President Imeson.  Chancellor Cox.  Members of the Board.  By way of reintroduction, my name is Gary Tiedeman, and I have been an Oregon State University employee for twenty-nine and a half years.  It is my pleasure to appear before you today for the first time as IFS President.  I welcome the opportunity to observe, to learn, and perhaps to offer a faculty perspective from time to time.  I thank you all for that opportunity.

It is my intent today to summarize the February meeting of IFS, to give you a preliminary forecast of IFS goals and activities for the year 2000, and to comment on a few current higher education topics and concerns.

The IFS met February 4 and 5 on the campus of Oregon State University.  We were welcomed  by Immediate Past Provost Roy Arnold and  were then visited by State Senator Cliff Trow, whose first emphasis was the critical importance of key initiative measures which, if not defeated, could devastate higher education and every other public service enclave in Oregon.  We then discussed other facets, mostly legislative, of Oregon's distressing 46th place standing in state revenues for education, of prospects for the composition and behavior of the next legislature, and of what can be done to affect the fate of higher education.  Senator Trow's visit led directly to opening discussion of the development of an IFS legislative agenda, to which I will return shortly.  We next visited with OSU Interim Provost Tim White and discussed topics ranging from New Provost Shock and the ethics of veterinary surgery  to shared campus decision making.  Finally, as part of our Saturday morning agenda,  we spent an hour conversing with Denise Yunker about the PEBB situation, particularly as it affects faculty and their interests.

Every one of our guests had something to say about the notion of system mediocrity, and the consensus view was that the Oregonian series has been a mixed blessing.  The idea does constitute a double-edged sword.  If we admit to
mediocrity, we look inept, inferior, second-rate.  But if we deny mediocrity, especially after our continuous claims of relative deprivation, then those who make funding decisions may be inclined to infer that our funding is sufficient, which it certainly is not.  What we must all express more clearly, I believe, is that we are confusing at least two forms of mediocrity in our reactive discussion.  On the one hand, our resources are, indeed, mediocre.  In fact, if mediocre means average, they are far less than that, and we would all be pleased if we could achieve mediocrity.  On the other hand, the OUS system is blessed with many of the finest teachers and researchers in the land.  Our students benefit from such a surprising but fortunate circumstance, and they can obtain an education which matches that found anywhere else and which is anything but mediocre.  It is amazing that we're as good as we are.  What we need to stress is how excellent we could become.  Why settle for adequacy in higher education when we have the potential to be the very best?

It will continue to be our custom to include a board member as one of our guests at each meeting.  Two of you were invited to attend the February meeting but were unable to do so; several of you can count on future invitations, and it is my understanding that we are expecting some Board presence at our April meeting here in Eugene.

Let me comment next on IFS goals for the year 2000.  In the early going, these goals are primarily two in number.  First, there is the legislative agenda to which I alluded earlier.  Although this is not a legislative year, we consider it an equally important year for higher education because it is the year during which the next round of players will be chosen, their attitudes ascertained, some of the issues set, and it is the year the next higher education budget proposal will be formulated.  Term limits mean that there are significant numbers of new, inexperienced legislators to be identified, elected, and informed - - or, perhaps preferably, informed and then elected.  A first key deadline is just around the corner, in the form of the May primary, so we have a working subcommittee already at work to mark some fruitful pathways for us.  Our activities, teachers and researchers that we are, are likely to feature depictions of the character of higher education in Oregon designed to educate political decision-makers to our reality and our needs.  Among our early ideas are: graphic educational summaries of the essential interconnections between compensation, quality, recruitment, and retention; encouragement of a K-16+ perspective toward the end that education in Oregon not be viewed as ending with high school; development of a network of scholars willing and available to assist legislators in formulating legislation; and construction of accountings of what happened with the recent budget increase - - and what did not happen. I shall apprize you of our achievements as the year progresses, and you are likely, I hope, to see samples here and there.

Our second central goal is very much in consonance with the first.  It is to communicate and work more effectively and interactively than in the past with three sister organizations (the Association of Oregon Faculties, the Oregon Student Association, and the American Association of University Professors) on behalf of higher education.  Each of these groups has its own traditions, emphases, and strengths, and we believe that actively cooperative endeavor will best benefit all concerned.  Our joint annual meeting is coming up in April, by the way, and we hope to see some of you there.

In terms of what to include in these reports, a few well-wishers have cautioned me not to talk about salaries.  The usual expression is: "The Board members don't like to hear you 'whine' about salaries."   Meanwhile, virtually all of my faculty colleagues plead with me to speak loudly and frequently about salaries. Since I am first and foremost a faculty member, and since the organization I represent is the Interinstitutional Faculty Senate, you can imagine which set of advice I feel obligated to heed.  It would be grossly irresponsible of me to do otherwise.  For a faculty leader in the State of Oregon not to sermonize about salary insufficiencies would be akin to a businessperson being silently oblivious to a drop in the stock market or to Ernie Kent  continuing to start a player who scores no points and collects no rebounds.  The unusual event we witness around us coincident with this meeting is the latest indication that our sad salary situation can no longer just be set aside in a quiet corner.  (While the display you see here is not a result of IFS instigation or sponsorship, I can assure you without hesitancy that IFS endorses the sentiments you see being expressed.)

The as yet undelivered promises of the new budget model have intensified faculty frustration, sapped morale yet another degree, and shed a bright new spotlight on discrepancies with our comparator institutions.  And we are even further behind those comparator institutions than we already were when the Board established its catch-up plan two years ago:  the gap has grown, not shrunk.  I do think you will hear less 'whining,' however.  For when whining yields no result, it either shrinks to embittered silence or magnifies in volume.  I expect that shouting and screaming might become more the standard until significant improvements are evident.  If so - - if the cries do become more strident and persistent - - I hope the members of the Board can appreciate that they are not indicators of selfishness, or greed, or antagonism, but of dedicated professionals who desire to make Oregon higher education the best it can be and who realize, from daily life "in the trenches," what it takes to make that happen.  These are not enemy voices but the voices of citizens who feel abandoned, exploited, and unappreciated by their fellow citizens and, therefore, ever more desperate.

Finally, faculty can be well and fairly served through benefits other than salary, of course.  And faculty with whom I speak are absolutely delighted at the prospect of a tuition reduction program for faculty dependents.  Even those of us to whom it would not apply personally regard the program as an important symbolic gesture in a system so resource-strained.  Yet, we understand that some of the provosts and presidents are resisting its adoption, and especially resisting its portability component.  Realizing that the Chancellor and the Board have already registered support for this simple, inexpensive, inventive assist to faculty, I nevertheless invite whatever additional push may be within your power.  Again, it is not just the benefit per se that is at issue, but the all-important demonstration of caring, concern, and effort.  Otherwise, it is ironically fitting that we this week mourn the death of Charles Schultz and his Peanuts characters.  For faculty feel very much like poor Charlie Brown, who trusted Lucy every year to hold the football in place, only to have it jerked away at the last second.  Please help us give this one a good, healthy kick.

I apologize if I have overstepped my bounds or my time limit today.  I am on the early slope of a new learning curve.  But I sincerely thank you for allowing me to share these remarks.
 
 

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Gary H. Tiedeman
Professor of Sociology/Director, Liberal Studies
Fairbanks 303/Social Science 211
541-737-5383/541-737-0628
FAX: 737-5372/737-2434
E-mail: GTiedeman@orst.edu