… in the Minneapolis Star Tribune notes that the most charitable description of what’s been going on at the clubby University of Minnesota medical school would be “bizarre.”
Thursday, December 9, 2010
University of Minnesota President Bruininks to
"slip 'land-grant' into the goal"
Desperate times take desperate measures, I guess...
Faculty Consultative Committee
Thursday, November 4, 2010
President Bruininks ... began by acknowledging that it is not clear what will happen in the next few months, given the outcome of the elections in Minnesota. He reported that the presentation to the Board is being updated and should provide a good foundation for the new administration to think about the future of the University. The level of uncertainty in the directions of the state and country is very high, and the President expressed concern that public higher education may not be treated well as events unfold. The University is 47% of the State's higher education budget. If there are no new taxes, the State faces a budget deficit of about $6 billion, lower if the State does not pay the K-12 shift, so payments will be run into the next fiscal year, which in turn reduces the projected deficit in the next two years. So the state budget needs to be cut about 12%, but if K-12 education and health are protected, the situation could be tough for higher education.
And so we are going over to the legislature to ask for more money? This is insane. How do you think this will be perceived?
In the midst of the large political changes that will occur there will also be changes in the membership of the Board of Regents ... The candidates for the Board are not likely to run on platforms calling for an increase in the University's budget, the President surmised, and some may want to try to obtain more efficiencies.
Professor VandenBosch asked if "top three" is still an objective for the new administration or what the University should be striving for.
President Bruininks said the objective should remain as an aspirational goal. What he has said is that the University should be like those top-three public institutions and that it should benchmark itself against them. It is making progress in doing so. It would be a mistake to drop the goal; while one need not emphasize the three, it is appropriate to emphasize excellence.
Mr. President, the top three goal has been a joke. You have egg all over you on this one. And you are unwilling to admit it. To imply that those who do not buy into your top three goal oppose excellence is a slimy tactic.
The President said that he would now slip the words "land grant" into the goal. There are about 70 land-grant universities, and the University is in the top 3-4 of that group, based upon traditional academic measures. The President said he has a deep commitment to the land-grant mission, which includes providing access, and he worries that the University will be tagged as elitist.
The smoking gun. For shame Mr. President. In desperate times we will start to re-emphasize land grant, our original mission? This statement says it all.
The President said he thinks of the glass as half full and that he did not know of any group better able to invent its own future than the members of the University community. That having been said, this is the worst set of conditions he has seen in higher education his entire adult life. It may be necessary to cut more because of concern about tuition increases and the difficult conditions students face in attending the University.
The President agreed, and said that even in the worst budget years he has insisted on an investment pool.
Professor Curley said he did not disagree with the need to continue to make investments, but that need just makes the cutting all the more difficult.
Professor Curley reiterated his point that investments are an easy discussion, but they increase the size of the cuts that need to be made. It is the philosophy about cuts that is at issue. Professor Gonzales reported that when she speaks to colleagues, there is tumult and unease about the leadership transition as well as the political transitions and the election outcomes.
If there is a predictable decline in state funding for higher education, and the decline accelerates, and the University must thus reset its expectations for state funding, some units will have to be more self-supporting, the President said. Some colleges will continue to need a significant investment of state dollars because the disciplines are more expensive to support (e.g., engineering), but other colleges can be more self-supporting.
One leg of the stool is raising more money, Professor Luepker said, and few would argue that the University should not continue to make investments. How will the decisions be made about what to invest in?
The President commented that it cannot be a scientific formula.
Professor Luepker observed that this group could be meeting again in April facing a sizeable reduction in state funding, and cuts will have been made, new ideas considered, and the budget still not balanced. Then what happens?
The University must balance its budget, President Bruininks said. He would put revenues on the table first. They need descriptions from faculty on how to make the case on what happens when the budget is cut. The arguments need more salience, and presumably revolved around the quality of instruction, the opportunity costs to replace faculty, the difficulty in retaining the most productive people. But the budget will balance.
+++
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
Mouthpiece Dan Wolter
declines to make statement in
typical classless fashion...
Eight bioethicists at the University of Minnesota are charging that their own institution has committed an "alarming series of ethical violations" in a clinical trial where a young man committed suicide in 2004. The eight, who include roughly half of the university's bioethics core faculty members, yesterday released a letter to the university's Board of Regents, asking the board to set up an external investigation into the death of Daniel Markingson. He committed suicide violently while enrolled in a trial of antipsychotic medications through the university's psychiatry department. The letter alleges that his death wasn't adequately investigated earlier.
