112th Annual Christmas Bird Count

The year 2011 is the 112th CBC, the first official Christmas Bird Count was in the year 1900. There's a pretty long run of citizen science for you.

As we have for over a decade, Tom, Lynn and I each participated in our own regional counts on Saturday, which meant West Campus was not counted that day. Instead we counted here today, and by the official rules we cannot add numbers, only species to the official tally - and only if it's a species that was not found in the New Haven circle on Saturday.

Two years ago our Barred Owl was added as one of these "count week" species. Today we weren't able to add any new species, but put in a good birding effort anyway.

Here are the results:

number in party: 3 (Lynn, me, Tom)
party hours: 7 (6:45 to 2:15 with a lunch break)
weather conditions: cold 20-28F, clear and calm in the early morning, partly cloudy and breezy through the mid-day.
no snow, moving water was open, still water with thin ice
number of species: 34
number of individual birds: 454

31 Canada Goose
1 Mute Swan
5 Wild Turkey
1 Turkey Vulture
4 Red-tailed Hawk

75 Ring-billed Gull
20 Herring Gull
30 Rock Pigeon
10 Mourning Dove
3 Red-bellied Woodpecker

6 Downy Woodpecker
1 Northern Flicker
7 Blue Jay
40 American Crow
1 Fish Crow

8 Black-capped Chickadee
1 Tufted Titmouse
2 White-breasted Nuthatch
2 Carolina Wren
3 Ruby-crowned Kinglet

1 Hermit Thrush
50 American Robin
1 Gray Catbird
2 Northern Mockingbird
43 European Starling

9 Song Sparrow
1 Swamp Sparrow
14 White-throated Sparrow
1 White-crowned Sparrow
2 Dark-eyed Junco

14 Northern Cardinal
45 House Finch
10 American Goldfinch
20 House Sparrow

An excellent birding effort - beats our 2009 number by one, and the 2010 number by several - but last year's search was hampered by two feet of snow on the ground!

2010 results here
2009 results here

Mid-December update

Immature Cooper's Hawk, Accipiter cooperi, perched just a few meters above our feeders one morning last week. photo: Lynn Jones

December is just not a normal month. There's the transition from late fall to winter, when those warmish days are just fewer and farther between, and we resign ourselves to the fact of cold weather.
We have ways to deal with this.

If you're connected to students and the academic world in any way, there are end-of-semester issues. Grades and evaluations are due, plans are sketched out for second semester, last-minute challenges are par for the course.
We have ways to deal with this too.

And then there's the craziness of the "holiday season". THIS is self-inflicted, I mean the craziness part. The holidays, well they've all been around longer than we have, but what have we done to make them so crazy?
We have ways to deal with this too - GO BIRDING!!!!

It's time for the annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count, so tomorrow instead of joining the shopping craziness we birders will be out driving and walking our "territories" in search of every last chickadee, gull and wandering warbler we can find.


New squirrel baffle for one of our feeders - provided by Tony - the other two feeders are there in the background - one for sunflower seeds and the other for thistle seeds, which the finches are supposed to prefer.

West Campus bird list for the past two weeks, December 5-9 and 12-16, 2011:

Wild Turkey
Herring Gull
Ring-billed Gull
Red-tailed Hawk
Cooper's Hawk
Mourning Dove
Rock Pigeon
Downy Woodpecker
Red-bellied Woodpecker
10. Blue Jay
American Crow
Fish Crow
American Robin
European Starling
Northern Mockingbird
Black-capped Chickadee
Northern Cardinal
Song Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
20. Dark-eyed Junco
House Finch
American Goldfinch

Twenty two species for the middle of December - probably just about what you'd expect.

Next week, Lynn and I will report on our West Campus Christmas Bird Count.

How Three Companies Tweet Without Fear

I liked the piece in today’s Wall Street Journal by Elizabeth Holmes and on how three different companies deal with Twitter. My old personal favorite was Sea World, where they had Shamu tweeting. It took a while for me to “get” Twitter, but I love the service and along with HootSuite, I find it one of the indispensible tools to keep me up-to-date on the world of business…and other things as well. For example, during football Sunday’s, I keep my iPad next to me as I watch games as I follow the former head of NFL officiating Mike Pereira (@MikePereira) as he tweets about officiating issues regarding the games and gives his followers the correct information on why calls were or were not made.

