terrapinsanity.com

Sad news this morning, and unexpected to many, of the passing of Jeff Huskamp who served the community as VP and CIO on the College Park campus. Jeff did a good job in what is surely a tough role, and he was uniformly well liked. We reproduce below the announcement as circulated.

Date: Fri, 28 May 2010 10:59:51 -0400
From: Sapienza Barone
Subject: Service for Jeff Huskamp

Dear Friends:

Our friend and colleague Jeff Huskamp, Vice President and Chief Information Officer at the University of Maryland, passed away peacefully at home on May 27, 2010. He was surrounded by his loving family.

A memorial service celebrating Jeff’s life will be held on Tuesday, June 1, 2010 at 3:00 p.m. in the Memorial Chapel, Regents Drive, University of Maryland, College Park. The service will be followed by a reception hosted by President Dan Mote and his wife Patsy in the president’s residence (One Presidential Drive, College Park, MD 20740). The Huskamp family will also welcome friends in their home on Tuesday evening (305 Reserve Gate Terrace, Silver Spring, MD 20905).

Parking for friends coming from off-campus will be available in front of and on the side of the Chapel. Additional parking will be available in the Regents Drive parking garage (http://www.cvs.umd.edu/visitors/parking.html).

In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the:
Jeffrey C. and Sandra W. Huskamp Endowed Bioengineering Scholarship
or
Jeffrey C. and Sandra W. Huskamp Endowed Computer Science Scholarship

Checks made payable to the “UMCPF” may be sent to:
University of Maryland College Park Foundation
4511 Knox Road, Suite 205
College Park, MD 20740-3380

Cards may be sent to:
Mrs. Sandra Huskamp
305 Reserve Gate Terrace
Silver Spring, MD 20905

Sandra extends her profound gratitude to everyone in the University community who has been so supportive and helpful to Jeff and to her during these very difficult few months.

Thanks, Sapienza

Campus leadership has just announced that as of this summer Norma Allewell (whose appointment as Dean of the College of Chemical and Life Sciences would conclude at end of June) will take over as Vice President of Research at College Park, replacing Mel Bernstein who is leaving the role in order to go do the same thing at Northwestern.

This adds to the list of enigmatic (heck, let’s say it like it is – ridiculously inconsistent) messages from the College Park leadership team. Let’s review:

• One of the reasons the Provost cites as motivation for “merging” Allewell’s college into CMPS is that it is under-performing compared with expectations. There is no question that its 50th ranked departments don’t let the Provost brag as much as do the top ten departments over in CMPS so ostensibly, bringing CLFS into the CMPS fold will somehow raise their quality. Translation: “Allewell’s performance as Dean of CLFS is such that we must disband her college to merge its under-performing units into a successful college. And by the way, now we’re putting her in charge of all research in College Park.”
• As cited by its strategic plan, the number one barrier to raising CLFS national rankings is unavailability of modern research buildings on the College Park campus. Therefore we will merge CLFS into CMPS so its units can first compete with CMPS units for facilities requests, diluting the overall potential of science operations to get buildings they need to compete.
• According to Steve Halperin, CMPS dean, “it is clear that neither our office nor that of [CLFS] could handle the responsibility of a combined college.” (Diamondback, November 6, 2009.) That’s why the merger will proceed by disbanding CLFS and assimilating its units into CMPS which will handle responsibility for the combined college.
• It is important to bring the quality of CMPS undergraduate education standards up to those of CLFS, which is why we are abandoning the CLFS administrative structure and bringing them under CMPS policies and administration.

Let’s be real. This is not an administration overly concerned with transparency, consistency or quality, so any mixed messages above (or the thousand other they’ve sent) don’t matter. The reason Norma is moving to VP for Research is simply this: They’ve already decided that the “merger” must happen so taking her out of the game early will make it just that much harder administratively to go back. “Gosh, if CLFS doesn’t merge, then who will run CLFS? Now we have to merge.”

Today’s news from Montgomery County Public Schools is that next year they won’t penalize (academically) students who rack up unexcused absences from classes. (Today a sufficient number of cuts will result in a failure of the course.)

This news is just swell (not) for College Park, where many MCPS students already make faculty nuts with their expectation of consideration. You see, the county also has a forgiveness policy for students – they can always get a do-over on graded material, for example, and there is always “make up” credit available.

The standard business model learned by students from this system is to never study in advance of a test, since that risks wasting effort on things you don’t need to know. Instead, take the test, tank it but then use it as a guide for what to study for your do-over. If that doesn’t work, then go bleat to the teacher and you get more credit for doing some indeterminate ‘stuff’ later.

What a big surprise when these students land in freshman classes here, where professors strive for excellence in all students, but who know students are free to fail. Final exams are, like, final and all that.

We already deal with drama and grief from students who have yet to learn that lesson in life. How much more special it will be dealing with these students when they’re taught that they need not even show up either.

Since last fall our administration – hell-bent to “merge” the College of Computer, Mathematical and Physical Sciences (CMPS) with the College of Chemical and Life Sciences (CLFS) – has quietly quashed opposition to the typically fast-and-loose process. This week we learn that the plan is now not one of merger but of outright acquisition. If approved, CLFS will disband at start of the fall, its units will become part of CMPS (administrators graciously offer to come up with a new name), and all staff (that is not otherwise cut) will merge into the CMPS administrative structure – under the CMPS dean which has championed this plan. No wonder.

