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UVA Computer Science professor resigns over incompetence of board
- protomyth 14y agoAnyone have any sources for what the situation is?
- tomasien 14y agoJust Google it, this is a humongous deal in HooVille. I'll write a brief description above
- pinko 14y agohttp://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/u-va-board-appoints-interim-leader-mcdonnell-to-talk-with-reporters/2012/06/19/gJQAHAJ3nV_story_1.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/u-va-board-a...
- billyarzt 14y agoHere's the local Charlottesville paper, usually breaks stories sooner than the national press http://www2.dailyprogress.com/ http://www2.dailyprogress.com/
- tomasien 14y agoBrief description of what's happening: a bit over 2 years ago, Teressa Sullivan was appointed the first woman president in the history of UVa, a school that was all male until the 70's. Suddenly, last week she was forced to resign because of a "philosophical difference" with the Board of Visitors, a group that is appointed by the state of oversee University Affairs and top level hirings. It was later revealed this was the result of a coup by a bunch of Darden MBA's because they wanted "radical" change to the future plans of the University, not incremental change. The students and faculty are outraged because this was done in secret behind closed doors, which is very much contrary to the way things are typically done at UVa (because of Jefferson's vision or whatever, I find a lot of the Jefferson talk to be crap but let's take it for what it is for now). There have been protests, yada yada yada everybody is pissed and people are starting to quit. This is a big damn deal that's only getting worse, and although I'm a UVa alum who for some reason doesn't really care, I suggest taking a look at this if you're interested in the bs that can go on at the ivory tower institutions
- tomasien 14y agoI'll add that by all accounts she was beloved and was doing what was widely considered a great job. NOBODY was openly complaining, it was very sudden.
- dhimes 14y agoAlso alum, and I concur with your view. This is a high caliber guy who is resigning; he is (from his letter) married to a high caliber woman also on the faculty. This is huge. This will cause a loss of confidence in UVA if they don't take effective action to recover.
- electronvolt 14y agoAs a current student (undergraduate; CS/Math), and the son of two faculty members (Music/English) I'll agree with this. Every faculty member involved in some sort of administration that I know (both parents, multiple family friends, and people I have had courses for and work for) were in favor of Sullivan's proposed changes: anyone who has spent time around a University can imagine how hard it is to get that level of buy-in from the professors. (Hint: imagine herding irritable, opinionated, and very, very smart cats that are often impossible to fire. Then imagine that some of them have large bullhorns and are willing to write for Slate if they disagree with you, like Siva Vaidhyanathan here: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_minute/2012/06/teresa_sullivan_fired_from_uva_what_happens_when_universities_are_run_by_robber_barons_.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_m... Point being, it is hard to get consensus, and I might be understating that.) The main objection that I and most people I've talked to have is that the BOV hasn't given a good reason for its actions. It may very well be that Sullivan deserved to be fired. It may very well be that there needed to be more drastic changes than she was willing to make (although for an appropriate idea of how hard drastic, top down change is at a top University, see my description of faculty consensus above). But without releasing any concrete reason, backed up by publicly available data, and by essentially saying "shut up and trust our judgment", they showed a fundamental disconnect between their idea of acceptable governance and the rest of the university's idea of acceptable governance. For the record, I think that if you look at them as the board of a corporation replacing a CEO, their actions are totally reasonable (and I wouldn't be surprised if this was, in part, how they viewed themselves; this doesn't really say much for their case, though, because that still shows a massive cultural disconnect between them and the university body).
- pragmatic 14y agoUVA = U.VA. = U. of VA. = the University of Virgina.
- tomasien 14y agoUm, thanks? They say UVa actually, but yeah I can see how not everyone would see UVA and know what it was.
- hugopeixoto 14y agoI've always associated "uva" with the university of valladolid, spain (www.uva.es). It wasn't until I read this that the letter being in english finally made sense.
- ojilles 14y agoOr UvA. (University of Amsterdam, http://www.uva.nl/ http://www.uva.nl/)
- gpvos 14y agoSame here with the Universiteit van Amsterdam (www.uva.nl); and I guess there are more...
- mturmon 14y agoTLA namespace collision.
- Inufu 14y agoAnd I though of this: http://uva.onlinejudge.org/ http://uva.onlinejudge.org/
- wildtype 14y agoI think UVA as Universidad valladolid because i use their online judge.
- 14y ago
- wglb 14y agoWilliam Wulf is a seriously big deal in my book.
- kickingvegas 14y ago"More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency (without necessarily achieving it) than for any other single reason — including blind stupidity." — W.A. Wulf As an alumnus of the University of Virginia in Computer Engineering, kudos Professor Wulf.