From today’s article:

This week AMR Corp.'s American Airlines found itself caught in a public spat after actor Alec Baldwin vented on Twitter after being removed from an American flight. "Flight attendant on American reamed me out 4 playing WORDS W FRIENDS," Mr. Baldwin tweeted, referring to a Scrabble-like online game.

American replied via Twitter asking for his contact information. A day later, American tweeted, "UPDATE: Facts about yesterday's removed passenger" along with a link to a statement giving a less-flattering account of the passenger's behavior without mentioning Mr. Baldwin's name. Mr. Baldwin deactivated his Twitter account after the incident and apologized to his fellow passengers.

Companies are adopting a variety of strategies for navigating Twitter's pitfalls. One of the biggest issues is how many people to trust with a company's account, known as its handle. Spread the authority too thin, and the burden can be overwhelming. Authorize too many people, and the risk of mishaps multiplies. Here's how three very different companies—Southwest Airlines Co., Whole Foods Market Inc. and Best Buy Co.—are approaching the task.

RECENTLY...

Here are a few items that may be of interest....

Worship @ 1280

The previous Sunday night,  I was at LIFT Church at McMaster University  (The whole campus is basking in the glow of winning the “Best, Most exciting,Unbelievable Vanier Cup Final…  in the history of ever) ..... in the 1280 Pub, right in the heart of the Student Centre ( where Pop sensation LIGHTS had just done a concert the night before). How is that for a run on sentence..?

Anway, its newly married former student president Robin Waller held forth on sharing our faith in an age of diversity. His core point was: “ It is not about having to always know the answer or prove that you are right. It is about learning to have an honest, genuine conversation. “

Lift is close to my heart, where my son Dave would spend his Sunday evenings when he was in town.

The band was almost a reunion with the very people who led the worship at Dave's celebration service nearly two years ago when he left us for eternity.

Lead Team Meeting

Segue @ U of M

Tammy Junghans ran a dynamic campaign, this fall, featuring Joy  Clark  MP who has passionately taken up the issue of human slavery . Also featured a former classmate of mine, Mark Wallenburg, who is now a regional director for I.J.M (  International Justice Mission). Our student group Segue has simply taken the issue by the horns and is putting its weight behind it. There has been  tremendous publicity , favour and momentum around an issue that puts Segue on the front edge of one of the most urgent social issues of our day.

You can read more about it all at their website www.segueuofm.com 

Lakehead U, in Thunder Bay- where Gary Wilson and Jed Armstrong are launching a student ministry on campus, supported by Evangel Church on the edge of campus.  As a church they sponsored a Thanksgiving initiative where people in their congregation hosted dozens of international students for a Canadian Thanksgiving!

They just obtained student club status and they are up and running.  This is exciting news and their student executive are  busy planning for the coming term.

Lakehead U Student Centre

Roy Olende is starting an expression of Central Community Church right on the campus of Brock University. While it will be a plant of CCC,it will also have its own flavor and some of its own DNA. Roy has been gathering a core of students to begin worship in January, and he is already wondering what to do with everyone who is showing up. The national director of Red Frogs Canada: Everybody loves Roy. It could be its own sit com. Anyway, we sure do.

Pub/Cafe where they will be "doing church"

Behold Roy!

Other happy things to report. Jamie Nelson from Calvary Church in Cambridge, ON is starting a campus expression of Calvary in the residence of the Conestoga College Cambridge campus. It is a fresh new initiative and it is building a bridge from the existing church to the campus community. It is also experimental as they work at condensing the messages of lead Pastor David Couric into a video format and wrap it with worship and discussion.

The Nelsons!

I had the privilege of trekking out to Masters College and Seminary in Peterborough for their ministry class. With Professor Graham Gibson I took a class of about 70 first year students on a tour of nearby Trent University. Dr Bill Morrow,  the President of Masters College set the stage beautifully in chapel before we left. He preached on “Being the good neighbor” as he unpacked the parable of the Good Samaritan.



Masters students responding in chapel to the call to Be That Neighbor..

We extended the metaphor to the University Campus as we looked at it through missional eyes.

Bridge to the East side of campus

Note the fusion of Christian and native spirituality

In search for a transcendent Cause...

