You actually think the politics of Shalala is that different than the people running the changes through now? Maybe a little less creative than Shalala, but just as progressive. The motives of Kaiser are just as political as Shalala.
TU Financials
- Thread starter HuffyCane
- Start date
If you keep saying hurtful things like this, Gerard will need to spend some serious time in his safe space with one of TU's emotional support llamas.
I'll let him spend some time under my emotional support elephants.
Actual picture of university employee collecting the "data" used to create TU Committed!
I had a nice conversation with my friend who was on the Provost committee that supposedly made the recommendations.
With a little time to reflect, he feels now the committee had an artificially constrained deadline and that they did not really study the issues at a depth needed to have confidence in their conclusions. In other words, they only looked at the surface and some of their ideas had no basis in evidence.
This goes to poor leadership. I as also understand that more cost cutting is underway and that there is an insinuation the freshman retention rate is down (inferred from other comments).
It looks to me that few people are behind this plan inside or outside the university. We need new leadership.
With a little time to reflect, he feels now the committee had an artificially constrained deadline and that they did not really study the issues at a depth needed to have confidence in their conclusions. In other words, they only looked at the surface and some of their ideas had no basis in evidence.
This goes to poor leadership. I as also understand that more cost cutting is underway and that there is an insinuation the freshman retention rate is down (inferred from other comments).
It looks to me that few people are behind this plan inside or outside the university. We need new leadership.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing. Seems the admin pre-ordained the outcome by limiting the questions the committee could examine and manipulating the data, guaranteeing in advance that the committee would give the answer the admin wanted. I feel bad for the committee - they worked in good faith, assuming (wrongly) that the admin was working in good faith, only to find out later that the admin used and manipulated them to be able to blame the result on them.
It’s fixable. You just need to empower people with experience and heart to do right by the school.
Retention will be interesting. The vo-tech/job training model we're moving to has much higher student attrition than a traditional university approach so you'd expect attrition to increase by 20 percentage points or so. Which is why the admin adopted the "Club Med Tulsa" first year - a university experience so safe and fun and remedial and comforting and darn hard to fail out of that who could possibly want to leave?? We'll be Lake Woebegone Tulsa, with a first year so easy and remedial that every first year student is well above average (or at least will feel they are, and how they feel bout themselves is most important, right? For retention it is).
It's worth noting that the Moody's review probably had current data on retention as well as other factors affecting revenue and expense, so retention drops would not be surprising given the shocking 2 tier drop they gave us. They don't hand those out very often, we had to set ourselves apart somehow to get that turd burger.
Yes it is fixable. I think we need new leadership and new ideas to fix it. The current leadership, even beyond the plan's flaws, has essentially "lost the team" to use a spot-on accurate sports analogy.
Stop it. You sound just as bad as Howland. There isn’t some major Kaiser conspiracy.
Speaking of Howland, the latest thing he wrote ought to be grounds for termination. He insults the city. He can go to hell.
Speaking of Howland, the latest thing he wrote ought to be grounds for termination. He insults the city. He can go to hell.
There's clearly been been deep coordination between TU and the city (and presumably Kaiser foundation?) - TU's changes are obviously part of a bigger plan, with all the push to get Tulsa to be a tech center etc. That's fine, it won't happen without coordination between industry, education and government. But pretending there isn't coordination and a master plan that's bigger than TU with how the pieces fit together is silly. The big question is, is TU a driver in the plan or a (disposable) cog? We've given up a lot and completely changed the school to fit into the plan. It's like moving from Tulsa to Buenos Aires to be with your girlfriend. I hope we're in control of the plan and not just being told what to do.
We all love you and value your insight, but you gotta get over the Howland thing. Howland's totally 2019. You don't want to be like my grandpa, still railing against Truman...
He’s said some Ward Churchill stuff.
Your defense of Howland by baseless insults to me is tired and violative pedigree of education and wisdom you claim to have. He sucks.