- dredmorbius 14y agoThank you. You've just given me my #1 salvo against systemd :)
- chrismealy 14y agoThe lack of "strategic dynamism" part is hilarious: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/strategic-whatnow http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-co...
- gpvos 14y agoWhile the writer dismisses the term "strategic dynamism", he acknowledges the actual problem that the Board of Visitors tries to address: the imposed large budget cuts make it necessary that entire subjects/departments have to go, instead of small budget cuts across the board. Something that Sullivan apparently in the end wasn't able, or prepared, to do. (Note: I know nothing about the case, really; I am just pointing out that I think you misunderstood the point of the article you linked.)
- scott_s 14y agoI thought that part was interesting as well, and it's a seriously hard problem. I am aware of one institution making that hard choice, though: the College of William and Mary. Sometime before I arrived there in 2003 for grad school, they had eliminated graduate departments that the school felt could not become top-ranked in their area.
- aphyr 14y agoSeems to me that a major state university should aim to provide its students with a broad range of fields. Not being able to study German at a public school seems absurd.
- tryitnow 14y agoThis article is the most unbiased I've read. As a UVA alum I tend to side with the BOV in this case. Virginia is a notoriously stingy state and it's inevitable that big changes have to be made to keep UVA competitive. The current leader of any organization is rarely the best choice for making big changes. Unfortunately, it seems Sullivan was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. My guess is the BOV wanted to bring in a hatchet man to make some big cuts of entire departments as opposed to taking a shared sacrifice approach. I can tell you from my experience in the corporate world "shared sacrifice" rarely works for big organizations facing significant budget cuts. It's usually best to ruthlessly triage the weak parts and leave the strong parts intact instead of trying to cut the strong and weak equally. However, the BOV handled it poorly.
- thwest 14y agoReads more like a resume than reasons for leaving.
- WalterSear 14y agoIt's an open letter: he want's others reading it to know who he is, and why his opinion should matter.
- kmfrk 14y agoWell, it's both, I guess. He uses the extreme body of work to explain that he's got the experience and then some to tell them that this is a managerial and academic failure of nearly unprecedented proportions. He's not some tenured professor sequestered in the bubble of academia.
- Retric 14y agoAt a school that large they need to defend why their leaving matters.
- SpikeDad 14y agoI guess being a women in Virgina is an endangered species. Seems all they're good for is government forced medical examinations. Guess you get what you vote for in a guy like McDonald.
- jmduke 14y agoThe Rector of the Board of Visitors, Helen Dragas, is also a female. Gender had nothing to do with this.
- Nate75Sanders 14y agoTo be clear, this isn't some random professor: My wife (Anita Jones) and I are in Computer Science and we both hold the title University Professor — the highest rank at UVa. Of the 3300 faculty at UVa, roughly 13 hold that title.
- mturmon 14y agoAnd, not just a cranky emeritus: "I was President of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) for 11 years."
- rayiner 14y agoHe may be impressive, but he also sounds like an entitled baby boomer who thinks he should get more and more tuition dollars from young people in the name of "academic freedom." His resignation letter is devoid of even a sop to the budget crisis that has forced the Board to cut departments in lieu of raising tuition beyond the 275% the University has raised it in the last decade.
- brown9-2 14y agoHe may be impressive, but he also sounds like an entitled baby boomer who thinks he should get more and more tuition dollars from young people in the name of "academic freedom." Source? Sounds like his entire complaint is about the BOV. I don't see anything in the letter that would give you a different impression about the professor's complaint.
- rayiner 14y agoIt's implicit in the context of the larger debate. The furor is in response to the board trying to cut departments, because UVA has increased expenditures by 80% in the last decade while tripling tuition. It's easy to say that's not what it's about, but practically that what it's about. The university has been increasing faculty expenditures at 4-5% for years in the face of 0.7% increases in enrollment. The state has no more money. Faculty salary expenditures are the biggest line-item in the budget. If academic freedom is to be preserved by opposing the board's cuts, the practical consequence is continued rises in tuition.
- jlarocco 14y agoAnybody else completely lost on this? There's really no explanation in the link. I read the whole thing and have no idea why he's resigning, or even who he is or why I should care. "Being President was a full time job in DC..." made me chuckle, though.
- dredmorbius 14y agoAdditional backstory for those not gleaning sufficient context from either the HN title or Bill Wulf's resignation letter (echoing another comment: more a resume than a list of wrongs). From the Slate article below: On Thursday night, a hedge fund billionaire, self-styled intellectual, “radical moderate,” philanthropist, former Goldman Sachs partner, and general bon vivant named Peter Kiernan resigned abruptly from the foundation board of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. He had embarrassed himself by writing an email claiming to have engineered the dismissal of the university president, Teresa Sullivan, ousted by a surprise vote a few days earlier. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_minute/2012/06/teresa_sullivan_fired_from_uva_what_happens_when_universities_are_run_by_robber_barons_.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_m...