Native feminist spirituality

I had the students answer some basic questions. What's going on here? What do you see? What do you feel? What is God saying to you about it all?. As we debriefed the experience in class afterwards, we discovered several  basic themes.

 People looking for community. People looking for wholeness. People looking for fulfillment. People looking for a transcendent cause. 

In my theology, those are creational desires that are easilty misdirected towards false ends. It is in Christ that our foundational needs are fulfilled. Our calling, indeed our challenge is to find the way to do it.

Professor Graham, who is doing this PhD thesis on pentecostal native spirituality was particularly aware of the evidence of native spirituality throughout the campus. It has struck me that the academy is well aware of the importance of spirituality in native culture, while deriding or negating the  importance of spirituality in our own. No small irony...

While I have heard that there is some Christian activity on campus, it seems to be somewhat underground. It is my conviction that there is a whole lot more that God would do on this campus through individuals that yielded to His call.

We also asked students to consider what God might be saying to them about the Campus. One never knows.....

Sue and Lynn - West Campus birders - with camera trap.

The segue from November to December this week brought a few cold nights, but warm daytime temperatures linger still. Our sparrow population is down, but a good variety of thicket-haunting birds was around this week.

Ruby-crowned and
Golden-crowned Kinglets

Carolina and
House Wrens

Northern Mockingbirds and
Gray Catbirds

Dark-eyed Juncos and a
White-throated Sparrow

Blue Jays and
American Crows

House Finches and
American Goldfinches

Mourning Doves and
Rock Pigeons

Downy Woodpeckers and
Red-bellied Woodpeckers


Lynn keeps the courtyard feeders full.

Black-capped Chickadees and a
Northern Cardinal

American Robins and
European Starlings

Ring-billed and
Herring Gulls


Wild Turkey flock browsing? grazing? one morning this week.

Wild Turkey flocks
Canada Goose flocks, and a
Red-tailed Hawk
and always a few
House Sparrows

Twenty six species for the week - again, a week in which we didn't get outside much during the workday, but saw our good skulkers before work in the mornings.

Nocturnal visitors

Okay, here's something fun we've been trying for a few weeks - off and on...
We noticed some unusually large scat out in the courtyard and set up our camera trap to see who the nocturnal visitors might be. The possibilities are limited, since the area is only accessible via the trees - or via flight.


Virginia Opossum, Didelphis virginianus - North America's only native marsupial.

We were thinking it could have been a Gray Fox, since they're arboreal - and the scat was fairly large - so we'll keep trying! - fun stuff.

Bird list for the last few weeks (November 14-18 and 21-23, 2011):

Wild Turkey
Canada Goose
Herring Gull
Ring-billed Gull
Red-tailed Hawk
6. Cooper's Hawk

Mourning Dove
Rock Pigeon
Downy Woodpecker
Red-bellied Woodpecker
11. Northern Flicker

Blue Jay
American Crow
Fish Crow
American Robin
Northern Mockingbird
European Starling
18. Cedar Waxwing


Celastrus scandens, Oriental Bittersweet - bad weed, but good food supply for the birds.

Black-capped Chickadee
Tufted Titmouse
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
House Wren
23. Carolina Wren

Northern Cardinal
Song Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
House Finch
28. American Goldfinch
Brown-headed Cowbird
Baltimore Oriole - two!!
31. House Sparrow


Diverse habitat near the Leaf Pile - some bittersweet, some Phragmites, some open woodland.

This is often a good place for morning bird activity - in fact on a warm, humid morning earlier this week, this spot was alive with birdsong. Robins were singing, the Baltimore Oriole sang a few notes, White-throated and Song Sparrows joined in. Felt like spring!

From Drucker to Zuckerberg With a Little Page For Good Measure

Over the past three months, I hadn’t gotten my Fortune magazine. Based on a combination of moving from Syracuse to Boca Raton and that my subscription expired, I hadn’t read the publication for some time. So this morning, sitting outside drinking coffee and eating Cote France’s wonderful almond croissants, I had the chance to renew my longstanding love for this magazine. The magazine (which I now also have on my iPad) gave me a chance to read stories that started with Peter Drucker and ended up with the epic battle between on going between Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page in the Battle for the Future of the Web. My only wish is that the Fortune website would make it easier to find the articles from the print pub so I can make sure that my students and friends can read them.