"Bioethicists should not ignore disaster in their own backyard," says Mary Faith Marshall, one of the signers. Marshall came to the University of Minnesota in 2005 after serving in the federal bioethics policy arena. Among other things, she chaired a committee investigating the 1999 death of 19-year-old Jesse Gelsinger in a gene therapy experiment at the University of Pennsylvania.
Asked whether the university had a response to the letter, spokesperson Daniel Wolter wrote in an email: "There isn't any additional statement at this point as there isn't really anything new beyond Professor Elliott repackaging his position in new and different formats." The university's general counsel was not available to discuss the case before ScienceInsider's deadline.
After hearing Wolter's comment, Marshall said: "I still say, when a research subject dies in one of your studies, the public and the private message should be, 'We are really sorry about this and we are going to do whatever we can do to make sure this never happens again.' "
Mr. Wolter, formerly a flack for GOP governor Pawlenty, is apparently a graduate of the Tony Sutton school of Public Relations.
Sad performance, Mr. Wolter. And sad that this man is the spokesperson for the University of Minnesota. Hopefully this will change in the new administration. Hopefully a lot of things will change.
+++
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
Faculty for the Renewal of Public Education
calls for inquiry into the suicide of Dan Markingson
Dec 5, 2010
Board of Regents
University of Minnesota
600 McNamara Alumni Center
200 Oak Street SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455-2020
Dear Board of Regents Members:
We write in support of the call made by faculty members affiliated with the university’s Center for Bioethics for the Board of Regents to establish an independent panel of experts to investigate the suicide of Dan Markingson. We are particularly concerned that possible ethical violations at the University of Minnesota may have contributed to his death.
Dan Markingson committed suicide on May 8, 2004, while in a psychiatric study at the University of Minnesota, sponsored by the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. Articles in the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Mother Jones suggest that ethical violations contributed to Mr. Markingson’s death. These violations may have included the following:
1. The recruitment of a mentally ill subject into a research study while he was under an involuntary commitment order
2. Financial conflicts of interest on the part of the university researchers conducting the study
3. A payment structure which included financial incentives to recruit and retain subjects rather than provide them with standard therapy
4. A study design aimed at generating positive results for AstraZeneca rather than investigating a genuine scientific question
5. The failure of university researchers to address concerns of Mr. Markingson’s mother, who warned that Mr. Markingson was suicidal and who attempted for months to have him removed from the study
6. The development of a specialized unit in Fairview Hospital designed to identify severely mentally ill subjects for recruitment into research studies
7. A failure of the institutional oversight system for protecting human subjects of research.
These are all serious charges. If true, they suggest systemic problems in the way that clinical research is conducted and overseen at the university. Moreover, they erode confidence in research at the University of Minnesota, both within and beyond its medical school. It is essential that patients participating in research studies at the University of Minnesota, the university community at large, and the wider public, be confident that the university is doing everything it can to protect research subjects from harm.
We believe that an inquiry by an independent panel of experts in research ethics and the conduct of medical research is both warranted and necessary in order for the university to respond adequately to Dan Markingson’s death and take measures to ensure that research conducted here does not again result in a like tragedy. Transparency and accountability in conduct should be the touchstones of a public university.
Sincerely,
Bruce Braun, Department of Geography
Gil Rodman, Department of Communication Studies
Karen-Sue Taussig, Department of Anthropology
Antonio Vazquez-Arroyo, Department of Political Science
for Faculty for the Renewal of Public Education (FRPE)
University of Minnesota ethics professors
seek inquiry into drug study, subject's death
Six years after Dan Markingson's suicide, questions linger about the study in which he was enrolled.
Jeremy Olson [who with Paul Tosto won the Premack Prize for work done on this while at the Pioneer-Press]
In a letter to the board Monday, the professors questioned whether U psychiatrists lacked ethical judgment in enrolling the victim, Dan Markingson, a schizophrenic who may have lacked the wherewithal to consent to research. They also questioned whether financial incentives from AstraZeneca, the drugmaker funding the study, presented conflicts for the researchers, Dr. Stephen Olson and Dr. S. Charles Schulz."While it is understandable that some of our colleagues will have little interest in revisiting this case and the ethical issues it raises, we are persuaded that there is a disturbing and unjustifiable gap between how the University has responded to this death and the careful, critical investigation it warrants," the professors wrote.
