Officially Discovering What We Already Knew

There's nothing like a blinding flash of the obvious.

Last year, UNCG administered a survey known as the COACHE survey in order to make an effort to measure faculty satisfaction. Just on the off chance that outbursts, protests, letters, the AAUP survey, position statements, and general conversation didn't REALLY represent what faculty were feeling.
If there's one thing I always say about the faculty is that they are uncommunicative; it's just so hard to get them to really open up and talk...

In any case, Provost Dunn created a PowerPoint that summarizes the findings from this survey. Here are the absolutely unsurprising results:

It turns out, faculty are generally satisfied with each other and their departmental leaders (although that falls off a bit at full professor - probably not difficult to understand why that might be). Faculty are generally satisfied with tenure and promotion policies and procedures.

This next one, and this is the doozy, so let me say it clearly: FACULTY ARE OVERWHELMINGLY DISSATISFIED WITH SENION LEADERSHIP AT UNCG.

I'll give you a moment to get over your lack of surprise.

So, Brady is gone, although threatens to return to the classroom to bring her trademark wit, warmth, and wisdom. Imogene Cathey is gone, Paul Mason is gone, Edna Chun is gone, etc. etc. However, there are still plenty of sharks left over and it seems to me like it might be time to take a real long, hard look at them.

I'd say it's probably high time that anybody in executive administration didn't just get to continue to coast. The default assumption shouldn't be that they are doing fine. Instead, they should have to prove themselves, reapply for their position, demonstrate that their overwhelming failure to gain the confidence of the entire faculty isn't just something that can be brushed off as if unimportant.

And it would be difficult to imagine that a staff satisfaction survey (which was never administered) would show anything except for another section of our community that finds senior leadership to have performed well below expectations.

If an academic department, or heaven forbid a center, were to receive this kind of feedback, the entire area would be under review with the threat of closure/dismissal/defunding - why should senior leadership get a pass? That's the fat at the university and yet we act as if they are indispensable and absolutely immune.

If Gilliam wants to start from anywhere but in a hole, he's going to have to clean up this mess that was left behind before him. The message is clear.

Now, I'm just going to wait for the survey to determine if it's a nice day outside, so I can have my fill of finding out what I already know.

Jan Zink Advances Backwards

I guess managing an extra five people turned out to be too much for dear Jan “Basket Queen” Zink. But her reign was not without accomplishments, of course. It’s just that I can’t think of any of them. I’m sure something will come to me.

[Note: accomplishments to be listed here just as soon as they become clear]

She managed, in her brief tenure, to drive away Lanita Goins further reducing the skeleton crew of university relations refugees. Rumor has it that even the birds stopped singing and several typefaces left the university in protest.

She’ll probably be sad to give up Betsi Robinson’s old office as I hear she had converted it into a humidor for her extensive collection of Cuban cigars. I could be wrong though.

Meanwhile, we’ve received James Thornton to egregiously chancellorate us through the next six months. He may be a lovely person, I have no idea, but I guess by comparison, how bad could he possibly be? And, after all, with his expertise in fundraising, he may just make Zink even more redundant than she already was.

And, at the very least, Thornton wins some sort of prize for the speed with which he updated his LinkedIn profile to reflect his new position. Elsewhere, LinkedIn is littered with the former connections of our least beloved who, despite continuing to be unemployed (and unemployable) have failed to remove their “Vice Chancellor of X” designations. Of course, I’m not sure “layabout” or “disgruntled claimant” really has the cache they were hoping for.

I hope Zink recognizes that this is the signal heralding closure of her time at UNCG. She’s not long in her old position either as the word ‘advancement’ couldn’t be used to describe anything she has conjured into being since arriving on our doorstep and since she has been here for slightly over two administrator years, that’s nearly a lifetime of employment in human years.

To put all of this into context, I turn to Joe “Golden Tongue” Gallehugh who, in an effort to capture the subtleties of the complex organism that is the university, said: “No comment.”

I propose a basket of ice as a parting gift and directions to Seth Cohen’s office should she find anything about her exit confusing.

Hope Springs Eternal

We at UNCG have had very high hopes for our Provost (and current acting Chancellor) Dana Dunn and for Charlie Maimone, the Vice Chancellor of Business Affairs.

There have been a series of "unfortunate" events...

