Fixing Education by making Geeks cool?

Interesting article in Wired Magazine this month. I like the idea that as soon as learning/being smart is cool, everyone does better. Lots of applications, when you think about it.

Chairman of the BOT corruption? What a surprise.

Received from hyperspace, written by Laraine Wright. I think we all know in our gut that SIU's BOT positions are purchased for campaign contributions (or political support in the case of Glen Poshard). Difficult to prove without a wiretap, but here is a pretty compelling example of how BOT members have their fingers in the SIU pie.

If there is any justice, Tedrick with step down today. I'm not holding my breath.

Question - how can you give SIU money, if this is what you are supporting?

Roger Tedrick, chairman of the SIU Board of Trustees, has in at least 34 cases violated the SIU Management Act (110 ILCS 520/4) that states, " ... nor shall any member of the Board be directly or indirectly interested in any contract made by the Board ... "

Through documents I recently obtained through a Freedom of Information request, I discovered that Tedrick Insurance in Mt. Vernon sold expensive liability insurance to construction firms and service providers doing business with SIU through contracts that Tedrick voted to approve as a member of the board. The firms include many who recently were approved as contractors and sub-contractors for Saluki Way , such as Holland Construction Services of Swansea, which last year the board tacked onto Saluki Way as a "partner" of the original contractor, JE Dunn of Kansas. Holland Construction Services built Rent One Park in Marion for John Simmons, another Blagojevich appointee on the SIU Board of Trustees.

Tedrick was appointed to the Board in February 2004, two months after he made a $5,000 donation to Blagojevich. Eight days after Tedrick was "elected" chairman of the board on June 20, 2005, he made another $5,000 donation to Blagojevich. In total, Tedrick gave Blagojevich $26,000.

You may recall that Chairman Tedrick immediately and vigorously defended Glenn Poshard when the examples of plagiarism in his Ph.D. were revealed. No sitting back to wait while an investigation could be done, just immediate public defense. You may also recall that Tedrick was supposedly the one who asked SIU Legal Counsel Jerry Blakemore to conduct a "thorough review," an "internal audit" of the Board following Blagojevich's arrest December 9. "Are any of us corrupt?" Heck, no, said Jerry Blakemore to "The Southern" in mid-January, which also said, "SIU President Glenn Poshard ... praised Tedrick for moving quickly to investigate any improprieties and stood by the finds of Blakemore's investigation."

On March 10, I spent more than two hours at the Southern Illinoisan offices talking to reporters Caleb Hale and Adam Testa. They had the same documents that I later obtained through my own FOIA, and many more regarding other corruption allegations. They had already conducted other interviews about this information and they assured me they would be running an article about Tedrick. But nothing has happened. I don't fault Hale or Testa. The problem lies above their heads at "The Southern."

Instead, there have been two articles about how Jerry Blakemore has now written a new policy for the board, which it may approve at its May 7 meeting in Carbondale, that calls for board members to "recuse" themselves from voting on contracts that might be a conflict of interest. Even ahead of adopting this laughable policy, Tedrick apparently recused himself from voting at the April 2 board meeting.

Tedrick may continue to recuse himself for the next 50 years, but he STILL is in violation of the SIU Management Act merely by SERVING on the board WHILE SELLING INSURANCE to university contractors. He has known this all along and so, I submit, have Glenn Poshard, staff members in the SIU President's Office and Budget Office, and possibly other members of the SIU Board of Trustees. Also, every year the board members and all state employees must fill out a Statement of Economic Interests that discloses any business ties one may have that conflict with one's role as a board member or state employee. These statements are collected by SIU Ethics Officer Corey Bradford and forwarded to the Secretary of State's Office in Springfield. Hmmm.

I am again asking the SIUC community, internal and external, to share this information with others; to write to Gov. Quinn demanding that he remove the three people who were appointed to the Board after making large donations to Blagojevich (Tedrick, John Simmons, and the now-bodyguarded Bill Bonan II); and to once again discuss together and question where Glenn Poshard is taking SIU. I am on the speaker's list for May 7. If you want to make your own speech, please call Misty Whittington at 536-3344.

