All your base are belong to us

A story that first appeared in the Texas Tribune last month is starting to get noticed:

The Texas commission charged with aiding economies hit by military base closures will spend millions for a vaccine plant in Bryan-College Station — even though the region’s military base closed nearly five decades ago.

Critics think that the military base closing commission should prioritize places like San Antonio, where bases have closed more recently. To them we say: You have no chance to survive make your time. Ha Ha Ha Ha

Shared Services

From Tuesday's Eagle

The university-wide plans had called for the elimination of 93 faculty and 117 staff positions -- along with 100 vacant faculty and 175 vacant staff positions -- to help meet a "worst-case" state reduction of $39 million and an internal $21 million reallocation plan to bolster a centrally administered pool to fund strategic priorities.

Across the university, non-tenured faculty have been given notices.

On Monday afternoon, all nine lecturers and senior lecturers in the biology department were set to receive notices of non-renewal.

Vision 1920 is thinking Chancellor McKinney and System VP Giroir, who both have MDs, could pick up a couple of sections of Intro Biology. If their student evaluations are good enough, they could even get some teaching awards.

The bottom line

Today's Eagle reports on a new way A&M is leading the way in redefining higher education

A several-inches thick document in the possession of A&M System officials contains three key pieces of information for every single faculty member in the 11-university system: their salary, how much external research funding they received and how much money they generated from teaching.

The information will allow officials to add the funds generated by a faculty member for teaching and research and subtract that sum from the faculty member's salary. When the document -- essentially a profit-loss statement for faculty members -- is complete, officials hope it will become an effective, lasting tool to help with informed decision-making.

According to System VP Frank Ashley, most departments are in the black. The System isn't releasing the document yet, which makes sense to Vision 1920. There is obviously something wrong with the metric if it shows those lazy faculty with their tenured jobs as actually pulling their weight.

Every Ag can dream of being Governor someday

Quoted in yesterday's Eagle

In the interview printed last week, Perry was asked about layoffs and buyouts of experienced faculty. He was quoted as saying, "We're laying off professors because there was a huge hiring increase that went on in the mid-2000s and these people are not even in the classrooms teaching our kids. I totally support that concept. Reductions in personnel that are nonessential at universities is good fiscal management."

The push to hire new faculty through the "Faculty Reinvestment Plan" was based on the flawed idea that A&M needed to reduce class size and increase our research prominence.

We could save a lot more and reduce the cost of college for students if we just got rid of the classrooms too. As the Governor's own career shows, all an Aggie needs can come from yell practice and Bonfire.

Look out, Gophers!

President Loftin boasts about how we did in the 2011 US News rankings:

Texas A&M fared well in rankings released this week. U.S. News & World Report (http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/) placed us second nationally among public universities (and the only public university in Texas) in the “Great Schools, Great Prices” category, behind only the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Overall, we remained tied at 22nd among national public universities. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (http://whatwilltheylearn.com/) again gave Texas A&M the top grade of “A” for our focus on core course requirements, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University ranked Texas A&M 95th in its annual list of the world’s 100 best universities (http://www.arwu.org/ARWU2010.jsp).

The President didn't point out how we did in the actual National Universities rankings:

Vision 2020 Abbreviation	2011 Ranking
Minnesota	64
Texas A&M	63
Purdue	56
Ohio St.	56
Florida	53
Penn St.	47
Illinois	47
Wisconsin	45
Texas	45
UC Davis	39
UC San Diego	35
Georgia Tech	35
North Carolina	30
Michigan	29
UCLA	25
UC Berkeley	22

We may remain tied for 22nd among public schools, but we've crept up to 63 in 2011, while we were only at 61 in 2010. Among the Vision 2020 schools, we're achingly close to passing Minnesota. C'mon Ags! We can do it!

Deck chair arrangements being planned

The Eagle reports

Texas A&M officials have provided hints about what a planned $21 million internal reallocation could be spent on: increasing graduate student enrollment, improving the undergraduate experience, enhancing facilities and taking care of faculty.

Decisions about the reallocation -- which is stacked on a potential $39 million "worst-case" state funding reduction -- aren't final and the current discussion centers more on the process for deciding the priorities than figuring out what they are.

Some might be surprised that a process for figuring out priorities at an established AAU university doesn't already exist.

There's an old saying that one should measure twice and cut once. That's how we do things for Vision 1920... just not necessarily in that order.

Dear Faculty: please leave

The Eagle covers the Voluntary Separation Plan (VSP), and the details are here (pdf). Eligible faculty get either one or two years of pay to leave. For most colleges it's open to any tenured faculty member who has been at their current rank since 1995.

The application window is also pretty short: August 15- Sept 23, 2010.

The University can reject VSP applications, and VSP applicants can't bail out of their Fall teaching; the earliest separation date will be December. Who is the target demographic for the VSP?

Doug Slack, a wildlife fisheries science professor, said he will apply for the program. He said he's had his dream job for 37 years teaching students at Texas AM and serving the state, but it's time to move on. Though nearing retirement anyway, he said, he wouldn't have decided to apply now if it weren't for the incentive.

"The program enables the university to spend a little money on the front end and save a lot on the back end," said Slack, 67. "It will help with the remaining faculty members, and help our department meet some of its needs."

Slack chaired a search committee whose recommendations were rejected by the Regents, and was critical of the process. Vision 1920 sees the VSP as a great way to encourage senior faculty who have been around long enough so they are no longer looking to the administration for handouts able to lead new initiatives to retire.