U leaders will take the letter seriously and take the protection of human research subjects seriously, said the U's general counsel, Mark Rotenberg. He stressed that other government entities have found no causal link between the study and the death.
"The fact that this is tragic doesn't mean the treating physicians did anything wrong," he said.
Among the new critics is Mary Faith Marshall, a bioethics professor who served on federal panels regarding the protection of human research subjects. She also served on an advisory panel that investigated conflicts of interest after the 1999 death of Jesse Geslinger, a participant in a gene transfer study at the University of Pennsylvania.
Whether or not the U was at fault, Marshall said the institution owes Markingson's mother, Mary Weiss of Cottage Grove, an apology and an investigation. She called Markingson's death "an example of a failure" to protect research subjects.
The patient, Dan Markingson, was committed to the psychiatric wing of University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview in 2003 and entered into a clinical trial for an anti-psychotic drug. He committed suicide a year later. The incident was largely exposed by the St. Paul Pioneer Press and, some believe, implicates University researchers in ethical lapses.
Markingson was still enrolled when he died by suicide at a group home. Weiss had implored researchers to release her son because she felt the drug under study wasn't treating his delusional behavior.The lead author of the letter is Carl Elliott, a U of M bioethicist who wrote an article in Mother Jones magazine recently about Markingson's death and researchers' financial ties to the drug industry. Elliott also testified with Weiss for the passage of "Dan's law," which prohibits mentally ill patients under civil commitments in Minnesota from consenting to research.
Other bioethicists who signed the letter: Dianne Bartels, Joan Liaschenko, Dr. John Song, Leigh Turner, Susan Craddock and Joan Tronto.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Sadly, the Academic Health Center at the
University of Minnesota Still Pushes Homeopathy
For some background, please see:
Homeopathy at the University of Minnesota Academic Health Center
The LA Times on Homeopathy:
The Healthy Skeptic: Homeopathic cold remedies
Products may be too diluted to be helpful, or their active ingredients may not help much
Looking for relief without risks, many cold sufferers have turned to homeopathic pills and liquids, which are often heavily diluted — sometimes to the point where few to no molecules of the active ingredient remain.
Zicam RapidMelts, perhaps the most widely available homeopathic cold remedy, is sold at practically every drug store. According to the label, the single active ingredient, zincum gluconicum, has a 1X dilution. This means that one part of zincum gluconicum (a zinc compound) was diluted in 10 parts water before it was added to the lozenge. The label doesn't say how much zinc is in the product, but a customer service representative reached by phone said each lozenge contains 10 mg. of zinc, a little less than you'd get from a typical multivitamin.
According to the label, all of the active ingredients have a dilution of at least 6X, which means one part ingredient per million parts water. Some of the ingredients, including sulphur, have a dilution of 12X, which is a million times less concentrated than the 6X dilution. In other words, don't expect to get a whiff of rotten eggs when you open the bottle.
According to the label, Cold 'n Cough 4 Kids is recommended for cold sufferers ages 2 and up. Children ages 2 to 5 can take a teaspoon every four hours. Children ages 6 to 12 can take two teaspoons every four hours, and children and adults over 12 can take 3 teaspoons every four hours. A 4-oz. bottle (24 teaspoons) costs about $5.
The claims. According to the label, Zicam RapidMelts will "reduce the duration and severity of a cold." It also says you can "get over your cold faster with Zicam." Representatives from Zicam were unavailable for comment.
The website for Hyland's Cold 'n Cough 4 Kids says the "100 percent natural formula offers safe and effective symptom relief from common cold symptoms, including sneezing, sore throat and congestion." J.P. Borneman, chairman and chief executive of Hyland's Inc., says that homeopathic products work by "stimulating the body's natural healing process." He adds that the company has received positive feedback from parents.
The bottom line: Homeopathy has its share of devoted followers, but the field doesn't make scientific sense, says William Gleason at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Most products are so diluted, he says, that there's "no longer any medicine in the medicine."
Proponents of homeopathy often claim that heavily diluted solutions contain a "memory" of the active ingredients, but Gleason says that concept is ridiculous. As he explains, every molecule of water in our bodies has been enough other places — oceans, sewers, the bathtubs of ancient Greeks — to make any "memories" hopelessly jumbled.
In a 2010 report, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a division of the National Institutes of Health, said that the key concepts of homeopathy "are not consistent with the established laws of science."