Finally, you may have seen an article in the April 14 or 15 "Southern" titled, "Quinn looks to restock boards, commissions." It was written by Kurt Erickson, Springfield Bureau reporter for Lee Enterprises, owner of the "Southern." Erickson says, "Joliet oilman Jay Bergman ... contributed $53,000 to Blagojevich's campaign fund between 2002 and 2008. He now serves as a member of the Illinois Board of Higher Education and the Illinois State University Board of Trustees." Another example of the same Blagojevich pattern. Big donations equaled appointments to public boards. How interesting that Erickson was free to write about an Illinois State board member but reporters at "The Southern" apparently can't do the same regarding Southern Illinois University.

Laraine Wright

The casual corruption of SIU

I give money to a number of universities and each sends me marketing collateral. A recent trend is to hire a company that makes magazines about research and sends it out. I have received one of these lately from SIU, Stanford, OSU and UW (Oregon and Washington). Interestingly enough, only one has a special piece of cardboard proclaiming that the marketing piece is "Compliments of" someone.

I started to wonder, why does John Koropchak need to claim responsibility for SIU's marketing spam? Is he running for office? Does this benefit SIU in some way? Did he pay for this "thing" out of his own pocket? We know the answer to each of these questions is no.

Are things so bad at SIU that no one points out how it looks when senior management, uses the public's money, to push some hidden PR/Ego agenda?

You have to wonder, who is minding the store, even when you know the answer is no one. I keep hoping for better, but keep getting disappointed.

Congratulations SIU - A suit they are going to lose

Cal Meyers sues SIU from the SI

A little analysis on the case

You were wondering how any organization could look worse than the Green Bay Packers? SIU, come on down.

Bush Administration counts to one and statistical stupidity

Recently saw a story in the paper about a salmon return. After having a hatchery release millions of salmon, the scientists prepared to count the returning numbers. As the spawning season arrived only ten fish returned. They were big and healthy fish, but the numbers were much smaller than expected. The Bush administration published a report, "Returning Salmon, Larger Than Normal." I made this up, to show that when you start talking about large systems, you can't take the few successful instances and claim success. You have to look at the larger system and the failures as well.

The reason I bring this up is that I got a comment from a person who claimed to be a recent SIU graduate. They claimed to have a degree in some kind of science, and further claimed that they got a great education at SIU. They went further and told me that SIU was a great place and any criticism I have of it, must be misplaced. There are a couple of sampling problems with this, for example, how does a 22 year old, who has a sample size of one, judge how good their education is? Of course, there are successful grads from SIU, maybe they are one? If you have an undergraduate in science, shouldn't you understand the statistical problems from using such a small sample? What I know is that graduates of better schools, are better able to be successful in their first five years out of college. A whole lot of that post graduation success is because the better schools attract better students.

If you use me as a one person sample for SIU grads, everyone would have a liberal arts degree, everyone would work in computers, everyone would have a blog, everyone would start companies, everyone would live in Oregon, etc, etc. You can easily draw conclusions, based on small sample sizes. What is difficult, is to draw conclusions (or the truth), without a bigger picture. This was the power of this blog, access to a bigger picture about SIU and Carbondale, by accessing the information that is easily available in town, assuming you talk to both the business people and the university people (which no one really does).

My father doesn't understand how you can be an engineer, without being able to do math. I don't understand how you can be a science grad and not understand statistics. I do understand how you can draw conclusions based on a very small sample and have no idea if you are right.

John Simon - is it possible my last entry was too weak?

I have had a couple of emails, pointing out that I didn't go far enough on this topic.

Here is the NYT's writeup of John Simon. Worth your time to read it. Looks like the US Grant people were in the middle of firing SIU over their treatment of Dr. Simon. Nothing like a great man being brought down by petty SIU politicians.

Turns out that there was a second emeritus professor hit with the same charges, in the same way as Dr. Simon. More to come on that situation.

I'm guessing we will see no local newspaper coverage on this, but the Chronicle of Higher Education seems to be on the case.

Seems like there is something going really wrong here. Maybe it is time for the good people of Carbondale to take a stand, before there is no one to defend you, when you get screwed. I have written to Poshard and a few others. You should do the same.

End of the Gas Car. A Business Case.

Did the SIU administration kill John Simon?

I hear that sad news that Professor John Simon has died. A long time senior professor, head of the US Grant work at SIU and a neighbor of mine in Carbondale. It is rumored that Dr. Simon was "fired" and "escorted off campus" for some unnamed transgression, against some unnamed accuser, without a hearing, without any process. Word on the street is that the stress of this event, caused him to have a major stress related collapse and he spent the rest of his life in the ICU and died yesterday. Because he was a member of the Faculty Association, he had people go fight for him and he was "reinstated," after he fell ill. Should make great reading at his widows lawsuit against SIU.

