uIywYUho

For the Record: UMD Prof Open Letter to UM President Kaler

UMD Professor pens open letter to UM President Kaler

Editor's note: On Monday, Feb. 17, University of Minnesota President Eric Kaler visited the UMD campus to hold a series of open meetings on the university's current budget situation. UMD History professor Scott Laderman wrote the following open letter to Kaler in response to that visit.

February 20, 2014

Eric W. Kaler, President
University of Minnesota

Dear President Kaler,

I want to thank you for taking the time to visit us at UMD.  The faculty here had for months been anxious to meet with you, so we appreciate that you accepted the invitation.  We trust that we will be seeing you again shortly.

As I assume was made clear during your brief visit, too many of us at UMD – both faculty and staff – are feeling demoralized.  This is in part because of the budget situation in which the campus finds Ladermanitself.  But it is also because we often feel disrespected and devalued within the University of Minnesota system.  You are our president, and we expect you to listen to and represent us.  You assured us on Monday that you are able to separate your responsibilities as the system president and the head of the Twin Cities campus.  With all due respect, I remain unconvinced.

I’m sure I was not alone, for example, in finding it disconcerting when you told us that UMD faculty had regular opportunities to communicate our concerns because we were connected by ITV (or some other virtual method) to your meetings in the Twin Cities with the Faculty Consultative Committee.  As we had to inform you, we are not.  We were removed decades ago by the Regents from that governance system.  We have now created our own shared governance system at UMD.  You are part of it, and I hope you will participate as meaningfully in our system as you do in the other.  I also think it is important to have Vice President Pfutzenreuter more regularly participate in our campus budget committee meetings.  He does, after all, work for all of us.

While I cannot speak for the UMD faculty as a whole, I can tell you that every faculty member with whom I have spoken did not feel appreciably better after your visit than they did before it.  Please allow me to explain why.  As you no doubt gathered from our questions, the budget situation we confront is a matter of tremendous and ongoing concern.  While I appreciate your assurance that you will be working with our local administrators to help the campus move toward long-term stability, the vagueness of your assurance left many of us uneasy.

At the root of many of our concerns is the fact that UMD does not receive the same level of support from the University’s state appropriation as does the Twin Cities campus (or Morris, for that matter).  You are right, as you insisted in the Faculty Assembly, that we must not compare apples to oranges.  But the fact that you followed up that statement by comparing UMD to the College of Liberal Arts in the Twin Cities did not demonstrate a willingness to abide by your own counsel.  Put simply, UMD and the College of Liberal Arts are not both apples.  One is a comprehensive university, with the many functions, programs, and services that implies; the other is a collegiate unit.  Even if, as you told us, seventy-seven percent of both rely on tuition to cover their operating expenses, that is not a compelling demonstration of geographical parity, as you seemed to want us to believe.  Given the myriad things funded by the UMD budget, many of which are funded centrally for the College of Liberal Arts, our students in Duluth are – whatever the actual numbers – receiving less state support than are students elsewhere.  This must change.

And please provide us with accurate numbers.  You mentioned several times – as has Mr. Pfutzenreuter in various venues – that some of the figures being disseminated about UMD are wrong, even “inflammatory.”  I am thus requesting the correct numbers.  We all recognize that there are differences between the campuses, but there must nevertheless be some common units of analysis.  It is frustrating to hear “your figures are wrong” while being denied the provision of allegedly more accurate figures.

Some of us were also unsettled on Monday by your administration’s response (or nonresponse) to a comment by one of our colleagues.  When that colleague suggested that UMD was not being reimbursed by the system for certain expenses it covers that benefit the Duluth branches of the Medical School and College of Pharmacy, both of which are, administratively speaking, Twin Cities programs, you agreed that this sounded like a problem that should be examined and addressed.  I appreciate your encouraging response.  However, after the Faculty Assembly ended, it came to my attention that the Medical School and College of Pharmacy have in fact been trying to accomplish for some years this payment to UMD for services rendered by UMD (SPA, ITSS, et cetera), and some of those on the stage with you knew this.  What is unsettling to me is that they did not respond to this direct question, leaving most of us in the room with the impression that the administration was learning of this situation for the first time.  I worry that this negatively affected my colleagues in the Medical School and College of Pharmacy, as some of us may have concluded that our colleagues with Twin Cities appointments were not willing to contribute their fair share to the costs incurred by UMD.  This is not true.  If the purpose of your visit was to field our questions and provide us with candid responses, there was an obvious failure in this instance.  Why?

I read in this morning’s U of M Brief that the Regents just supported a $4.1 million investment in safety enhancements on the Twin Cities campus.  Whatever the source of those funds, this is wonderful.  Students, faculty, and staff throughout the University of Minnesota system must be made to feel safe, and as someone with many friends and a spouse at the Twin Cities campus, I am heartened to see the administration taking seriously the safety concerns that have been expressed by many people there.  Yet I cannot help but notice that we have not enjoyed a similar responsiveness in finding funds to address the crisis at UMD.  We have safety concerns as well – if you have not already done so, I urge you to consult our local administrators about these – but more broadly we face the possible elimination of academic programs and services and the termination or nonrenewal of faculty and staff.  Our students will suffer.  Where is the urgency in finding several million dollars to address our crisis?