Much of the controversy around homeopathy doesn't really apply to Zicam RapidMelts, Gleason says, because the product actually contains significant amounts of its active ingredient. But he also notes that zinc isn't exactly a silver bullet (or even a zinc bullet) against colds.
A 2000 study found that lozenges containing 13.3 mg. of zinc (about 3 mg. more than found in Zicam RapidMelts) cut the length of a cold by about one day but didn't affect symptoms. Other studies have found no benefits at all. After reviewing 14 previous studies, Stanford researchers reported in 2007 that the effectiveness of zinc lozenges had "yet to be established."
And so, as Kurt Vonnegut would say, it goes...
Bioethicists ask U of M Regents to appoint outside panel to review ethics of 2004 Dan Markingson case
From MinnPost:
Eight University of Minnesota bioethicists have sent a letter to the university’s Board of Regents, asking it to appoint an outside panel of experts to investigate the ethical issues raised by the case of Dan Markingson, a young man who committed suicide in 2004 while enrolled in a psychiatric research study at the U of M.
“There are a number of unresolved concerns, and I think it’s time there was an outside assessment,” said Leigh Turner, an associate professor in the Center for Bioethics, the School of Public Health and the College of Pharmacy, in a phone interview last week.
Student representatives to the Board of Regents had also intended to raise the issue of conflicts of interest at the U of M — both in the Markingson case and in the university’s handling of the “Troubled Waters” documentary — in a report to the full board this week. Last week, however, the board’s staff objected to “stylistic” concerns about that section of the students’ report, and it has been taken out of the final document that will be presented to the Board on Friday.
Turner said he's hopeful that the Board of Regents will appoint a panel of experts to do an independent investigation of the Markingson case. “I can understand a sense of reluctance or unwillingness to revisit it and see what was done and why — and what could have been done better,” he said. But the university must resist the temptation to “sweep this under the rug,” he added.
A website with a link to the letter to the Board of Regents and other documents can be found here. You can read Elliott’s Mother Jones article about the Markingson case here. (Dan Markingson's story is also featured in Elliott's most recent book, "White Coat, Black Hat: Adventures on the Dark Side of Medicine.") The U of M’s response to the Mother Jones piece can be found here.
###
Added Later:
Other news organizations have also picked up on the faculty letter to the Board of Regents:
Dan Markingson's 2004 suicide: U of M faculty seek investigation
Minneapolis City Pages (blog) - - 5 hours ago
He feared evil spirits were after him. He described experiences with aliens in his apartment. ...
University of Minnesota profs demand investigation of drug trial
MedCity News - 3 hours ago
A group of University of Minnesota professors want the Board of Regents to investigate the suicide of a patient enrolled in a university-run drug study. ...
University of Minnesota Faculty
Letter to Regents:
Call for Outside Investigation of
Markingson Suicide
Board of Regents
University of Minnesota
600 McNamara Alumni Center
200 Oak Street SE
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis,
Minnesota 55455-2020
November 23, 2010
Dear Members of the Board:
On May 8, 2004, a young man named Dan Markingson committed suicide in a psychiatric research study at the University of Minnesota. The study was sponsored by the pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca. Over the past two years, articles in the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Mother Jones magazine have suggested an alarming series of ethical violations and lapses with that study which, if true, suggest serious problems in the way that clinical research is conducted and overseen at the university. Those ethical violations include: recruiting a mentally ill, possibly incompetent subject into a research study while he was under an involuntary commitment order; large financial conflicts of interest on the part of the university researchers conducting the study; a payment structure for the study which included financial incentives to recruit and retain subjects rather than provide them with standard therapy; an allegedly biased study design aimed at generating positive results for AstraZeneca rather than investigating a genuine scientific question; the failure of university researchers to address the legitimate concerns of Mr. Markingson's mother, Mary Weiss, who warned that her son was suicidal and who attempted for months to have him removed from the study as his mental condition deteriorated; the apparent development of a specialized unit in Fairview Hospital designed to identify severely mentally ill subjects for recruitment into research studies; and finally, a failure of the institutional oversight system for protecting human subjects of research.
Although the University of Minnesota and AstraZeneca were cleared of blame by an FDA investigator in 2005, we believe that the problems outlined in the Pioneer Press and Mother Jones articles are serious enough to warrant further investigation. These reports raise troubling questions that to date have not been addressed in our university's response to the death of Mr. Markingson. Patients participating in research studies at the University of Minnesota need to be confident that the university is doing everything it can to protect them from harm. For this reason, we respectfully request that the Board of Regents appoint an impartial panel of experts in research ethics and university governance of medical research to investigate the Markingson case, particularly any larger structural or financial conditions that might have played a role in his death and which may still be putting patients at risk.