You have to wonder who is running the circus at SIU and why anyone would go after a 70-some year old professor this way? Word on the street is that Simon wouldn't play ball with his US Grant endowment and he was being pushed aside so the administration could get control of that money. Don't know if that is true, but why fire him, without a hearing and without any process, unless you are after money and/or power?

Should be interesting to see who decided to drop a 10 ton block on the head of a loyal and longtime employee. If these rumors are true, I'm hoping the widows sues and shines light under every rock, just to see the administration cockroaches run. If you can't be enraged about this, what will wake you from your stupor?

RIP Dr. Simon, you deserved better.

Recent graduates give high marks to alma mater?

I'm just hanging out in my new pad in Oregon, but was sent a link to that DE story and commented on it.  Next, I check Dave's blog and looked at his Shawnee News aggregator, (which is very cool, good work Dave) and caught this link from the SIU News Service.

Here is what is interesting about the News Service press release, SIU sent out a survey to recent graduates, asking them about SIU.  OK, fair enough.  The problem is, they are now trumpeting the survey results, like they mean something.  Clearly, the responses are going to be self selecting, people who are doing well respond, everyone else pitches it.  They trumpet starting salaries, but we all know that everyone lies about their salaries in surveys.  This is like doing a vote for band of the year, on MySpace, doesn't mean much.  We all know that you can tilt surveys to the response you want, and dollars to donuts, that is what happened here. 

The truth is out there, but I'm afraid, this isn't a good way to find it.  In order to find out what recent grads really think, you would have to go and ask a random sample, of the total number.  Then ask the right questions.  I realize, this isn't likely to generate a self serving press release, but there you go.

Interesting comments on DE webpage

Here is the article link and here are the comments.

A better way to view the oil crisis

Wanted to introduce you to Mark Anderson.  I have been reading his technology newsletter for years, it is very good.  He has put out a video blog on solving America's oil crisis.  Worth your time to consider.

Book about SIU? How did I miss this before?

My Mother passed me a book that is about SIUC's English department, "Straight Man" by Richard Russo.  Russo, a former SIU English professor, has got the whole thing down cold.  I have been laughing out loud, as I read it.  Wish I had read it, before I wasted anytime dealing with SIU.

Recommended.

6 or the mobbed 30 from SIU? Wow!

I was sent this and thought it was worthy of your attention. Enjoy - Peterg

Thirty academic mobbing cases since 2005

Below, in alphabetical order, are 30 academics whose troubles, as reported in the press or on the web, appear to fit the definition of workplace mobbing. Reviewing these cases is useful for understanding the variety of origins of the phenomenon and the different ways cases play out.

1. Jury refuses to convict Sami Al-Arian (University of South Florida); he is eliminated anyway

2. Jonathan Bean on guard, surviving at Southern Illinois (Carbondale)

3. Jerry Becker and Elisabeth Reichert in board presentation at SIUC

4. Stephen Berman is ousted from University of Saskatchewan

5. At Sheffield, Aubrey Blumsohn is forced out, starts blog

6. Student Seung-Hui Cho goes postal at Virginia Tech, 33 dead

7. Firestorm over Ward Churchil at University of Colorado

8. Suicide of David Clarke at Southern Illinois (Carbondale)

9. At last, Jean Cobbs vindicated at Virginia State

10. Dramatist George Cron is ousted from Missouri State

11. Shiraz Dossa goes to conference, is mobbed, keeps job (St. Francis Xavier University)

12. Christopher Dussold's resistance at Southern Illinois (Edwardsville)

13. Mohammed Elmasry retires at Waterloo - mobbing aborted

14. Jews mob a Jew: Norman Finkelstein gone from DePaul

15. Redress for Joan Friedenberg at Southern Illinois (Carbondale)

16. Ouster of Frank Glamser and Gary Stringer at Southern Mississippi

17. Biswanath Halder cybermobbed at Case Western Reserve, goes postal

18. Hector Hammerly (Simon Fraser University) is dead

19. Filmmakers John Hookham and Gary MacLennan suspended from QUT for newspaper article

20. Harassment of Gabrielle Horne continues at Dalhousie

21. K C Johnson alive and kicking at Brooklyn College

22. Biology professor Robert J. Klebe files suit (UTHSC San Antonio)

23. David Mullen suspended for words at Cape Breton University

24. Physician Nancy Olivieri still battling in court (University of Toronto)

25. Lethbridge administrators attack Tom Robinson for his website

26. John Soloski fighting back at University of Georgia

27. Successful mobbing of Harvard President Lawrence Summers

28. Medaille College settles with Therese Warden & Uhuru Watson

29. James D. Watson broken for breaking a taboo (Cold Spring Harbor Lab)

30. Supreme Court victory for Wanda Young (Memorial of Newfoundland)

More details and info from: http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/~kwesthue/mobnews06.htm