There is valid criticism of the plan. This isn’t it. Get a new messenger. He’s ineffective. There is other trash being generated by faculty that was also terminated because of this. And they write each other back all day long.
The focus on this needs to be why it harms TU unnecessarily and why these programs add value. Instead, the fringe of this group that takes over so much of the messaging runs around dropping phrases that mean nothing, especially to the consumers they ought to be persuading. They lose the whole thing on messaging.
Your defense of Howland by baseless insults to me is tired and violative pedigree of education and wisdom you claim to have. He sucks.
There is valid criticism of the plan. This isn’t it. Get a new messenger. He’s ineffective. There is other trash being generated by faculty that was also terminated because of this. And they write each other back all day long.
The focus on this needs to be why it harms TU unnecessarily and why these programs add value. Instead, the fringe of this group that takes over so much of the messaging runs around dropping phrases that mean nothing, especially to the consumers they ought to be persuading. They lose the whole thing on messaging.
Last edited:
I'm not defending Howland, I'm saying he's irrelevant. I didn't read whatever he wrote because, why? He helped kick this thing off, he jumped the shark and nobody cares anymore. Justly or not, we've all moved on. Maybe he deserves to be run out of town with pitchforks but, you know, we just don't care enough. Sorry.
You obviously care about Howland a lot, which is fine, but don't confuse hating Howland with having to oppose the things he argues for. It's entirely possible for Howland to suck and for TU Committed to suck too.
I clearly have been critical of the plan. Your statement, like your attacks on me and much of what Howland says, is unnecessary.
If you actually care about getting this right, you need to understand that the faculty opposing this needs clear messaging to win over people who matter. Howland hurts that. Not identifying that basic issue and acting upon it will severely harm whatever change you hope happens. There are better people to be the voice than him, but they aren’t stepping up. To me, that is the biggest issue. But I will await your latest insult why that idea is invalid.
If you actually care about getting this right, you need to understand that the faculty opposing this needs clear messaging to win over people who matter. Howland hurts that. Not identifying that basic issue and acting upon it will severely harm whatever change you hope happens. There are better people to be the voice than him, but they aren’t stepping up. To me, that is the biggest issue. But I will await your latest insult why that idea is invalid.
But whether you cut this program or that program really isn't the issue. It's way bigger than that, what's the educational and correspondingly business vision of the school. You're suggesting we argue over the proverbial deck chairs. To do that is to surrender on the things that really matter.
I'm personally not too worked up about the obvious collaboration between the school and the city and possibly others. But I see why some would be. There's no question that it's happening. You're in the "it's ok" camp, which is fine and I basically am too. But I think there's a real worry about what happens if things get tough for TU. The plan calls for "collaboration with local post-secondary university". If TU doesn't deliver on that, does the plan envision helping TU get there or moving on to another university to check that box? I don't know.
I'm not sure anybody is paying attention to Howland anymore. I didn't even know he wrote something new and I keep up with the TU issues pretty well. I think you give him way more credit than he deserves to be the "messenger".
I'm not sure that disagreeing with your point is attacking or insulting you. I was perhaps a bit flip with the Truman comment (but come on, any post invoking Truman is funny, right?) but otherwise I'm not sure where the attack and insult perception comes from. While I don't literally love you as I said, I do like you as a poster (not that it matters to anyone) and value your opinion (even when you're wrong like here).
I just don't think Howland has as much mojo as you give him credit for. But maybe he does, you're closer to the university than I am. I don't think any faculty, especially someone who's never done anything but be a professor, can provide meaningful overall commentary on something that is so deeply a business as well as educational issue. If he is in fact the de facto leader of the opposition, then that's an issue. I just don't see him mattering that much. Anyway, it's still sorta a free country so people like me can't shut him up and I don't get the sense that he's going to give up his 15 minutes of fame for the greater good.
He’s the one who gets the attention. I don’t think you pay much attention. If you took the time to follow this, instead of pontificating on here about issues where you are clearly missing facts, you might actually he able to provide something useful.