Given the ongoing controversy over conflicts of interest in the Academic Health Center, we believe that it is important that panel members come from outside the University of Minnesota and have no financial or professional relationships to the researchers responsible for the study in which Mr. Markingson died. While it is understandable that some of our colleagues will have little interest in revisiting this case and the ethical issues it raises, we are persuaded that there is a disturbing and unjustifiable gap between how our university has responded to this death and the careful, critical investigation it warrants. We therefore seek your intervention in this matter.
Yours sincerely,
Carl Elliott MD PhD
Professor, Center for Bioethics and Departments of Pediatrics and Philosophy
Dianne Bartels, RN, MA, PhD
Assistant Professor, Center for Bioethics and Department of Medicine
Assistant Professor, Center for Bioethics and Department of Medicine
Joan Liaschenko, RN, PhD
FAAN Professor, Center for Bioethics and School of Nursing
FAAN Professor, Center for Bioethics and School of Nursing
Mary Faith Marshall, PhD
Professor, Center for Bioethics and Department of Family Medicine and Community Health
Professor, Center for Bioethics and Department of Family Medicine and Community Health
John Song, MD, MPH, MAT
Associate Professor, Center for Bioethics and Department of Medicine
Leigh Turner, PhD
Associate Professor, Center for Bioethics and School of Public Health and College of Pharmacy
Susan Craddock PhD
Chair, Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies and Affiliate Faculty Member, Center for Bioethics
Joan Tronto PhD
Professor, Department of Political Science and Affiliate Faculty Member, Center for Bioethics
==================
I am proud of my colleagues for not letting this matter rest.
###
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Thursday, December 2, 2010
For Profit Medical Schools
An Idea Whose Time Has
Unfortunately Come?
From the Orlando Sentinel
Palm Beach Medical College seeking state license and national accreditation
The proposed school has applied for a license from the state to issue medical degrees. And it is seeking accreditation from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the accrediting agency for schools granting medical degrees.
"The demand for doctors is alarmingly high," said Pete Martinez, a former IBM vice president who is chairman of Palm Beach Medical Education Corporation. "If you look at the state of medical schools right now, you can't count on states right now to fund them … If you go to the private sector, the private sector will get it immediately."
Martinez is working with Dr. Carlos Martini, Palm Beach Medical's president and CEO, to establish the new medical school.
Martini was instrumental in developing and winning approval for Florida International University's medical school. He worked with the University of California Merced as it developed a medical school. Martini, the former vice president for medical education at the American Medical Association, also has helped develop international medical schools.
Medical students would work in small groups with faculty mentors. The students would have early exposure — in the first two years — to patient care in clinical settings such as physician offices, hospitals and nursing homes.
Palm Beach Medical already has an agreement with the University of California system to use its joint medical program curriculum.
Technology would play a large role in the curriculum, with much of the education material electronic, allowing students to have three-dimensional views of patient cases. Electronic medical records would be instrumental in the students' education.
With the strong technology component, Martinez calls it "a disruptive model of how you do medical education."
The target opening is 2012, with an inaugural class of 100. Proposed tuition is $50,700 a year.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
American Medical Schools Are
"Only In It for the Money" Say Their Faculty
Oh, my, God....
One of my medical school heroes, Dr. Roy Poses, writes in Healthcare Renewal:
We recently discussed the plight of young medical faculty. It appears that their plight is even worse than we imagined.
Last month, an abstract was presented at the Annual Conference on Research in Medical Education at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Medical Colleges, in a session entitled "Your Career is More than Your Specialty." The citation would be: Pololi L, Ash A, Krupat E. Faculty Values in the Culture of Academic Medicine: Findings of a National Faculty Survey.
The authors described a large survey, of over 5000 faculty at 26 US nationally representative medical schools, done as part of the National Initiative on Gender, Culture, and Leadership in Medicine (known as C ‐ Change) project. The overall response rate was good (53%). Here are the striking results:
51% agreed that 'the administration is only interested in me for the revenue I generate'; 31%; that 'the culture of my institution discourages altruism'; 31%, that other people have taken credit for my work'; and 30% that 'I am reluctant to express my opinion for fear of negative consequences.' Half perceived that the institution does not value teaching and 27% that it does not reward clinical excellence; Over half disagreed with the statement that their own values are aligned with those of the institution. Also, 30% had seriously considered leaving academic medicine and 46% their own institution, both in the prior year.