The faculty at UMD would like an explicit assurance from you that the system will treat the budget situation at UMD like the crisis it is and do more than the bare minimum in helping us to resolve it.  If the system provided UMD with less money in recent years because our admissions and tuition revenue were increasing, fairness dictates that the system now come to UMD’s aid as our admissions and tuition revenue have dropped.  After all, our earlier success benefited the system’s coffers.  Now it is time for the system’s coffers to benefit us.

In sum, I am asking that you please do more to fully represent us as our system leader.  When you told us on Monday that “[y]ou stubbed your toe on undergraduate enrollment a couple of years ago and that has cost you continuing ongoing tuition revenue,” one of our colleagues could not have been more appropriate in his response.  If you were truly our system leader, he replied, you would have said that “we stubbed our toe” and that it has cost “us” tuition revenue.  UMD is the second largest research university in the state of Minnesota, and our faculty are working tirelessly to educate our students while making significant contributions to the arts, humanities, and natural and social sciences.  We at UMD are also the University of Minnesota, and our ability to continue with this success should not be in jeopardy.



                                                                                                Sincerely,

                                                                                                Scott Laderman
                                                                                                Assoc Professor of History

For the Record: Leigh Turner letter to Governor Dayton #markingson

December 20, 2013

Governor Mark Dayton
Office of the Governor
130 State Capitol
75 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
St. Paul, MN 55155

Re: An Open Letter Concerning Mary Weiss and Mike Howard’s Petition Requesting an Independent Investigation of Possible Psychiatric Research Misconduct at the University of Minnesota 

Dear Governor Dayton:

On December 5, you were presented with a petition asking you to initiate an investigation of the death of Dan Markingson and additional reports of possible psychiatric research misconduct at the University of Minnesota. Dan Markingson’s mother, Mary Weiss, and Mike Howard launched the petition earlier this year. I am an Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Bioethics and School of Public Health. I am one of the 3495 individuals that signed the petition. With the other signatories, I hope that you will play a leadership role in ordering an independent, external investigation of allegations of psychiatric research misconduct at the University.

 Repeated efforts to persuade senior university administrators of the urgent need for an independent investigation of possible psychiatric research misconduct have all failed. While the University of Minnesota’s Faculty Senate recently passed a resolution calling for an inquiry into the Markingson case, President Kaler has already indicated that whatever panel is established will not investigate Dan Markingson’s death. Furthermore, it appears that President Kaler envisions himself playing an active role in selecting panel members. Individuals appointed to an independent, external inquiry must not be chosen by individuals whose conduct will have to be examined by the investigation.

As Governor, you have the authority to establish an independent investigation. Unlike President Kaler, you have no conflicts-of-interest that might prompt questions about the independence and integrity of such an investigative panel. Should you establish a body responsible for investigating reports of psychiatric research misconduct at the University, I urge you to mandate that this panel address Dan Markingson’s death and additional reports of alleged research misconduct.

Last May, I wrote to President Kaler and urged him to support Mary Weiss and Mike Howard’s petition. He refused. I was subsequently contacted by several individuals who reported that their loved ones suffered serious harm while enrolled in psychiatric clinical trials conducted by faculty members in the University’s Department of Psychiatry. They indicated that what happened to Dan Markingson was very similar to what their relatives endured. Professor Carl Elliott, a colleague of mine at the Center for Bioethics, has been contacted by an even larger number of individuals describing incidents that raise serious questions about the adequacy of protections for psychiatric research subjects at the University. These citizens need to be given an opportunity to bring their reports of mistreatment and abuse to an independent body authorized and empowered to investigate their claims.

Given university administrators’ repeated refusals to investigate reports of psychiatric research misconduct, the conduct of senior university officials must be scrutinized as part of any legitimate inquiry. President Kaler, Vice President and Dean Aaron Friedman, General Counsel William Donohue, former General Counsel Mark Rotenberg, other senior administrators at the University of Minnesota, and Regents have repeatedly failed to make reasonable inquiries in response to reports of possible violations of rights of research subjects.

As both a faculty member at the University and a resident of the state of Minnesota, in the strongest possible terms I urge you to initiate a thorough, independent, external investigation into reports that psychiatric research misconduct has occurred at the University of Minnesota. I have no confidence that senior officials at the University of Minnesota are fulfilling their moral and legal duties and addressing these reports with the urgency and attentiveness that they require.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

 Leigh Turner, PhD 

Associate Professor 

University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics 

N520 Boynton, 410 Church Street SE 

Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55455 

A Question of Accountability

Accountability: The obligation of an individual or institution to account for its activities, accept responsibility for them, and to disclose the results in a transparent manner

A Question of Accountability

Each year the administration presents to the Regents the University Plan, Performance, and Accountability Report. Here are some excerpts from the September 2013 Report:

1. Compensation

Sibson also found that employee compensation in these four areas [human resources, budget & finance, information technology, and purchasing services] is at market rates for higher education and slightly lower than in the private sector.

