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Join colleagues for DuckOUT’s UO LGBTQIA+ Faculty, Staff, and Graduate Student Mixer. DuckOUT is a no host mixer that connects LGBTQIA+ individuals across campus and works towards building a more inclusive community.​ DuckOUT: LGBTQIA+ Faculty, Staff, and Graduate Student Mixer Friday, March 30th, 2018 4:45 pm – 6:30 pm Falling Sky Pizzeria, EMU 1395 University St Unit 46 Show the flier at the event for 25% of your entire purchase to be donated to HIV Alliance! Good for all food, beverage, merchandise, and gift certificates. DuckOUT is made possible by the Division of Equity and Inclusion, the Center on Diversity…

Dear Friends and Colleagues, Mozart wrote forty-one symphonies, Beethoven only nine. I have written none, but I offer these thoughts on metrics. I apologize in advance for the naiveté, as well as the pathos. On September 14th, at the beginning of the current academic year, University Provost and Senior Vice President Jayanth Banavar hosted a retreat for “academic leaders” in the EMU Ballroom. The highpoint of the assembly, in my view, was Jayanth’s own (seemingly impromptu) description of the research of David Wineland, the Nobel Laureate who recently joined the UO’s Department of Physics as a Knight Professor. In a manner…

I oppose the initiative to incorporate external “metrics” into evaluating teaching and scholarship. First, we already have a system for evaluating teaching and scholarship – the collective judgment of faculty and peer review. At the heart of this system are two principles: 1) only faculty themselves have the disciplinary expertise to evaluate colleagues’ work; and 2) while faculty draw on concrete evidence including publications, there is ultimately a degree of scholarly judgment involved that can’t be collapse into a mathematical formula. There is no reason to change this system unless the intention is to have administrative edicts take precedence over…

Dear Provost Banavar, We applaud your call to develop meaningful metrics that will help us evaluate “how well we are collectively contributing to the university’s mission.” We are proud to work for the University of Oregon and we support the vision of our University defined by our mission statement:  “The University of Oregon is a comprehensive public research university committed to exceptional teaching, discovery, and service.” As stated, our vision “is to be a preeminent and innovative public research university encompassing the humanities and arts, the natural and social sciences, and the professions. We seek to enrich the human condition through…

Whether you care to openly admit it or not, grad school has probably felt like a sledgehammer repeatedly slamming into your face and soul. Spend an hour with Lego Grad Student as he attempts to explain why this is a perfectly normal–but not inevitable–feeling, and offers painfully learned advice on how you can manage it. (Satisfaction absolutely not guaranteed.) We all know that graduate school is not easy.  Many students experience ‘imposter syndrome’ while navigating their graduate program.  Imposter syndrome is a concept describing individuals who are marked by an inability to internalize their accomplishments and a persistent fear of being…

The Ethnic Studies archival team has released the Puerto Rico Project‘s digital archive. https://blogs.uoregon.edu/theuopuertoricoproject/ They recommend regularly checking in for new interviews, bibliographies, stories, photographic journeys, and more educational materials pertinent to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. The Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies hosts the Justice Across Borders Symposium on March 8, 2018. You can find additional information at http://cllas.uoregon.edu/2018-symposium.

Are you interested in the art of storytelling? Would you like to get more connected to your stories and the stories of those around you? We have just the thing: on Saturday, March 3, the team from last year’s “Intertwined: Stories of Home” event will be hosting a free, fun, low-stress storytelling workshop from 10:00am-1:00pm in Straub 245. We would love for you to join us! This workshop is an opportunity to Explore the structure, presentation, and art of stories Practice crafting and presenting your own narrative in a supportive environment Connect with a group of faculty, staff, and students committed to supporting…

Last year, the members of the Board of Trustees expressed concern that we, as a campus, would not be able to measure the progress toward our goal of achieving excellence in all facets of faculty work unless we had a defined set of metrics to measure faculty performance. At the behest of the Trustees, the Provost’s Office drafted a plan to measure faculty research productivity. Over the course of the last several years, UA leadership has repeatedly pointed out well-cited problems associated with certain external metrics, particularly Academic Analytics, in evaluating individual faculty or entire departments (for further reading on…