terrapinsanity.com

We’re sure the student athletes in under-performance programs (you know, ones that graduated students instead of make money for the all-controlling athletics association) feel okay for eliminating their sport so the athletics association can get new artificial turf on practice fields, to the tune of $1 million (thanks for that, Diamondback.)

More on Comcast Center and athletic financial woes from a former executive board member of the University of Maryland Terrapin Club in this morning’s Sun. We like the part about charging Comcast $55M for the center’s naming deal, but then promising the fees back in the form of mandatory student fees. The company gets naming rights simply for serving as a short term money lender, and students not only get the bill – they get their cars towed so all the important people (those concerned with athletics, not academics) can play their games.

College Park is well known for its willingness to serve Democratic Party needs, for which our campus leaders get accommodation now and then. We provide gainful employment for officials who are in a holding pattern between administrations, we generate studies to give political cover to policy moves sought by the Party, and we set up a nice backdrop when the party needs a scenic photo-op with images of youthful support.

Sometimes what we do is spill the beans.

That happened in a recent advertisement from the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute, an operation inside our Engineering School. Mtech is promoting a new “clean energy challenge” and as part of that sent out advertisements linking to its web page, which announced “As part of the Obama Administration’s effort to support and empower the next generation of American clean energy entrepreneurs, the Department of Energy awarded $360,000 for the $100K ACC Clean Energy Challenge …” (We saved the full advertisement, which you can see by clicking on the image below.)

Spending $360,000 for a $100,000 challenge. Yeah, that’s about right for this administration.

It took a day but the web page was subsequently changed to remove this language. Clearly, someone had a “what were you thinking?” conversation with Mtech. At time of this writing, however, their web site retains the rest of the party pandering, which is the energy event’s kick off with a screening of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

Serious scientists on this campus study climate change, and we’re shocked that they would be willing to have the value of their work overwhelmed with the public image of someone who right, wrong or indifferent now serves as America’s top junk science huckster. Will researchers in the science college even be allowed to add an asterisk to this Mtech kick off? Doubtful. To most observers, UM climate research will be hitched to the Al Gore junk wagon.

What a record setting year for Terrapin football, and with a fitting climax. In 21 minutes of play the Terps blow a 27 point lead, losing to NC State.

Seriously. Has anyone looked into whether they’re balancing the athletics program budget by fixing point spreads in on-line betting?

This morning’s DB (Officials discuss Comcast upgrade) reports on administrative hopes to add about half a million bucks worth of steel rigging to the Comcast center. This would ostensibly support larger screens, speakers and other accouterments necessary to host Verizon Center or Patriot Center scale events. As reported, this infrastructure had been planned in the original build-out, but was dropped during implementation.

And let’s review one of the reasons why it was dropped: lack of such fixtures in the Comcast was not the sole barrier to having large events. After officials figured out that spending the extra cash would not bring them that much closer to having the regional-scale facility everyone wanted, the fixtures were dropped from the build to save cash. Spending on them now will throw good money after bad, increasing the thrash of athletic programs as they spiral in decline.

So what else was – and is – a barrier to large events? Infrastructure. We don’t have adequate parking or road capacity to carry daily traffic now, much less the present level of events. We must banish staff and graduate students from campus – or at least tow their cars – in order to make room for some pathetic level of tailgating like we are one of the big schools. And good luck getting to work on time, or leaving at end of the day, during the seasons when Comcast is rented out to, say, high school graduations. That can be a very unpleasant hour-long ordeal.

And these people think spending half a million on rigging for bigger screens will make things right?

The increased congestion on Route 1 and 193 (itself the product of county officials basing their planning on cash, not throughput) isn’t going to get any better. Thinking ahead, the Purple Line coming through campus ought to make foot-traffic from outer parking areas to Byrd Stadium truly special. (Presumably we can be like the Redskins, where fans park in one city in order to take public transit to the games. Great alumni experience there.) Maybe there is something a lot better that can be funded by this cash.