I am in some FB groups and don’t want to look away because I care about this city, but I get pinged multiple times a day by the rantings of some weird effing people. It’s hard to read because so much of it is just garbage. Look up Julianne Romanello. I went to TU with her. She has Phd from Baylor or something and I believe she was let go when they announced the plan.
Several months back the Kaiser Foundation thanked an intern who went to Brown and was leaving after the summer. JR posts this conspiratorial rant about how Ken Levit went to Brown and therefore this is a conspiracy to deny opportunities to other qualified students. Or something? She caught crap for it. But it exemplifies my criticism of this. You have these angry, disorganized faculty and former faculty who can’t effectively get on point about messaging.
And here’s the result: I asked one pretty bright student I know what the status is on campus about the resistance to the plan. He said no one, not even the faculty, talks about it. I think the lack of effective, meaningful leadership by the critics is going to undermine the opportunity to make a difference.
What’s wrong with leftover bacon?
I am in some FB groups and don’t want to look away because I care about this city, but I get pinged multiple times a day by the rantings of some weird effing people. It’s hard to read because so much of it is just garbage. Look up Julianne Romanello. I went to TU with her. She has Phd from Baylor or something and I believe she was let go when they announced the plan.
Several months back the Kaiser Foundation thanked an intern who went to Brown and was leaving after the summer. JR posts this conspiratorial rant about how Ken Levit went to Brown and therefore this is a conspiracy to deny opportunities to other qualified students. Or something? She caught crap for it. But it exemplifies my criticism of this. You have these angry, disorganized faculty and former faculty who can’t effectively get on point about messaging.
And here’s the result: I asked one pretty bright student I know what the status is on campus about the resistance to the plan. He said no one, not even the faculty, talks about it. I think the lack of effective, meaningful leadership by the critics is going to undermine the opportunity to make a difference.
What’s wrong with leftover bacon?
Yes, I follow the same FB groups. But I believe Julianne Romanello is technically a different person than Jacob Howland, no? I assume most people take the lunatic fringe with a grain of salt.
I read Howland's recent paper and I'm sorry to say, I agree with it 1000% (though admittedly it is written in a tone that makes you want to punch him in the face, though the gratuitous highlighting of the sloppy/incompetent writing is pretty hilarious). The questions of ethics and morality are absolutely being asked by the smartest and most influential people in technology, this isn't a Howland thing. And it's not just the big questions, though you can't be a real mover in tech without having well considered opinions on those thing. It's, how do we get front line engineers to have ethics and follow them? These aren't just pie in the sky issues, they matter - A LOT. I highly recommend the article linked below and research underlying it that shows how small ethical breaches snowball into catastrophe. These in fact are questions being researched at TU (though ironically not with TU engineers I believe).
I know you don't like the comparison of TU and Karamay, a city that is to put it very mildly controversial. But remember, it's not Howland who made this comparison, it's Clancy! If you have a beef, it's with Clancy, not Howland. Anyway, Clancy's favorable review of Karamay, the most "planned" city you can have, is pretty terrifying - it says Clancy either (a) is enamored by the benefit of an omnipresent big brother guiding hand to control people's lives without an appreciation of the risks, or (b) was simply ignorant of what Karamay is all about. Either of those is very frightening.
Howland is asking smart people questions. The fact that they get no traction perhaps is an indication that the war is already lost.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/01/what-was-volkswagen-thinking/419127/
Again, an unnecessary question about Howland vs. Romanello. So much of what you say just doesn’t help. Don’t debate me, debate the school. They need leadership to resist this.
Case in point, the dean of the arts and sciences school is widely viewed as a Clancy stooly. They never talk about her. What’s bizarre is 20 years ago when I was in undergrad, she was buddies with all of them. But instead we waste endless time on whether BOK/ Kaiser foundation should be involved at all.
I get the distinct sense that a lot of the critics have no idea how finance and budgets work. The way to win over the board of trustees is there.