- chernevik 14y ago"Sullivan is an esteemed sociologist who specialized in class dynamics and the role of debt" Actually kind of a revealing sentence.
- dredmorbius 14y agoIndeed. I may have to look her up. The most interesting things I've seen written about debt in the past 20 years comes from an anthropologist, David Graeber. Debt, the first 5000 years. Insights I've never seen from an economist. I'm curious as to what a sociologist has come up with.
- chernevik 14y agoWhat I've seen of Graeber's stuff is interesting. Economics is too important to be left to the economists. But I've always regarded sociology as undisciplined and people studying it unrigorous. I haven't missed much by those rules of thumb. A number of Sullivan's books were written with one Elizabeth Warren. When other academics tried to examine their data they came up short. Look her up if you like, but you're more likely to learn more elsewhere.
- wcarey 14y agoBeyond the politics (which the Board of Visitors appears to have handled distressingly badly), there's an interesting analogy to software design lurking in the story. It seems like the philosophical conflict that drove Sullivan't dismissal maps cleanly to the two styles of programming that pg described in "Programming Bottom-Up": "It's worth emphasizing that bottom-up design doesn't mean just writing the same program in a different order. When you work bottom-up, you usually end up with a different program. Instead of a single, monolithic program, you will get a larger language with more abstract operators, and a smaller program written in it. Instead of a lintel, you'll get an arch." My reading of Dragas's and Sullivan's statements to the Board of Visitors is that Dragas wants the University designed as a lintel, and Sullivan as an arch. Dragas argues that "the Board is the one entity that has a unique vantage point that enables us to oversee the big picture of those interactions, and how the leadership shapes the strategic trajectory of the University." [1] The changes Dragas seems to support (though it's hard to find a clear statement of them anywhere?) would be akin to a major rewrite from scratch. University design by lintel. Sullivan conversely argues that, "[c]orporate-style, top-down leadership does not work in a great university." She seems to be arguing for incremental changes more akin to aggressive refactoring. [1] http://cvillenews.com/2012/06/18/dragas-sullivan-statements/ http://cvillenews.com/2012/06/18/dragas-sullivan-statements/
- gantz 14y agoI know this letter was written for a UVA audience but there is almost no actual rhetoric about why he believes the administration to be wrong. I understand the power of losing every title and honor on your own,..but why not put more Ome into drafting a concise and powerful argument?
- ChristianMarks 14y agoFor background and context, please see http://leiterreports.typepad.com/ http://leiterreports.typepad.com/ NEWSFLASH: the Vice-Rector has resigned. Let's hope that Rector Dragass [sic] resigns too.
- Camillo 14y agoThat's too much and not enough at the same time. We really need a decent summary.
- ChristianMarks 14y agoYou could start with this: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2012/06/coup-detat-at-uva.html http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2012/06/coup-detat-at-...
- rayiner 14y agoAdditional backstory: the revolt of the faculty is due to the Board wanting to close marginal academic departments at the University. Further backstory: the expenditures of the academic division at UVA have increased about 80% since 2001. Enrollment has only increased 9%. In-state tuition has increased about 275%. I'm not a UVA alum, but I grew up in Virginia, so I care about what happens at UVA. UVA's faculty can wax philosophical all they want about academic freedom and the like, but at the end of the day the explosion in university expenses cannot be ignored. Expenditures on faculty salaries have risen 4-5% per year over the last decade even though enrollment has only grown 0.7% per year and salaries in other sectors have been stagnant. It's insane that there are 3,300 faculty for a school that has only 21,000 FTE students. I'm a strong supporter of public education and public research, but facilitating this faculty growth at the expense of students is absolutely ridiculous and it's high-time the Board made some cuts.
- jmduke 14y agoWhat about the change in money brought in due to research done (aka the main revenue generator for academic institutions)? Also, do you have a source for the 80% growth?