I particularly liked the short piece on Francis Hesselbein, who reminded me again of one of Drucker’s five questions:

1. What is our mission?
2. Who is our customer?
3. What does the customer value?
4. What are our results?
5. What is our plan?

For Hesselbein, who used to be the CEO for the Girl Scouts of USA, the mission was “short, powerful and compelling: To help each girl reach her own highest potential.” You have to love that mission, and it isn’t something that would be spit out of the Dilbert Mission Statement generating machine.

Spread Life 2011

It would have been David’s 24^th birthday. Last year, those of us who mourn his loss wanted to do something on his birthday that captured something of his essence. That is when my wife came up with the idea of doing creative acts of kindness in his memory on his day. Some of his friends added elements to the day that made it particularly meaningful , such as the colour orange ( his color) and wearing flip flops. It embodied things that we knew represented him. We landed on calling the day of creative acts of kindness “Spread Life” which we drew from his final words on Facebook “ I want to run, jump and spread life in this world…”.

Last year, for Spread Life,  my family and and some friends contributed to a clothing giveaway at Lighthouse Church in Wasaga Beach. Other members of our extended family planted orange tulips in all sorts of meaningful places and many other people did a variety of kind acts in memory of Dave and in honour of Jesus.

Setting up...

 This year, we converged on HiWay Pentecostal Church, in Barrie,  to make coffee that we gave away on the waterfront. It was a spectacular day.

Really, no strings attached...?

Of course people wondered why we were giving away coffee and some shied away from our table. However, Jordan did such a great job of inviting people in, and all of the kids took part in explaining the reason for what we were doing with the cards created for the event. There were a number of special, unforgettable moments.

Talking about Spread Life...

In fact, one young woman was standoffish and asking us where the coffee came from and what brand it was. “I’m sorry to be a snob, but I am picky about my coffee”. Jordan just handed her the card and said, That’s ok, we are just celebrating the birthday of our brother, who died. He had a big heart, he loved God and he loved people and this is just the kind of thing he loved to do”. When she looked at the card and heard Jordan’s gentle earnestness, she just melted...... Her eyes filled up with tears and she apologized. As she walked away, holding the Spread Life card and clearly touched, she told Jordan, “You have already made my entire day”.

It was true for others as well. I could tell that once they grasped what this was all about , they were deeply moved. They knew that it was about more than the coffee. It was a sweet, gentle time and before we knew it we were out of condiments, the sky was clouding over, and it was time to go. What we did was small and insignificant, but it was in fact Something. And it was done with prayer and with love. And it was more than worth doing….

For the background see  www.davidpowell.me .

A Case for Solidarity

I just finished Michele Alexander’s The New Jim Crow (New York: The New Press, 2011) which is an eye-opening account of how the American judicial system perpetuates racism. Few, if any, can read this book without feeling enraged at the systemic discrimination that targets people of color as criminals and puts them in a hard-to-break cycle of imprisonment, poverty and despair. In addition to shocking statistics and heart-wrenching examples, Alexander points to the use of “divide and conquer,” as a successful (elite) strategy for undermining opposition and thwart solidarity across color lines. Ever since Reconstruction, if not earlier, powerful interests have used “white supremacy” as a strategy for preventing poor and working class people from forming class based coalitions. Often in exchange of a few token privileges, poor whites have been encouraged to prioritize solidarity across race over solidarity across class.

So what, you may rightfully ask, does this have to do with academia and the CFA’s causes? At first glance it seems presumptuous, even absurd to compare the academic fight for self-governance with those over institutionalized racism because the material outcome is so different. Nevertheless, at the core, the two causes share a common denominator.

Much like poor whites, professors are encouraged to consider their allegiances to lie with the “managerial” classes and reject forming coalitions with colleagues of lower professional rank (i.e. instructional faculty, academic professionals and graduate students) and other workers on campus. Universities insist on keeping a distinction between non-tenure and tenure track faculty even if their educational background and job descriptions are the same, giving the latter a sense of “superiority.” In a recent article, AAPU President Cary Nelson proposes to grant all long-term college teachers tenure at the percentage appointments they currently have. (“From the President: Reforming Faculty Identity,” Academe Online, July-August, 2011). This, he convincingly argues, would lead to a better educational environment for students and professors alike. The fact that this would create a single class of tenure-track professors with common concerns and the power to challenge their employers is obviously not lost on university administrations. Thus, it is in the latter’s interest that the often arbitrary distinction between college teachers’ job classifications is kept intact and that the tenure-track individuals are flattered into considering themselves superior.