If they really wanted an issue to get angry about, it would be that the Chapman Trust is now administered through BOK. In reality, that’s probably a good deal for TU compared to how it was handled before. But I doubt a lot of the critics understand that there is a trust.
Case in point, the dean of the arts and sciences school is widely viewed as a Clancy stooly. They never talk about her. What’s bizarre is 20 years ago when I was in undergrad, she was buddies with all of them. But instead we waste endless time on whether BOK/ Kaiser foundation should be involved at all.
I get the distinct sense that a lot of the critics have no idea how finance and budgets work. The way to win over the board of trustees is there.
If they really wanted an issue to get angry about, it would be that the Chapman Trust is now administered through BOK. In reality, that’s probably a good deal for TU compared to how it was handled before. But I doubt a lot of the critics understand that there is a trust.
Speaking of which, did you see that Days of Our Lives was just renewed for a 57th season?? I never cease to be amazed by how much entertainment people draw from the petty dramas and tits for tats of everyday life. Anyway, I'm sure Howland does not begrudge your debates about whether Horatio or Leonard should be in charge of the deck chair rearranging crew, please don't belittle his effort to talk about the iceberg. Your personal disdain for him does not change the laws of physics, and your fixation on him distracts from discussion of the actual plan, though I suspect that's not by accident.
The question about Howland and Ruminello was rhetorical to point out the failure in your logic about Howland being the "leader", which of course is why you consider it not to be helpful.
And it was "old bacon", not "leftover bacon". I got that from my son and like a good middle aged father, immediately screwed it up.
I am not active in Facebook groups. But curious about what Howland wrote.
Unfortunately Howland is going about this the wrong way. His antagonistic approach is not likely to persuade but rather to alienate people with a love of the school and the city. Politically he is not building a coalition to change anything but rather coming across as a complainer. A smart complainer with carefully picked arguments to back up his views, but it is more like academic debate.
When you get down to brass tacks, we have lost all our foreign students revenue the past five years. How do we come up with a compelling vision and plan that excited all key stakeholder groups - prospective students, faculty being of great importance?
What we got was NOT a winning plan from just about any angle I can see. We need new leadership and a fresh look headed up by somebody who knows what they are doing. Chalk up Commitment as a great learning opportunity and move on.
Unfortunately Howland is going about this the wrong way. His antagonistic approach is not likely to persuade but rather to alienate people with a love of the school and the city. Politically he is not building a coalition to change anything but rather coming across as a complainer. A smart complainer with carefully picked arguments to back up his views, but it is more like academic debate.
When you get down to brass tacks, we have lost all our foreign students revenue the past five years. How do we come up with a compelling vision and plan that excited all key stakeholder groups - prospective students, faculty being of great importance?
What we got was NOT a winning plan from just about any angle I can see. We need new leadership and a fresh look headed up by somebody who knows what they are doing. Chalk up Commitment as a great learning opportunity and move on.
So Howland just asserted that Janet Levitt will be appointed president of the university soon (due to Dr. Clancy stepping down for a medical issue).
False but with nuggets of truth.
He’s been ill for awhile. He’s taken a leave of absence for medical care.
She’s the Acting President President until he recovers, in accordance with the University bylaws.
He’s expected to recover and return to duty.
Feel free to twist that into a conspiracy, but the above are all facts.
He’s been ill for awhile. He’s taken a leave of absence for medical care.
She’s the Acting President President until he recovers, in accordance with the University bylaws.
He’s expected to recover and return to duty.
Feel free to twist that into a conspiracy, but the above are all facts.
It doesn't matter, it's just more Days of Our Lives - fun gossip but not important. Replacing one incompetent despot with a different incompetent despot wouldn't be worth having a conspiracy over. If Clancy were a calming voice of reason who wanted a real process to define TU's future, then you could totally see why "they'd" want him out. But he's not. So why would "they" bother to remove him? As a conspiracy theory, it makes no sense.
My current favorite is that the new video game lounge in ACAC is a mind control experiment.
