Man with a mission
It's tornado-cane season, and Peter Gregory continues to blog up a storm in his biz blog. As he explains in a recent post about SIU.
The game becomes . . . putting your finger on the problems at SIUC that are cheap to solve, but require real work -- and ask SIUC to do them. Only by raising the public awareness can this be done. I'm going to spend a little time and effort and see where it takes us. Hopefully, some good will come out of it.Peter's pointed criticisms of the management of poor job by the District 95 School Board and poor SIUC management practices, and local business climate -- must seem like a breath of fresh air -- a gust of hurricane force wind -- in the claustrophobic confines of Faner Hall.
This is the roll of the bloggers in American life today. The media is in just a few hands and where 40 years ago the reporters might have covered this story, now they would be fired for trying.
Even so, I challenged his charge that the chancellor was unethical, and he blew me away with:
Name 3 good management initiatives that SIUC has rolled out in the last 5 years.Okay, I'll get to work on that (keyword: 'good'), but I don't see what it has to do with ethics. My advertising classes taught me that an unethical action is "a lie (or theft) that harms another while (seemingly) benefitting yourself."
Peter is on more ethical ground when criticizing the job performance of "Uncle Walt." Hence, his challenge to me (above), and this post.
I'd like to get the two of them together for a podcast interview -- better microphones than my previous interview with Wendler (which I bet PG hasn't listened to). I'll bet they're not as far apart as Peter thinks.
For instance, when he writes:
. . . I'm kind of hoping that each of you decides how [you] want to be remembered, as someone who tried to do great things, or as someone who coasted and watched lots of TV. I don't know if I can do great things, but I know there is nothing better on this earth for me to attempt.Walter V. Wendler would agree with that.
But Peter goes farther in his belief in the power of blogging to help bring those things about. He's also launched an art blog for his business.
Perhaps Walter will explain what management initiatives his team has put forward in the past five years in his own (unofficial) blog
3 Comments:
i like Peter's take on faculty negotiations.
As everyone who is paying attention knows the administration no longer pretends to follow the JRB recommendations. When the administration's representative votes against the administration they still don't follow the JRB recommendations. This leads to screwing over people, getting them fired (sorry, turned down for tenure), and falling moral (sic) among anyone who knows the screwee.
SIUC lost the best professors because management failed.
Without good professors, there can't be a good education. Students sense this and are not recruited or retained.
The simple solution is to keep the best teachers. The department chairs have the responsibility; keep the teachers that make students learn, and let go of the teachers that fail students yet satisfy Southern "tenure track" politics.
Unlikely, though it may be.
I'll get into unethical more for you Dave, there is a lot there. You read my reply to the comment about Saluki Way funding over in my blog? When you launch a campus wide plan that can't be done, is it unethical or not? If you fire people (sorry deign tenure) when you choose to ignore the rules is that unethical? I don't have to be screwed over personally to recognize this kind of behavior as unethical.
Since our society is based on the research of universities like SIU, I think it is a mistake to talk about keeping great teachers and allowing professors to do no (or little) research. Every great business in the USA today is based on the research done at universities in the USA. Don't kid yourself, our society is rich because of the performance of our research universities. SIUC has a reasonable balance where teaching is rated about the same as research at promotion time, they just don't always follow the rules. The good news is the rules are very well defined, if you don't have 6 reasonable papers you aren't getting tenure (or something like that), so you have 6 years to hit a stationary target on the research side.
Peter,
Over in your blog, we discuss WVW's iniatives.
But I do not consider 'Saluki Way' unethical. At worst it is overreaching; at best it will improve the overall look of the campus and attract more students because of it.... I know, I know -- what goes on inside the classroom and labs is more important than the appearance of the buildings, but many buildings and facilities need upgrading. Does this justify 'Saluki Way'? Not to everyone.
The other example you cite, about being denied tenure is quite a different matter, but it would have to be taken examine case by case, no? As you say, follow the rules. Sounds like you have some friends who were unfairly denied tenure.
My definition of unethical is "deliberately deceiving others to benefit oneself."
Saluki Way would be unethical only if the Chancellor believed it would fail when he put it forward (apparently not warmed over Southern@150, but warmed of Poshard plan from 1999, if memory serves).
I bumped into a former chancellor the other night, and he wasn't impressed by Saluki Way, but that could be envy.
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