Ideally, our solidarity should reach beyond academia, to include workers of all ranks. In a recent issue of Journal of International Communication Victor Pickard warns us not to view educational labor issues too narrowly but to place them in their proper social political context and make the appropriate connections. There is no denying that tenured academics enjoy a relatively privileged lifestyle. Their salaries and benefits are (still) better than those of most workers, on campus or elsewhere, but they increasingly share the growing concerns over work-place issues, wages and benefits with other workers, be they white or blue collared. Although a professor might make far more than the office support staff, her work-related concerns are still far closer to that of the staff worker than to the top 1 percent of income earners in America. “What befalls public school teachers and public-sector unions seems distant from our daily routines. But we should see these conflicts as data points of a larger pattern: the systematic impoverishment of public services and civil society institutions in tandem with the bolstering of corporate power,” states Pickard.

Our capital is largely of cultural value which puts us in a unique situation. We can use our knowledge and skills as outreach tools – letting others know that we belong to the 99 percent of Americans who share a common concern over a long list of eroding social goods and services. Our work-related obligations might be different from those of grade school teachers, social workers and firefighters but that does not keep our jobs safe or our benefits protected. Efforts to “divided and conquer” must be rejected to ensure that we and the rest of the 99 percent stand a chance of saving civil society.

An unseasonably warm week - such a pleasure, after a string of frosty mornings, well, and not to forget the big snowstorm 2 weeks back.

Bird list for the week of November 7-11, 2011.

Wild Turkey
Canada Goose
Herring Gull
Ring-billed Gull
Red-tailed Hawk
Cooper's Hawk
Rock Pigeon
Mourning Dove
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Northern Flicker
Blue Jay
American Crow - 89 birds counted
Fish Crow - 12 birds counted
(the West Haven crow roost is gathering again!)


American and Fish Crows gather on a West Campus rooftop.

American Robin
Northern Mockingbird
European Starling
Cedar Waxwing
Carolina Wren
Black-capped Chickadee
American Goldfinch
House Finch
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Northern Cardinal
Eastern Towhee
Song Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
Brown-headed Cowbird
House Sparrow

SB 512 Threatens U of I Pensions

On Tuesday a state House committee approved a pensions bill which contains a number of measures which seriously downgrade the pensions of U of I faculty and other state employees. Among these are:

*Creating a three tier pension system at the U of I which would reduce benefits for new hires
*Increase pension deductions for U of I faculty from the current 8% to 15% as from 2013. This would apply to anyone who wants the present, defined benefit pension plan. This rate could go as high as 17% after 2017.

This is a major attack on public employee pensions and committee approval means the bill can now be voted on by both houses of the legislature. This could happen as soon as today. The State University Annuitants' Association (SUAA), the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the Illinois Education Association all oppose the bill. To read the SUAA press release on the bill click here. We urge you to contact your elected representative and make your voices heard.

Catching up

fall colors afloat on the Oyster River

Among other excuses, I have had a cold for the past two weeks and opted to stay indoors knitting, rather than go out birding - so, the list this week is 100% attributable to Ms. Lynn Jones - her photos too.

Bird list for the week of October 31 through Nov 4th.

Wild Turkey
Canada Goose
Great Blue Heron


Ardea herodias, G B H, passing through West Campus

Ring-billed Gull
5. Herring Gull
Killdeer
Turkey Vulture
Red-tailed Hawk
Cooper's Hawk
American Kestrel
11. Mourning Dove

Rock Pigeon
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Downy Woodpecker
American Crow
16. Fish Crow
Common Raven
Blue Jay


A small amount of birding involves unsolved mysteries. Here's half a hawk Lynn saw this week. An immature Buteo? - I was going for young Red-tail, based on the rufous head, pale belly, dark back, vertical streaking. Who knows?...