CLFS faculty and staff were briefed, had open meetings for discussion, received a copy of the report from the (sham) joint committee that studied the “merger” and then voted. We’re told they voted “overwhelmingly” to approve the change. Late Tuesday of this week, the CMPS faculty were given the surprise opportunity to vote on this as well – before the deadline at COB on Thursday. With 48 hours to vote, many faculty who have never been given the first bit of analysis, discussion or description of the change must make a decision. (While asked for the same level of information and access as CLFS, the CMPS dean, Steve Halperin, denied release of the same report to his faculty. There have been no college-wide meetings, no reports and no general faculty discussions.)

But the story gets worse.

The balloting is being tracked by the same people in the central office that has championed this change in the first place. When the CLFS results were announced, it was accompanied by a detailed breakdown of the titles and roles of those who participated (not nearly the whole college.) And just like with the CLFS ballot, those in CMPS now able to vote must first log in giving their campus directory ID, anticipating that their preferences on the “merger” will be tracked by the very people advocating the change.

We’ve now interacted with several staff and junior faculty who have expressed – without wanting their names public – that they fear the merger (some for substantive reasons, some for process reasons) yet fear casting a vote against it, to be tracked by their direct supervisors who have taken the strong advocacy position in support of this change.

In spite of no CLFS administrative staff member expressing public support for the plan to disband, the Provost reported these employees voted support – by about the same margin that Vladimir Putin ensured voters picked Dmitry Medvedev as Russia’s duly elected president. Now that everyone knows central is monitoring ballots cast, the real question is whether CMPS’s dean – reputed to have an approach to administration that makes Putin look like a wimp – can beat those numbers. Maybe he can get his margin up to that of Kim Jong Il’s election results. It’s possible. Their campaign techniques are the same.

This process is flat wrong and should not be tolerated on a free and open university campus.

The long-time campus practice of assuming a compliant supine position in response to any state political need has never served us well, and only invites more sexploitation by officials who direct UM to expend resources in support of important state projects (by which they mean the officials’ own political priorities.)

Then came the Purple Line.

State planners want to drive a dagger through the heart of campus, splitting it in two. Have you seen the plans to run a Metro line through campus? Here, let’s remind you. The engineer’s rosy artwork shows true peaceful co-existence between students and trains. Check out the proposed route.

Any engineer who plans on cozy day-to-day interaction between campus pedestrians and trains has either never tried to drive across this campus or is simply delivering made-as-instructed solutions for political masters. There is no other place in the metro system that co-mingles foot, bike and train traffic like this – it is all controlled access, which is exactly how it will have to be implemented in College Park. It is not a trolley! We will get two campuses out of the deal – University of Maryland at North Side and University of Maryland at South Side.

Go ahead. Visualize graduations at Reckord Armory, as families must time their post-commencement conversations and photos to work around the metro schedule with trains running 40 yards away. Let’s serve as a nature preserve for outsiders to drive through every 10 minutes and gawk at the natural flora and fauna of campus. Be sure to charge parents top dollar for their kids to live in St Mary’s Hall, and feel proud that this real estate will be the closest housing to any metro stop in the system – every Dad is sure to feel happy to know his daughter is highly accessible to everyone in the DC-metro area.

And never mind noise, impact on laboratories, dividing our sense of community (at a time when more than ever we need one-ness) and crime. Yes, crime. Long-timers in the region know that no metro station has ever gone in without a direct skyrocket in crime. Metro is a teleportation device. Today when you drive onto campus late at night you will get screened by security. (Good!) Metro will by-pass this by the trainload. And for what? Nobody asserts this will be good for campus – it will be to get the political cost down for officials to pander to neighboring communities.

And this returns us to our “supine” observation at top. Campus officials have proposed a closure of Campus Drive – in great part the Purple Line path through campus – starting next month and lasting the summer. The idea just got blasted by community feedback, as reported in the DB this morning. What’s the campus game?

Dangerous, that’s what, but there is no safe political route at this point. The test closure could let UM stake out a “we’re going pedestrian-only, you’re too late” position. That doesn’t matter to politicians who know that the day-to-day problems will come only years after they have moved on. Trains are a mixed use of space that would not be compatible nor safe but that will be someone else’s problem. What’s more useful in a closure is that this raises visibility within the community, alerting everyone to changes in our future. (Changes are in our future.) News of the Purple Line has yet to stir reaction around campus, so maybe once Campus Drive is closed it will get everyone’s attention. Then they can be invited to visualize what this space would be like without cars but with barriers and trains.

In the end, nothing but more questions. The closure could go poorly with lots of negative feedback – and there goes the campus argument that this must be protected as pedestrian-only space. The closure could go well, which could artificially buoy state planners’ arguments that their proposed bifurcation of campus would not by itself have much negative impact.

Even under the the best of circumstances, campus officials would need to fight hard in order to protect our sense of community and campus integrity. Years of being toadies to Annapolis will only make this fight harder.