These results show that US medical education is in moral crisis, and probably close to catastrophe. These results should provoke shame and outrage, and cause widespread discussion.
On Health Care Renewal, we have discussed evidence, mostly anecdotal, about the rot within the foundations of medicine and health care. (Note, posts on conflicts of interest, often affecting medical school faculty and leadership, are here; we have posted about how academic medicine has often allowed suppression and manipulation of research; posts on excessive compensation of health care executives, including those of academic institutions, not based on upholding the academic mission are here.) Now it appears that the rot is so severe that the whole edifice is about to fall down.
Meanwhile, the academic leaders who have personally profited from and colluded with the transformation of the system into one that is only in it for the money should resign. The few remaining leaders will need to draw upon all their honesty, integrity, knowledge, and determination to rebuild the system.
Finally, shame on all of us for letting us get to this place.
______________
Amen, Dr. Poses.
***
One of the University of Minnesota's
New Goal Schools, North Carolina,
Struggles With Football...
Our new president, Eric Kaler, put North Carolina in the pantheon of US schools we should try to emulate.
(I hope that the top three public research universities in the world business is forever gone.)
(I hope that the top three public research universities in the world business is forever gone.)
Thus the editorial in the Charlotte News Observer is pertinent:
More Funny Smells from
University of Minnesota
Athletics Department
When new Director of Golf John Harris offered Katie Brenny the Gophers associate women’s head coaching position this summer, he was offering a job she never had a chance to perform, multiple sources closely connected with the program said
Brenny resigned in late October after just two months on the job and without traveling to any of the team’s four fall tournaments.
The Minnesota Daily spoke with more than 10 people connected to the golf program, including half a dozen with intimate knowledge of the situation, about her brief and ambiguous tenure.
They corroborated a tale of a hiring under false pretenses, of Harris’ goal to promote his son-in-law Ernie Rose to head coach despite violating University of Minnesota hiring policy and of frustration among players and boosters with Harris’ extended absences while continuing a professional career he implied he would taper off.
University officials, including Athletics Director Joel Maturi, couldn’t comment on the resignation because of University policy about publicly addressing outstanding personnel matters. Harris declined to comment on any aspect of the story when reached by phone.
Maturi mentioned to Harris, according to an August interview Harris did with the Daily, that the position was available to him if he felt his golf career was coming to an end. Harris, 58, said that at some point while trying to find a replacement for James, he realized his competitive days were "unfortunately" winding down and decided to accept Maturi’s offer.
Though he’d never coached before, he beat out then-associate men’s head coach Andrew Tank, another top candidate for the job who soon after took the men’s head coaching position at Iowa State.
Harris informed then-associate women’s head coach Kris Wessinger that if she stayed on, her role would change, multiple sources said. About two weeks after Tank departed for Iowa State, Wessinger left to start the women’s golf program at St. Catherine’s College in St. Paul.
Even if Harris wanted to name Rose — who is married to Harris’ daughter and spent the previous season as an assistant coach under James — as Wessinger’s successor, he couldn’t. Like all University Professional and Administrative jobs, a head coaching position requires a bachelor’s degree, which Rose didn’t finish during his playing career at the University of South Carolina. So Harris promoted Rose to "Director of Instruction" — Rose’s title at Windsong Farm Golf Club in Independence, Minn. — and kept him on as an independent contractor rather than a University employee, skirting the qualification rule, sources said.
On July 12, Ebner e-mailed Maturi with concerns over the potential hire and warned that Harris’ "main objective is to hire his son-in-law (Ernie Rose) as men’s coach and eventually have Ernie take over. … Why does someone almost 60 and very wealthy, that has never showed interest in college golf (except that he played for the Gophers in the ‘70s), want to become a coach now? What are his motivations?"
"All [Maturi] listened to was John Harris," Ebner said. "Apparently John Harris was initially the guy that said, ‘I’ll help find the new coach.’ Then he ends up hiring himself."
With the task of filling both associate head coaching positions, Harris set out to find a women’s coach with a bachelor’s degree who could act as a figurehead while Rose did the coaching, Ebner and multiple sources said.
While he’d been upfront with Wessinger and James, who both declined to comment for the story, about his plans to let Rose act as coach, he made no mention of it when he contacted Brenny — who likewise had no coaching experience — about taking the job, multiple sources said.