American Robin
Hermit Thrush
21. Tree Swallow

European Starling
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Black-capped Chickadee
Song Sparrow
26. White-throated Sparrow
Chipping Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
Northern Cardinal
Brown-headed Cowbird
31. House Sparrow


Here's a beauty - the Blue-headed Vireo, Vireo solitarius, Lynn saw last week.

New Haven Bird Club's Feederwatch (link, or see below) started this week, and Lynn has begun keeping a tally of our feeder birds, as she has for the past two winters. So far, the usual visitors are a pair of Blue Jays, a few chickadees and sparrows, Mourning Doves, woodpeckers and a gray squirrel. This week a huge flock of juncos descended - sixty at the highest count!

NHBC 19th Annual Winter Feeder Survey November 1, 2011 through March 31, 2012 This is a yearly census to help determine the number and frequency of birds visiting feeders in the Greater New Haven area. You are invited to observe and record the activity at your feeder at least once a week for the entire time period. Contact-Peter Vitali: 203.288.0621,vitali_peter_e@sbcglobal.net

So, in last week's post I mentioned a taste of winter, with more to come. Saturday, October 29th the northeastern US was hit with a snowstorm - a nor'easter on a scale usually only seen in mid-winter. [hmm, interestingly, I took no photos] Parts of the state were without power for 7, 8, nine days, as heavy snow brought down trees which still had a full complement of leaves.

Read Scott Kruitbosch's well-written account of the storm - from the perspective of a birder. Local news media provided plenty of coverage of the storm's aftermath - from the perspective of disgruntled customers of the state's electric utilites. Now, close to two weeks after the storm, here's a link to a blog in which the writer posted power outage maps for October 31st.

A Story that Needs Changing

On Monday, October 24, the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory hosted “The Innovation Conspiracy: Ruin and Rebirth in The American University,” a lecture by Christopher Newfield, professor of English at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Below is a post he has provided for the Campus Faculty Association Blog. His official blog can be found here.

"A Story that Needs Changing"

Public universities are being endangered by a false consensus about their problems and solutions. The consensus puts every academic activity in an austerity box, which makes it much harder for universities to imagine the educational upgrade our society and economy need.

I’ll offer two examples, and the first occurred last week in the Levis Faculty Center on the UI –Urbana campus. My comment here is not about what actually happened in the room. It is about the story arc that was pieced together by a reporter – I assume with impressive professional skill --from statements that seem to have been made.

On October 25th, the News-Gazette published an article about a faculty meeting with the new University of Illinois system president Michael Hogan. One goal was to discuss Hogan’s centralization plan, which would among other things create a single admissions system for the University’s three very different campuses – Urbana-Champaign, a mature and internationally distinguished public research university, Chicago, an important urban campus, and a regional campus at Springfield. It appeared that the enrollment centralization plan had not yet been presented to the chancellor of the Urbana campus or to faculty representatives. Faculty were worried that the plan was a done deal already decided by the new president and the Board of Trustees. The possible implications were clear: a major point of authority would be taken away from the campuses. Perhaps the Urban-Champaign campus would be leveled down by administrative means.

According to the story, when faculty expressed concerns about this lack of consultation, president Hogan asked if they wanted to go back to the days when UI was under investigation for corrupt admissions practices. He noted that state law “makes it perfectly clear the university is a single, common entity with a single seal, single president... single budget,” although, he conceded, the system has three “somewhat distinct campuses.” He added, “The president is the president.” When UI history professor Mark Steinberg told Hogan, “there’s a growing worry this is a board of trustees we have no influence over,” Hogan replied that the board is “incomparably better than its predecessors” and that they are engaging more with faculty than before. Hogan’s position appeared to be that the faculty had nothing to complain about, and that concerns about consultation could be laid to rest by invoking presidential authority.

At another point, Hogan noted that faculty would be asked to play a “big role” in identifying “programs that makes us distinctive and distinguished.” The reporter then cited Hogan saying that “this is a big university and it was built in an age of abundance . . . Now we’re living in an age of scarcity.” The faculty therefore would be helping the university “to decide whether it can afford to sustain all of its programs.”

The article does not mention anyone who described the practice and principles of shared governance at the University of Illinois. Nor does the article mention anyone that, on the question of academic programs, noted high rates of existing campus innovation or who called on the president and the Board to support upgrading educational quality.