As we all know, the real shadow president of TU has been Ron, who has been looking for fellow guys to do his bidding since the early 90’s. They run the school from JR’s. You thought it was gone, but it’s still there, like the island on Lost. They sit and wait, along with Ermal Kuqo and Jacob Bower, to re-take the university and dominate the WAC. Rippin is their messenger.
Also, they have all the Michelob you could ever want, they honor those vouchers from Hardwood, and they had the BYU game on that day.
Also, they have all the Michelob you could ever want, they honor those vouchers from Hardwood, and they had the BYU game on that day.
Last edited:
Ron, lol. I thought about his popularity, back in the day, a few months ago while at a TU football game.
Also, Gilligan gets his tickets from these guys and shares the proceeds.
Of all the things that never go away at TU, somehow we still have Gilligan and he hasn’t aged a day.
Of all the things that never go away at TU, somehow we still have Gilligan and he hasn’t aged a day.
From TU's Twitter. It's not hard to understand why some see a "conspiracy" since there clearly is deep integration and collaboration of efforts between TU and some powers that be in Tulsa. I'm not sure it can really be a conspiracy though when it's out in plain view for everyone to see.
"TU's Tandy School of Computer Science is planning a big year of cyber activities that expand programming and support Tulsa's growth as a hub of cyber entrepreneurship. #utulsa"
The school has a lot of unique issues. It makes no gaddum sense that there isn’t a four year public university in the city. TU has benefited from that for a long time. But times change.
I don’t think there is a grand conspiracy. And I know a lot of random stuff and read a lot of crazy things for my job. Kaiser deeply cares about the city and is doing things mostly with the best intentions. If you compare him to some of the oil barons out in western OK, he’s a damn saint.
His interest with TU stuff goes back a long time and its way more complex than taking over the board. People want to read a narrative in the clouds and there might not be one more than affection for the community.
He has bought up a lot of the Kendall Whittier area and turned it into housing for transitional families. It looks so much better over there. I see all these weirdos saying bad things, but I doubt they have any idea about that or what it means to be poor with children. The criticism have six figure jobs and not important things to write. I don’t see why you wouldn’t take his money for legitimate and good purposes.
I don’t think there is a grand conspiracy. And I know a lot of random stuff and read a lot of crazy things for my job. Kaiser deeply cares about the city and is doing things mostly with the best intentions. If you compare him to some of the oil barons out in western OK, he’s a damn saint.
His interest with TU stuff goes back a long time and its way more complex than taking over the board. People want to read a narrative in the clouds and there might not be one more than affection for the community.
He has bought up a lot of the Kendall Whittier area and turned it into housing for transitional families. It looks so much better over there. I see all these weirdos saying bad things, but I doubt they have any idea about that or what it means to be poor with children. The criticism have six figure jobs and not important things to write. I don’t see why you wouldn’t take his money for legitimate and good purposes.
There's clearly a grand plan that is much, much bigger than TU. Whether it's Kaiser's or the mayor's or someone else's or some combination (that's my guess), I don't know. But it's clearly a broader Tulsa plan, and TU is a cog.
I think there is an enormous difference between "is what Kaiser does good" and "is TU's role in the plan good for TU". From what I've read and seen, I'm a big fan of Kaiser's efforts - he's not only changing Tulsa but using Tulsa as a laboratory for social change interventions that can be used throughout the country But I think the role that TU needs to play in 'the plan' is a disaster for TU. TU Committed is driven by what the plan requires, not what is best for TU.
I just disagree that TU is doing something against its interests in support of said grand plan. I don’t think it works like that.
If you look around on the intertrons, there’s some really insulting stuff people have written about Kaiser. It’s weird. I’m extremely liberal by Tulsa standards and I had to wonder whether it was written by Russian trolls. Then I saw the name Romanello on the article.
If you look around on the intertrons, there’s some really insulting stuff people have written about Kaiser. It’s weird. I’m extremely liberal by Tulsa standards and I had to wonder whether it was written by Russian trolls. Then I saw the name Romanello on the article.
Similar threads