------------------------------------------

Posted by Louise Michel @ 11:02 AM 2 Comments Links to this post

2 Comments:

At 12:09 PM , Anonymous said...

I believe that my mobbing comes from a local coalition at the university. I believe that their actions have been supported by senior management at the university. They have wrecked my academic career. I remain... stressed...ill ... fighting ... and in post. Aphra Behn

At 4:17 PM , Roger said...

Wow-- 6 out of 30 at Southern Illinois; quite a place; seems they never learn.

Wendler is a loser and why is the SI publishing this crap?

I don't know if you caught Uncle Walt's latest POS column in the Southern? He is claiming that faculty are the most important thing at the university. OK, I agree, the people are more important than buildings. The problem I have with what he wrote, is that he was head of SIUC for 6 years and when he had power, he never, never, never followed the idea, that the faculty were important. Wendler's master plan was to put all free money into buildings. He would still have his old job, if he had acted like people were more important than buildings.

I guess we can call Wendler a "Born again Manager?" To bad he didn't believe this, before he was kicked to the curb for incompetence. What a loser.

We knew the Southern Illinoisan people weren't too smart, and I guess allowing self serving crap like this into the paper proves it?

End of the road for Poshard? Not if he can help it!

I was in town last week and enjoyed the press coverage on Poshard - post plagiarism scandal. The question you should be asking, is he done as a mover and shaker at SIU?

The continued excellence we are seeing from Poshard is the addition, by subtraction, at SIUC. Wendler, Lenzi and Mass Comm Dean's exits were excellent examples of leadership. Recently we have found out the Dean of Engineering (world cruse in the middle of the school year? Wink) and Ed Burger (from the Alumni Assoc.) are history too. Fantastic, two more losers gone. If he keeps going, the losers in the SIUC administration could be under 90% of the total, in the next 10 years.

Poshard's biggest challenge is to get Edwardsville to stay in the system and who can blame them? SIUE isn't nearly as screwed up as SIUC. If I was at SIUE, I would be trying to distance myself from the SIU system too.

In short, it looks like Poshard is still driving his programs. Things are getting better at SIU. The plagiarism scandal may do him in yet, but it looks like it has passed for now. Noting better than having your board in your pocket, when the crap hits the fan.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

YOU KNOW YOU ARE LIVING IN 2007 WHEN

Sent to me by a friend. Hope everyone is doing well.

1. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries.

2. You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.

3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of three.

4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.

5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don't have e-mail addresses.

6. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.

7. Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of the screen.

8. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn't have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.

10. You get up in the morning and go on line before getting your coffee.

11. You're reading this and nodding and laughing.

12. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message.

13. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.

14. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn't a #9 on this list.

Taxes in Carbondale? The bone heads are at work.

I'm catching the bone headed comments from Carbondale about Brad's sales tax increase and giving $20M to SIU's football stadium, thought I would throw in my 2 cents from far afield.

There seem to be 3 issues here -
Should Carbondale raise taxes
Should the tax increase be from sales taxes or property taxes
Should Carbondale give that money to SIU for a football stadium

I think the general idea for raising taxes in Carbondale should be no, unless there is a good reason.

Sales taxes are the new method of sharing the pain with people who use the city's services, without paying for them. This is clearly the winner in the best practices in other cities. The people who are claiming that raising property taxes would be better are bone heads. Sure there is a chance that the entire American/Western Civilization will fall apart and people will stop buying things, but that chance is fairly small. Carbondale is just beginning to see the results of not having the highest property taxes around, with the return of families moving back into town. It would be stupid to raise property taxes now. The argument that Henry Fisher and the like are getting fat on the property tax cut is stupid too.

In the real bone headed things to do, Brad's proposing to give $20M to SIU for a football stadium is just plain dumb. Maybe it is the right thing to do, but we sure can't understand why from the information given.