Other than Dunn’s spate of hysterics at the last faculty meeting in which she apparently mistook me for a character from Lemony Snicket, she generally seems to be much more reasonable than the cabal of cronies with which we have been burdened for the last seven years. People on campus still seem genuinely hopeful that she represents a kinder, gentler administration and I hope they are right.

The same sort of hopefulness was floating in the air in regards to Charlie Maimone (despite the unfortunate possibilities present when rhyming his name with “My Money”). His first strike was a vote for a totally closed search, in direct contrast to the hybrid model for which the faculty senate had unanimously voted. However, he quickly fell of the radar again amid the fireworks being set in the rest of the executive administration.

Only now, with Edna Chun’s summary dismissal and her complaint is his name rising to the surface again.

The jury is out. Chun says he created a hostile work environment and labels him as “instrumental” in the firings of Carpen, Wilson, & English (the UNCG3). Now, that’s a new twist in the plot, isn’t it?

Is this a woman desperately clawing at others as she falls from grace? Or is there something more here that needs attention?

Shockingly, Maimone has not responded to the allegations (probably he has received coaching from UNCG’s spokesperson extraordinaire Joe“no comment” Gallehugh.)

In the same allegations, Paul Mason continues to look like the bull in the china shop that everybody already knew he was, but now somebody has actually said it out loud (or in print, which is as loud as we need).  This is the first time that anybody in the upper administration at UNCG has admitted that there might have just been even the tiniest bit of wrongdoing on Mason’s part.

Those left standing in upper admin and on the board of trustees at UNCG have been repeatedly told that there needs to be some truthtelling in order for there to be reconciliation. Generally, the response has been to clamp down completely (for example, to date, the letter that faculty member Hannah Mendoza wrote to the BoT has gone unanswered).

It looks like the truth is going to come out no matter what. The only question remaining is: how badly do they want to be part of the reconciliation?

The first step to forgiveness is admitting that you have a problem.

We’re all ears.

Edna Chun’s Sad Tale or As the World Turns at UNCG

All right, I finally did it. I broke down and bought an ergonomic keyboard. I simply can’t keep up with the pace of the UNCG soap opera if they are going to keep churning out news at this rate. I really am going to have to ask for health insurance and a pension if they keep me working full time like this.

The News and Record reported yesterday that Chun has filed a grievance with UNCG.

The irony was not lost on me. I think it would have been considered heavy handed as a story line even in the world of daytime television, but this is reality where no such bars on the purest melodrama exist.

Chun’s angle is that she was fired because of her age (68) and her ethnicity (Asian). She certainly wasn’t fired because of her abilities (insignificant) or her strength of character (absent).

One of her primary complaints isn’t that she was innocent of royally screwing up but that she wasn’t extended the courtesy of being allowed to resign or retire rather than be fired.

Wait, I’m tearing up and I can’t see the screen clearly.

Okay.

In other words, she is the first one that has been dealt with appropriately. That has got to hurt.

Somebody more fluent than I in the subtleties of this system might need to fill us in, but I would imagine that if you retire or resign you get a different set of benefits than if you are fired. At the very least you get to save face.

Something that doesn’t happen, of course, if you are carted away in handcuffs and your mug shot is posted for all the world to see.

But I digress.

So, she wasn’t given the velvet handshake. Also, she says, she doesn’t know why she was fired. And she didn’t have anything to do with the UNCG3 anyway. And Paul Mason made her do it.

I’m having a hard time processing all of those different angles at the same time. She didn’t do it, except for that they made her do it, and she doesn’t know why they fired her, but she didn’t do it anyway, so it doesn’t matter. I think that’s the argument.

Pulling together all of his talents as a university spokesman and after a lengthy incantation to invoke the muses, Joe Gallehugh responded bravely on behalf of UNCG with words that are sure to echo through the ages much as the speeches recorded by Tacitus in his Histories that the university couldn’t comment.

Chun is showing some backbone in refusing to allow others off the hook and go silently. Of course, it would have been helpful earlier if she had brought it to the public’s attention that Paul Mason had demanded to know the names of those who had filed grievances against him and pressured her to dismiss the matter. Also, apparently her supervisor, Charles Maimone created a hostile work environment – something Chun suddenly seems to clearly understand.