See p. 73 of the 2013 Accountability Report.

The Sibson Consulting report on "spans and layers" does not even use the word "compensation" much less make any finding about market rates for higher education. See the August 2013 Sibson report.

Nor does the Huron Consulting report on administrative services benchmarking make any such finding. Huron refers to compensation simply to note that the U of M Office of Human Resources is preparing a compensation study. See p. 101 of the June 2013 Huron report.

For a report that does have information on the compensation of U of M senior administrators see On The Cost of Administration Part IV.

2. Facilities Management

Focusing on service [for Facilities Management] represents a shift away from taking care of the University's buildings and toward caring for the needs of the people and programs in them. This includes focusing on a culture that enhances productivity, demands accountability, and places a premium on clear communication.

See p. 86 of the 2013 Accountability Report.

On November 26, 2013 the U of M vice president for university services appeared at the meeting of the faculty Senate Committee on Finance & Planning. The minutes of the meeting record the following:

He [Professor Luepker] noted that he had been informed that most of the construction work done on campus is by private contractors; Vice President Wheelock affirmed that almost all of it is done through competitive bids and that University staff only do small projects.

See p. 5 of the November 26, 2013 SCFP report (emphasis added).


On that same day KMSP reported:

University investigators dismissed a complaint that Louden appeared to organize the bidding process to minimize the competition for Skyline, but according to e-mails, it appears that she and her staff did just that. 

Instead of considering the inspection of several buildings as one project, which would have to be put out for bidding, she told them to break up the inspections building by building. That kept prices low enough that Skyline would be given the work without bidding for it. 

A pile of purchase orders show Skyline pulled in hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past 5 years.

KMSP report of November 26, 2013 quoted in A Cover Up Culture.

3. Costs of Administration

[The administration] reduced administrative costs by $32.6 million, eliminating and consolidating administrative offices and processes.

See p. 4 of the 2013 Accountability Report.


The administration did reduce certain costs in mission support and facilities and in leadership, but there were increases in other expenditures in those two categories that were even greater. There was a net increase of $41.7 million in expenditures for mission support & facilities. There was a net increase of $7.9 million in expenditures for leadership. The 2013 Accountability Report fails to mention these net increases. See A Complete Accounting.



4. Medical School.

Tackling another priority to return the Medical School to national prominence, the University, University of Minnesota Physicians, and Fairview agreed on a new "integrated structure" to better serve patients, increase funding for the Medical School, and enhance the University health sciences training and research.

See p. 8 of the 2013 Accountability Report.

The "integrated structure" is just the beginning of the long term efforts necessary to restore the Medical School. In its June 2013 report the Strategic Planning Committee described numerous "key initiatives" that must be implemented to enable the Medical School "to regain its position of excellence" by 2025. The Medical School Faculty Advisory Council released its own report describing major obstacles to achieving the "key initiatives." See An Institution Adrift Part II. The 175 page 2013 Accountability Report fails to even mention these reports much less review their analyses of the problems facing the Medical School.



5. Clinical Research Trials.

Key steps taken in 2012 [to translate scientific breakthroughs into improved health] include:

Initiated new resources and consultative services for research teams, including the Clinical Research Ethics Consultation Service . . .  

Added expert staff members to guide, serve, and collaborate with research teams, including an Institutional Review Board specialist . . . .

See p. 60 of the 2013 Accountability Report.

The Institutional Review Board reviews research projects to ensure that human subjects are not placed at undue risk and that they give uncoerced, informed consent to their participation. See the IRB description.

In May 2004 Dan Markingson committed suicide while he was a participant in a U of M clinical trial. His psychiatrist recruited him for the trial as an alternative to a civil commitment as a mentally ill person likely to do harm to himself or others. An FDA investigation in 2005 concluded that there was no misconduct.

The U of M administration uses this 2005 FDA conclusion as a primary reason to reject calls for another investigation. But in 2012 the Minnesota Board of Social Work took corrective action against the social worker who was the study coordinator. Perhaps the most damning findings were these:

2(g)(1) Despite the large amount of data gathered as part of the CAFE study, the records are devoid of any evidence that the data was critically analyzed or used in the treatment planning process. . . 

2 (g)(4) There were critical omissions in Licensee's [U of M study coordinator] documentation that were relevant to suicide prevention and chemical dependency treatment. . . 

2(h) On March 17, 2004 Licensee received an e-mail message from the CAFE study sponsor warning of a new risk of hyperglycemia and diabetes for patients taking medications used in the CAFE study. This new information effectively invalidated client #1's [Dan Markingson's] original informed consent.

See pp. 3--4 of the report of the Minnesota Board of Social Work (emphasis added).

Yet the U of M president still refuses to conduct a new and independent investigation of the Markingson case. Is this being true to the principle of accountability? See Time To Do The Right Thing.



Michael W. McNabb
University of Minnesota B.A. 1971; J.D. 1974
University of Minnesota Alumni Association life member