- rayiner 14y agoUVA 2000-2001 budget: http://www.virginia.edu/budget/Docs/Budget%20Summaries/summary2001.pdf http://www.virginia.edu/budget/Docs/Budget%20Summaries/summa... (p. 4) UVA 2011-2012 budget: http://www.virginia.edu/budget/Docs/Budget%20Summaries/2011-2012%20Budget%20Summary.pdf http://www.virginia.edu/budget/Docs/Budget%20Summaries/2011-... (p. 1, 15) Note that the 2000-2001 budget lists only the UVA academic division, while p. 1 of the 2011-2012 budget includes the UVA medical center. The academic division is broken down on p. 15 of that budget. Thus the pie charts on p. 1 of the first pdf correspond to the pie charts on p. 15 of the second. At UVA, sponsored programs (i.e. research grants) make up only a quarter of the budget. Tuition and fees and state appropriations make up almost half. From 2001 to 2012, sponsored program revenues are up 60%, but not nearly enough to cover the 80% increase in expenditures. The other revenue sources haven't kept pace with spending growth either. Of the $590m in additional spending, $276m (or about half) has been supported by tuition increases. Another way to look at it is that if spending had kept pace with inflation (2.5%) and enrollment growth (0.7%), tuition could have been easily held at 2001 levels. Or, alternatively, had tuition revenues increased to track inflation and enrollment growth, university expenditures could have increased a more modest 50% given the growth in other sources of funding, rather than 80% which was achieved by almost tripling tuition.
- rfrey 14y agoApologies in advance for the off-topic comment. But in looking for more information on this story, I read http://hamptonroads.com/2012/06/amid-uproar-uva-moves-replace-president http://hamptonroads.com/2012/06/amid-uproar-uva-moves-replac... the Virginian Pilot. Which is not the item. The item is: I have never in my life read such civilized and respectful comments from blog or newspaper readers who clearly disagree with each other on an important issue. My goodness! Is this a regular feature of Southern U.S. life?
- chrisrhoden 14y agoEdit: Sorry, getting frustrated by the other comments about the south. It's nothing to do with your comment.
- jmduke 14y agoVirginia -- particularly Charlottesville and Richmond -- is not some Southern stereotype. That being said, I think the people most interested in this news are those with vested interests in Virginia higher education -- alums, donors, etc. -- and that tends to raise the average level of discourse.
- chrisrhoden 14y agoMost of the south isn't a southern stereotype. The DC metro is more like a new england city than either of the two you mentioned. This paper is based out of southeastern VA, in the VA Beach and Norfolk area.
- Bullislander05 14y agoEven the VA Beach and Norfolk area is significantly different than the average southern stereotype. It has a medley of cultures, mostly due to the massive military presence there. That said, I'm surprised the comments are so cordial. I agree with the analysis that the fact that it's mostly UVa alums/students and interested parties commenting contributes to the higher level of discourse.
- 14y ago
- wildtype 14y agoIt it ethical to publish someone resignal letter?
- gte910h 14y agoIt's an open letter.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- tmo9d 14y agoThe article in the Washington Post mentioned that the Board was unhappy that the ousted President wouldn't cut "obscure" programs like German and classics. Guess who majored in that obscure field of study? Tim O'Reilly, and he talks about how studying Classics helped him decode trends in technology. I'm an alum of the Engineering school, but I wouldn't have attended UVA were it not for the strength of some of these obscure programs. Monied interests are ruining this institution in the name of profit.
- iGarbo 14y agoBill Wulf who? I spent 5 years at UVA, graduating with honors and an MCS in 2005, but never had a single interaction with him. Ironically I did meet interim pres Carl Z at a breakfast for corporate recruiters last year and was impressed by his welcoming honesty. My anecdotes only reinforce what is obvious: Bill is a peripheral academic overdue for retirement, Carl Z was rightfully recognized, and UVA is in safe hands.
- mahmud 14y agothis is Bill Wulf, compiler hacker extraordinaire, designer of Bliss programming language and optimization pioneer. One of my personal heroes.
- redwood 14y agoVery sad to see. We need to save public higher education in this country, especially at the most elite institutions that actually have a chance to compete with the privates.
- mathattack 14y agoI don't know the professor, but seems like he's sticking the school with a problem in the fall with his sudden resignation.
- bconway 14y agoBy this email I am submitting my resignation, effective immediately. I do not wish to be associated with an institution being as badly run as the current UVa. A BOV that so poorly understands UVa, and academic culture more generally, is going to make a lot more dumb decisions, so the University is headed for disaster, and I don’t want to be any part of that. And, frankly, I think you should be ashamed to be party to this debacle! Is this real? That's barely proper English, and certainly not something I would submit to an (interim) university President.
- repoman 14y agoI don't like the letter. He spent too much time talking about his "experience". Oh come on. It's like "dude I am a Nobel prize winner, and none of you have that title so I am right." I hate people giving that kind of resignation, regardless of their intentions.
- joezhou 14y agoTHAT IS HOW YOU DO IT LIKE A BOSS!