Here we have a missing narrative, one that explains what has actually been going on in universities.

Faculty and staff struggle in a time of cuts to maintain quality, and students struggle to learn in larger classes with less help. Tuition goes up as public funding goes down, and yet, in this accurate story, faculty, staff, and students continue to innovate and try to upgrade with decreasing help from political, business, and academic leaders.

The News-Gazette article instead provided a familiar script. The presidential figure, Michael Hogan, affirms a constitutional basis for a unitary executive, places faculty outside of that, defines the era uniquely as a time of cuts, suggests that faculty had not sufficiently adapted to this plain reality, and defines their role as cutting their own programs. The narrative does not err by raising the issue of program changes, which would normally include elimination and consolidation. The problem is the false tale through which these changes are presented.

Here the executive is the bulwark against people who deny fiscal reality. Full governing partnership with the faculty would implicitly jeopardize this.

The News-Gazette article exists in ecology of such articles. The national discourse is the fuzzy sum of these inputs. As it happens, the next day the Los Angeles Times covered the new College Board report on tuition increases, where other standard elements were introduced. The headline was “California leads nation in escalation of college costs.” The piece began, “Steep funding cuts to higher education in California and elsewhere were significant factors in pushing average tuition and fees up 8.3% at four-year public colleges and universities nationwide this fall.” The causal claim here was explicit: states cut funding, and then universities raise tuition.

Lest readers believe that universities are being hurt by shortsighted legislators through no fault of their own, the narrative locates an expert named Patrick Callan, president of the Higher Education Policy Institute, a reputable think tank based in San Jose, California. Callan told the reporter that the real issue is cost containment: “Universities still resist efficiencies, especially in adopting new technology and persuading research faculty to teach more classes. `There is a real lack of serious attention to productivity and innovation,’ he said.”

This article offers an operative back-story that animates the conflict in the News Gazette narrative without being present in it.

The claim is that faculty and staff not only do not innovate but are opposed to innovation. Sadly, the innovations they oppose, according to this tale, are exactly the ones that would save money while at the same time, through higher teaching loads, help students. This narrative offers the back-story that explains why public universities now require the strong executive that Michael Hogan came to UI to be.

Taken together, these two newspaper articles reinforce the current consensus on public higher education. Here are its key elements, including several that are not part of these two particular articles:

• Everyone agrees that higher education is a private good.
• As a result public funding is never coming back.
• Therefore we must give up on that and orient public universities toward downsized programs, relentless cost cutting, and higher tuition.
• Faculty and staff will resist all of these, so a university’s senior managers must be given the authority to impose efficiencies.
• These efficiencies must be enforced through productivity assessment, including bibliometric analytics for faculty promotions, educational efficiency as measured by degree throughput, and other Taylorist practices.
• None of this hurts educational quality, which will instead improve through tougher management.

These elements form a vicious narrative cycle, and for decades it has had the real-world effect of reducing resources for public education relative to the private elites (p 237). Faculty members need to redouble their efforts to fix this narrative, for the sake of research and teaching alike.

It's our time...

For all of its issues, York ( see earlier blog ) is one of the most influential and far reaching institutions to be found anywhere. Add to its nearly 55,000 students over sixty thousand students at the University of Toronto, twenty thousand plus at Ryerson University and many tens of thousands in other university and college campuses dotted throughout the GTA the opportunity and challenge afforded is almost overwhelming…

As I think and pray about the campus, the words reverbrate through my soul. I am NOT OK with this! I am not ok with the way things are. I AM NOT OK!  I can't be.

The reason I dove into coordinating this work is not only due to my experience but because I honestly believe that it is time for our Fellowship to weigh in.. big time.

So, let's make it clear. I am talking about the PAOC. Many are those who are shocked to find that we do campus ministry. They are even more shocked that we often do it really well. More shocked still to find that we are doing it all over the country.

Allow me to be bold enough to say the words that have been alive in my heart for several years.


It’s our time. The time is now.


This could sound like arrogance. I pray not. It is an emerging sense  of responsibility and role. It is the recognition of an opportunity - a word often used to translate a meaningful greek NT word 'kairos'.  The ancients recognized 'kairoi' as key hinge moments that determined 'fate'. It corresponds to the English sense of 'timing' or 'season', which is an opportune time which demands a response.

