Wednesday, September 1, 2010

UF President Cathy DeSoto Speaks at the Fall Faculty Meeting, Aug. 30, 2010, University of Northern Iowa

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6 comments:

  1. Wow- talk about the right person, saying the right thing, and the right time! I'm so fed up with special projects and tasks that have no demonstrable impact on my teaching or research. Thank you Professor Desoto for speaking truth to power! The question now is whether the powers that be are listening.

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  2. What people have said about the speech via emails. I am honored and inspired by your votes of confidence. There were more, it would be too much to post them all. These emails and comments matter. Thank YOU.

    “PERFECT PERFECT fantastic! BRAVO!!!!!”
    “Your courage today was an inspiration to me. Thank you.”
    “You have a great speech writer! Anytime you combine a brave, smart person with a great speech writer, a powerful address will result. I think you hit a home run today! Thanks for a job so well done!”
    “I would have NEVER been able to do what you did...write such an impassioned and articulate speech and then deliver so well with so much confidence and aplomb. You were so admirable up there, and you made such important statements.“
    “What a great speech. Thanks for saying what needed to be said.”
    “Can you publish it in the Northern Iowan? It was great.”
    “GREAT job! I wanted to stand up and "whoo" but I thought it would be inappropriate. Hopefully you noticed the loud and long applause--I think it went over well. “
    - Email message written by one of new members who joined after the speech.


    “Thank you, Cathy for your comments, they were Well , Well Received. “
    - Chair of the meeting, Dr. James Jorgensen.

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  3. In response to "Anonymous" - some of the "powers that be" were indeed NOT listening during Cathy's speech, which I thought demonstrated her point perfectly: throughout Cathy's speech, Provost Gibson spoke frequently with Ben Allen and Ginny Arthur, which was not only rude in the extreme but made her later comments about "caring about faculty" seem even less sincere.

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  4. I thought this was a terrific speech!!!! Much much better than simply talking about things that really do NOT matter. BRAVE - Yes; BOLD - I'd say so; IMPORTANT - Without question.

    Dr. Desoto and UF please keep up the good work. If I was not already a member, I would be after listening to this speech. Thank you!

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  5. I don't think she wasn't listening - I think she was commenting. I don't think it was rude. When I am listening to a speech, I will turn and comment to a friend. Her later comments showed that she was paying very careful attention.

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  6. So, where are we as of today --- June 21st 2011. (1) there has been no settlement of the Prohibitive Practice Complaint although UF has spent thousands of dollars in legal fees and sold off savings Certificates of Deposit to keep funding this activity
    (2) UNI faculty will be strapped with a PPO plan competing with its existing health care plan that eventually will cost members large sums of money over many years
    (3) UF leaders forgot to mention, or did they conveniently leave out, the major reduction in UNI faculty life insurance benefits [from 2 1/2 times salary to 1 time salary]
    (4) UF successfully negotiated a work load policy that is now going to result in a good share of existing faculty teaching extra courses - largely due to the subjective manner in which work load is being defined within each department
    (5) the current UF leadership has managed to paint themselves into such a corner that they are not meeting regularly with UNI administrators to iron out difficulties -- which leaves UNI faculty to fend for themselves in filing grievances, most of which will not be subject to binding arbitration [due to the way the UF contract was negotiated this year]
    All in all, this year's collective bargaining agreement was a win ---- to such an extent that I'm sure that BOR would like to negotiate every year with this group.

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