But if she wants to call out the whole rat’s nest, I would advise everyone to put on goggles and gloves because it’s going to get dirty.

Maybe Lyda Carpen can offer Chun some pointers about going through the grievance process. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Carpen is too busy these days to have time to help.

99 People and Counting...

I've just received a few more names to add to the list of those who exited UNCG under Kim Record's distinctive leadership. Nearly 100 people found the environment worth leaving behind. Nearly every day I hear from someone with a confirmation of the toxic nature of her management. She has been protected by the bubble of administrative superiority for a long time, but now that this bubble is deflating, I wonder how much longer she'll be with us?

She never seems to have been particularly compatible with UNCG, almost as if she wants to make us into something we're not. A favorite tactic seems to be to cut off resources from those who need them and then to claim surprise at their failure to thrive. Sure it's underhanded and not particularly sportsmanlike but why would we look to the leader of our athletics program to demonstrate notions of fair play?

In any case, at least she did play a little defense after her assistant AD Brian Battle tried to strangle a soccer player on the field. By which I mean, she buried the story and possibly paid Battle to go away. That's a move that's pretty standard in the UNCG playbook, I'm sure he followed some better opportunity. It seems that even if you mess up badly (ie somebody catches you) your "externalization" is still padded.

That's why I guess I'm still surprised that they didn't offer that same face saving opportunity to Edna Chun that they did to Paul Mason (who apparently either was paid off enough that he doesn't need to work...or it's awful hard for him to escape what his name has come to represent). I wouldn't feel too badly for Chun though, after all, she's used to moving on. In fact, almost all of these executive types are. It's too bad we can't do a trade, get back some of the people who were long term members of UNCG's community in exchange for the release of some of these upper admins back into the wild.

Barring that, or a genuine reformation by those remaining, it'd be helpful if we could wrap up the executive admin exodus before the arrival of the new chancellor; give her/him a fresh start, a fighting chance. We all want our new chancellor to succeed and in order to help ensure that s/he can swim, it's time to release some of the dead weight that might pull even an olympian to the bottom.

Kim Record
Benita Peace
Jan Zink
Bonita Brown
Bryan Terry

If you love us, you'll leave us. And if you don't...we'll drum you out.

A bit of helpful advice.

Edna Chun Should Start Packing

When I was job-hopping through college and in the years after it, I remember hearing that it was important that I show people I could hold a job.

I’m now questioning that advice. It seems like the people who have been holding down the fort at UNCG for the longest are not the ones who are rising to the top. Instead we get people like Edna Chun and Paul Mason who seem to think that a two-year stint at a single employer is long enough.

No wonder they fire or drive away employees with 15, 20, 25 year histories with UNCG – it just seems suspicious to them that somebody would stay that long somewhere unless they were getting some illicit benefit. Having never worked anywhere long enough to become part of the community, they don’t trust that it is possible to become loyal to a place.

When Chun joined UNCG in 2011, they boasted of her past which included three years at SUNY Geneseo (2003 – 2006), one year at Brooklyn College of the City of NY (2002 – 2003), and two years at Kent State University (2000 – 2002). Her record holding length of employment was a five year period with Broward College where she served as vice president for human resources.

Unfortunately for Chun, it seems that the longer-term employment at Broward didn’t agree with her. In 2010, Chun was a finalist for the position of Chancellor of Peralta Community College district. That search was eventually restarted after all three of the finalists were rejected by a unanimous vote from the board.

This must have come as quite a blow to her since she had recently been fired by the Broward College President J. David Armstrong. The racial discrimination charges were brought to the administration by an employee and deemed sufficiently damning to lead to her dismissal with full and unanimous approval by the Broward College Board of Trustees.

And so UNCG continued in its new habit of taking in wayward administrators and added Chun to our ranks.

You would think Chun at least would have picked up a thing or two about dealing fairly and equitably with employees, but she seems to have remained confused about the relationship between race and the right to a healthy work environment when she told various UNCG employees that if they weren’t a member of a protected group, there just wasn’t a darn thing human resources could do about continued harassment.

This does raise the question: exactly what is the job of human resources, then?

And

Isn’t it about time that Chun moseyed on to her next short term bout of employment?

After all, if you stay in one place too long, your incompetence is bound to catch up to you.