This morning’s Post has a column by Charles Lane, Maryland’s plan to cut 8 varsity teams shows its true colors. This calls it like it is – President Loh “doubling down” on big-time athletics and the cash, at expense of scholarship – and notes in particular that the sports recently cut here for budget reasons were the ones most populated with students who graduate. (College Park can’t get even 3 out of 5 football players to graduate? Seriously?) We all know what will happen to our outcomes statistics when the programs populated by students with good outcomes go away. Of course, the figure most sought by leadership is one that has a dollar sign next to it. Loh is out of his depth.

Lane does well until his conclusion, at which point he advocates:

[D]onating to these beleaguered student-athletes would do more than support a good cause — it would also register a protest against the warped priorities that prevail at too many institutions of higher education.

Noooooo! Donating to these programs means Loh’s extortion has worked! Loh is holding the successful programs hostage and betting soft-hearted alumni will tithe to fill in the gap.

The best message all alum could send is a statement “We’re withholding donations to any program on campus until you turn your focus back to excellence in education. Get your priorities right!”

In the Diamondback reporting of Saturday evening’s alert to residents of an armed robbery, a campus spokesman stated:

“This was not a true victim walking down the street who was targeted by a criminal. It was a criminal who had things taken by other criminals,” Velez said.

Oh, okay. Learning we have twice the number of criminals than we originally thought were out on the streets makes us feel so much better. (Good grief!)

(And more is the pity.)

Commenting in the Diamondback on a penalty that called back a Terrapin score in this weekend’s Wake Forest game:

“We had that one kind of penalty, it was like illegal motion or some shit,” defensive tackle Joe Vellano said.

Communications major, no doubt.

In a tremendous 60 Minutes piece aired on Sunday, UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski continues to champion his UMBC campus and programs. If you missed the original airing, then the transcript (linked above) is well worth your consideration.

The interview is noteworthy not only as another well-deserved honor for Dr. Hrabowski, but also for contrasts it paints. The difference in priorities between UMBC and UMCP could not be more stark. Hrabowski’s statistics on STEM education (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) quietly speak what he does not – that UMBC is fast becoming the STEM center of the state.

Whoa, the folks in College Park might say, we have the bulk of the research and far more majors. We’re the flagship. All true, but when legislators hear about UMBC, they hear that 40 percent or more of its graduates each year are STEM degree recipients, a far greater proportion than UMCP, bespeaking a different set of priorities. They hear about overall graduation rates, the successful emphasis on undergraduate research experiences that are fostered by faculty (not just allowed to happen so long as they do not interrupt a “serious” researcher’s pace with graduate students.) They hear about how many top Maryland high school students increasingly by-pass a chance at the flagship in order to attend UMBC, which invests recruiting funds based on excellence, not race. UMCP has almost no unalloyed excellence-based scholarships or prizes for undergraduates, and appears to be moving away from merit-based support altogether – and consequently is getting what it pays for.

From the CBS interview, officials hear:

Interviewer: You had a chance to get a football team at UMBC, right? And you said no?

Hrabowski: People talk about that. Right. I mean, well– well, first of all, it takes a lot of money for a football team to win.

UMBC’s nationally competitive group is its fairly cerebral chess team, while from College Park of late officials hear about our money pit athletics program, which loses more money each year than is spent on undergraduate STEM degree programs in total.

(For all the effort UMCP invests in creating “learning outcomes” for its programs, we have yet to see any argument for how the athletics budget connects to any scholarly campus missions. It isn’t hard to see how that could be done for chess.)

And tellingly, for all that state officials hear about UMBC’s educational successes, especially in STEM, they don’t hear much from College Park itself. As we have observed repeatedly in the past, College Park is losing a political game it does not know it is playing.

The Chronicle has a thoughtful essay by a Michigan faculty member who reports far less than satisfying experiences with use of an on-line component in her classes. It is worth your attention. She correctly observes that the jury is still out on the question of what techniques work for internet-based instruction, but it should give us pause as at UM there is increased pressure to move on-line. The bean counters in particular love it, since it leverages faculty time across a broader assortment of students, i.e. it costs less. The present essay should make us wonder if one gets the same outcome.