Yet, here is an honest assessment. We don’t do it well enough.


We can do more and/or better. We must. When I walk through the huge institutions that swallow our young like Molech of old, I am physically affected. I am not being overly dramatic, here. I feel the weight of the challenge.  


 Institutions like York rise like Goliath and loudly taunt God’s people to do something. Anything.....

The assumption is that the parachurch organizations which  continue to serve us so well have it all taken care of. Yet, on almost all campuses across the nation there are less than three percent of the student population involved in a Christian group of any kind whatsoever. In many places it is much less. Much, much less.....

Add in all of the other worthy groups and organizations involved in campus ministry in our nation to our own efforts and the truth be told... all of our combined efforts fall stunningly short of what is needed.

We have a challenge and an opportunity before us. Engage the campus. Do it with the experience and resources we have as a movement. Whether it is planting churches, providing chaplains, starting student clubs, developing church ministries that actually reach out onto campus and/or developing commercial projects that reach the campus , we can leverage the experience of those who have done it well and who are still growing.

I believe we can have it all. Intellectual integrity. Biblical and theological soundness. And the power of the Holy Spirit. We can do it in a way that is contextually aware, creative and that reveals the servant heart of Jesus. To my mind this is 'normative' Christianity.

What we cannot do is be OK with the way things are...

Introducing Our New Blog Editor, Inger Stole

We are introducing a new blog editor, Inger Stole, who will be collaborating with Susan Davis in keeping us posted with CFA news.

Inger is a member of the CFA Communications Committee, and she not only has great ideas for writing about working and learning conditions at UIUC, but she’ll be doing interviews with faculty at unionized campuses.

Inger is Associate Professor of Communication at UIUC, and she is an expert on the history of advertising, war-time propaganda, and consumer culture. Welcome, Inger.

My past few days have been spent in the academic blogosphere where good news is a rarity, at best. Tales of expanded workloads, shrinking benefits, expanded class sizes, and elimination of “cost inefficient” courses and programs seem to dominate the discourse. All of these issues seem inter-linked in a race to the bottom for our working conditions and our students’ learning experiences. Demanding work conditions and stresses that traditionally have been part of adjunct professors’ burden are now trickling up to assistant professors. Those in more established careers have been less affected by the new “austerity measures” but we should not fool ourselves into thinking that tenure is a protection against future administrative quests for efficiency.

It is true that in Illinois, with its grievous economic situation, we never seem to be able to offset the dwindling income from state and federal sources. The administration is eager to show the Board of Trustees and Springfield that it CAN cut its way to a leaner University. The question is for whom and for what purpose. Programs that are less attractive to outside corporate funders are particularly affected by the ongoing “austerity measures” while the administration itself seems to have missed (or not read) its own memo about saving money.

As faculty members emphasized at the recent meeting with the President and Chancellor, many are frustrated by the lack of fiscal and decision-making transparency. We can only guess about the administration’s ultimate goals, but it looks as if the tough economic times have given it a golden opportunity to change the university’s future in much more privatized, corporate direction. Surely I am not alone is having noticed that no one from the administration promises better times, improved benefits, and better working conditions once the “economic crisis” is over. As Norman Denzin said at the faculty meeting, the administration offers no vision or dream for the public university, no big idea we can hang on to about education’s role in a good society. But I think we the faculty can offer one.

Only faculty, be they tenure track or non-tenure track, know what it is like to teach at this university. We are the closest to the students and their learning experience. It is up to us to push the academic administration to join a dialogue about public higher education and its future.

So, I hope this blog can be a place of meaningful discussion about learning and working at the UIUC, and what we can do to improve it. Techno-fixes in the form of “I-clickers” and other ways of digitally managing students are not the answer. Neither do we need to commission new (and costly) image campaigns. The people of Illinois already hold their public university in high esteem. Thus, we need to protect the institution and improve it through our own ways of taking back responsibility for its shape and direction, and make it financially affordable for students to attend.

What is happening in your school or department? What does that mean to your students? How would you improve it? What are you doing in the classroom or laboratory or community that helps your students learn, rather than merely pass assessments?

And specifically, I want to ask: what difference a union would make to faculty at all levels, and to the University as a whole?