According to Terrie Purdum, the publisher of Florida Golf Central magazine, for which Brenny writes a fitness column, Brenny thought she was taking "her dream job." She promptly quit her position as an assistant club professional at Pinehurst Golf Club in North Carolina, one of the most prestigious in the country, and moved back to Minnesota, where she won the 1998 state championship at Little Falls High School.
When she arrived, however, Harris disallowed her from talking with the team about golf, traveling to matches or recruiting off-campus, sources said. She was relegated to handling paperwork and interacting with players in a mentorship-only role. Well-liked by the players, she joined them each day for their 6 a.m. workouts but had to deflect questions regarding golf to Rose or Harris.
Meanwhile Rose, whose $49,500 salary was $5,500 more than Brenny’s (though as a contractor he didn’t receive employee benefits), performed all of the official women’s head coaching duties and was the lone coach that traveled with the team. A YouTube interview posted Nov. 5 by the athletics department even expressly labels Rose as "Women’s Golf Head Coach."
When Harris told the Daily in August that he took the job because his playing days were in their twilight years, he said he planned to play only "sparingly" the next few years.
Harris’ one-year, $110,000 contract states, "The University and Mr. Harris also acknowledge that he will from time to time participate in professional and amateur golf events which will not interfere with his duties as Director of Golf."
But in his first fall with the team, Harris played in three Champions Tour events, two of which coincided with men’s tournaments. He made $19,823 in those three tournaments and didn’t attend any of the four women’s events with Rose. He also missed National Signing Day while attending a corporate golf event in Florida.
Excellent article.
As for skirting the rules, perhaps the athletic department is only imitating what has gone on in the AHC and Morrill Hall for some time?
As for skirting the rules, perhaps the athletic department is only imitating what has gone on in the AHC and Morrill Hall for some time?
Lead faculty member? Instead of Director?
And remember, we have done nothing illegal?
Scrupulous attention to the Open Meeting Law?
_____
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
David Pogue on
Talking Tech or
What is the next iPad Killer?
I've been interested in the iPad and Kindle as possible electronic book readers, e.g.
The iPad, the Kindle, or a manual typewriter... (Chronicle Brainstorm blog)
So David Pogue's recent observations about technology struck a B#.
Things don’t replace things; they just splinter. I can’t tell you how exhausting it is to keep hearing pundits say that some product is the “iPhone killer” or the “Kindle killer.” Listen, dudes: the history of consumer tech is branching, not replacing.
TV was supposed to kill radio. The DVD was supposed to kill the Cineplex. Instant coffee was supposed to replace fresh-brewed.
But here’s the thing: it never happens. You want to know what the future holds? O.K., here you go: there will be both iPhones and Android phones. There will be both satellite radio and AM/FM. There will be both printed books and e-books. Things don’t replace things; they just add on.
Sooner or later, everything goes on-demand.
Some people’s gadgets determine their self-esteem.
Everybody reads with a lens.
But feelings run just as strongly in the tech realm. You can’t use the word “Apple,” “Microsoft” or “Google” in a sentence these days without stirring up emotion.
It’s not that hard to tell the winners from the losers.
Some concepts’ time may never come.
Forget about forever — nothing lasts a year. Of the thousands of products I’ve reviewed in 10 years, only a handful are still on the market.
Nobody can keep up. Everywhere I go, I meet people who express the same reaction to consumer tech today: there’s too much stuff coming too fast. It’s impossible to keep up with trends, to know what to buy, to avoid feeling left behind.
Well, here’s a dirty little secret: It’s almost too much for me, too. Heck, it’s my job to stay on top of this stuff — and even for me, it’s like drinking from a fire hose. I do my best — I read all the blogs, devour the magazines, attend the conferences and listen to the PR pitches — but I sometimes feel as if I’m furiously paddling my surfboard on the top of a tsunami wave.
In other words, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, you’re not alone, and it’s O.K. to let yourself off the hook.
That makes me feel better.
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UCLA Restructuring and Implications
for
the University of Minnesota
An excellent article has appeared on Bob Samuel's blog, Changing Universities.
(emphasis added)
"Perhaps the university is hoping that cashing in on intellectual property rights will help UCLA to resolve the difficult task of increasing revenue while decreasing costs, yet, it should be stressed that it has been very difficult for schools to profit from their inventions and knowledge production.