So, stupid to raise taxes for any reason, stupid to suggest property tax increase and stupid to fund a football stadium. Seems like a clean sweep of stupid on this issue. But maybe some commenter's could raise the stupid level even higher?

From the Left Coast, your loyal subject reporting.

Where will you be in 20 years?

I was talking to a person I really liked the other day and asked them if they had their goals written down. They asked me what I was talking about. I'm sure you all know that if you write your goals down, you are much more likely to accomplish them.

We all have dreams . . . We all want to believe deep down in our souls that we have a special gift, that we can make a difference, that we can touch others in a special way, and that we can make the world a better place.

So begins Tony Robbins in "Awaken the Giant Within," his best selling book. If you haven't read it yet...

I learned a question worth asking when giving a guess lecture for a student group a few years ago. I asked them, given a choice of becoming really good at video games, not world class mind you, just very good, or starting a company and making $20M, which would you choose? Then I asked them, what are they doing to make that dream come true? The real answer for most students is nothing.

One of the sad things about living in Carbondale, is so many people are planning to be worse off in 20 years then they are today. So many people's lives were capped when they reached their last college graduation. Few are striving to be great, few are striving at all. We know the janitors, working civil service at SIU, have given up. They aren't learning, they aren't striving, they are filling their slot, until they retire and then they are going to die. Ask them if they want to live to 100 and they say, "what for?" OK for them, but I don't want to be that way. Do you?

It is sad to see SIU's administrators, not working hard to become better managers, hiding behind layers of secretaries, ducking out the back and not working hard. It is sad to see SIU's professors not doing research, not pushing for new knowledge, not working to become better teachers. It is sad to see SIU's students not working to learn the knowledge offered up in their classes and from their professors, and instead worrying about their video games, cell phones, beer bongs, $7/hour jobs and paying for their personalized license plates. SIU is a place that needs an overhaul, it needs to become an organization of striver's again. I can see some movement on the very top, but so many people will have to be fired to make it come true, I don't see it happening.

I have been here for six years, trying to do service for my hometown. Some things turn out well and some didn't. I have 5 or 6 friends I'm leaving behind, that I'm not sure I will be able to replace. I have hundreds of acquiescences, that are great people too. But, I don't want to be here, in a town where a majority think being smart and having no life goals is a good choice. Mediocrity is such a bad life choice. If you have to choose between having a great potential and a PhD or having less potential and making more of it, always choose to work harder.

The questions I leave you with now, where will you be in 20 years? Shouldn't you be doing more, both for yourself and your society?

Carbondale City Coucil acts for more worthless meetings

When dealing with the most well regulated, supervised, taxed, and followed issue in the city, our city council, decided that religious groups, drunks, heath inspectors, tax collectors, state officials, liquor company sales people, and normal clients weren't enough. Carbondale needs several layers of worthless meetings, before it can do, what the state laws says it must. On the other hand, aren't there more important issues for Carbondale to be working on?

I was impressed that Joel got a pine cone up his rear and actually did something. Now, wouldn't be good if he did something positive for the city, instead of championing a continuation of worthless city bureaucracy?

Just imagine if the people on the Liquor Advisory Committee and the City Council spent the time wasted talking about liquor issues and did something worthwhile with that time? We could get into what a pain it is for the business owners to have to educate 15 people on what they are doing, instead of 1 (like everywhere else), but we all know that Carbondale is supposed to be the hardest place to do business in Illinois. I was thinking neighborhood watch or picking up trash would both be a better use of City Council time?

SIU's future just got brighter? DE goes around the bend

I was going to write a little something, but had to make fun of Kyle and Joel first. Came across this editorial in the DE and had to comment. Athletic Directors don't make the sun come out at a university, they are more like a cherry on a milk shake (you still have a milk shake if the cherry isn't very good). Who cares if Mario stays or goes? He is a nice guy, he maybe good at his job, but we will not know that for 10 years, but he has very little to do with anything going on at SIU right now.

I know compared to approval of $14M more for Morris Library, this is good news, says the DE, "although the BOT has approved the new budget, the University has not found a source for the money." I liked their "There is a light at the end of Morris tunnel," passage too. I guess, approving money, you already spent, but don't have, is now light at the end of the tunnel?

I get the idea that when the BOT meets, the circus is back in town. The DE editorial staff seems to be the kids in the front row, believing the clown's magic tricks.