It turns out that it is very costly to do research, and many research projects never go to market. In other words, universities keep on looking outside of the classroom to find a source of income, but the fact of the matter is that education is not only what schools are supposed to do, but it is also what they do best and most cost-efficiently.
This is not to say that universities should not continue to pursue ground-breaking research, but they should realize where their money comes from and how much it costs to fund expensive labs with high-tech equipment and an army of bureaucrats, lawyers, office managers, and graduate students.
Currently, undergraduate students subsidize virtually everything universities do, and it is time for schools to recognize this by making sure that vital undergraduate programs are supported."
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Monday, November 29, 2010
What Makes a University Great?
For some earlier thoughts on the matter please see:
Robert J. Sternberg is provost, senior vice president and professor of psychology at Oklahoma State University. He is a former president of the American Psychological Association and is president of the International Association for Cognitive Education and Psychology
What Makes a University Great?
Land-grant institutions, contrary to some popular beliefs, are not merely about agricultural development, but rather, about changing the world in a positive, meaningful, and enduring way. Land-grant institutions perhaps best represent the very core of what greatness means in American society -- namely, equal opportunity for all and, through it, the chance to make our society and the world a better place in which to live.
Whereas the most selective institutions in the country are highly focused on entry value -- seeking students with the highest grades, test scores, and high-school records of "extracurricular activities" -- land-grant institutions typically are particularly focused on "value added" -- producing the future leaders who make the world a better place. A necessary qualification, of course, is that the students admitted are able to do the work, either upon admission or with remediation and enrichment. Land-grant institutions generally have honors programs, but often the focus is not just on how academically smart you are, but on how much of your smartness you can give back to the world. What is important in a land-grant institution is developing future ethical leaders who will enrich their communities and their societies, in whatever way.
Ratings such as those of U.S. News & World Report reward institutions that reject lots of applicants but thereby are not fully consistent with the land-grant mission. The game becomes somewhat perverse: get lots of applicants so you can reject them to prove how exclusive you are as an institution. In land-grant institutions, providing access is especially important for students from low-opportunity households whose only chance to go to college may be at the land-grant university.
In admissions, the most selective institutions tend to be organized around a relatively fixed notion of human abilities and skills. Requiring sky-high SATs and ACTs make sense as important (although not exclusive) bases of admission only if one believes that they measure relatively fixed traits that project the future potential of the applicant. From the point of view of the land-grant mission, access provides a way for students to achieve the equal opportunity our society promises. Abilities are indeed modifiable so the institution can help each student reach the outer level of those abilities--to translate abilities into competencies and competencies into expertise.
Land-grant institutions tend to have a broad sense of what abilities are -- these institutions are about admitting people who will make the difference to the state and the society that was embodied by the principles of the Morrill Act.
Land-grant institutions typically require standardized test scores, but not at the levels required by elite colleges. ..one can end up with particular leaders who were educated at elite institutions -- who are very smart in an SAT sense -- and then sometimes prove unable to connect with the rest of the population and who create financial and ethical messes because their analytical skills were never adequately complemented by the creative, practical, and wisdom-based skills they need truly to succeed as leaders.
In a land-grant institution, traditional scholarly quality still matters, but work that gives back to society receives especial plaudits. It thus becomes easier for state legislatures and the people of a state to see why research is important to them, not merely to the advancement of individual researchers’ scholarly careers.
Service and outreach have a have a particular meaning in a land-grant institution. In a land-grant institution, service is more integrated into the fabric of teaching and research. Service is the reason for being of the land-grant institution, so service learning, research with potential applications, and outreach are intrinsic to its mission.
In the land-grant institution, the emphasis on give-back leads to the centrality of ethical leadership and wisdom as the core values of the learning experience. “Smartness” is valued, but as a means of giving back. Wisdom is the use of one’s smartness and knowledge for a common good through the infusion of positive ethical values, and because the land-grant institution must give back to the state and the country in order to fulfil its mission, its graduates cannot be viewed as truly successful according to the mission of the college or university unless they embody this ideal.
Whereas some of us may think of land-grant institutions as needing to emulate the most elite institutions, perhaps these elite institutions would benefit as much or more from adopting some of the land-grant values. Land-grant institutions in many ways reflect the ideals of the American dream. They have a unique role in helping to achieve that dream that is not being captured by magazine ratings based on narrow criteria that have led our society to a precipice.
What is above is only a selection. Please see the original for a longer version.
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