Campus Connect

Campus Connect scours student unions, lecture halls and dorms for the crucial and quirky stories that make colleges and universities special. Share what you’re up to on a Friday night, learning (or not) in that lecture - and what you're looking for in a school search as a new student. Higher education reporter Jenna Ross will keep you informed.

Past U president ranks among best paid

Posted by: Jenna Ross Updated: May 23, 2012 - 5:14 PM

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The past president of the University of Minnesota was among the best-paid university presidents in the United States.

Robert Bruininks' total compensation of $747,955 in fiscal year 2011 earned him 8th place on a new list of public university leaders compiled by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

That compensation includes a base salary of $447,955, which alone ranks 45th among 199 presidents. But what brings him to the higher spot is $300,000 in deferred compensation.

Bruininks served as president for nearly a decade, and his compensation package was structured to reward him for length of service.

The highest-paid public president in 2011 was E. Gordon Gee, president of Ohio State University. He made nearly $2 million in total compensation. Gee has been featured in a recent New York Times series on college students' rising debt.

The Chronicle's list also compares the enrollment and endowments of the various public schools. Ohio State's enrollment ranks third, while the University of Minnesota's enrollment of 51,721 ranks fourth.

All this talk about presidential salaries reminds me of a conversation (confrontation?) Bruininks had a while back with a few legislators who questioned new U President Eric Kaler's salary.

Bruininks said then that while public universities should not pay outrageous salaries, "we also need to be competitive if we're going to get really good people -- and then trust those people with running, in my judgment, the most complex organization in this entire state."

Video: Dessa delivers commencement address

Posted by: Jenna Ross Updated: May 21, 2012 - 4:27 PM

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"Failure is a tool," rapper and writer Dessa told a graduating class of thousands. But not a tool in some ugly-duckling fable, she said.

"In being able to tolerate the prospect of failure," she continued, "you become bold enough to be appropriately ambitious when selecting your future objectives."

Dessa, a member of the hip-hop collective Doomtree, delivered last week's commencement address for the University of Minnesota's College of Liberal Arts, of which she is an alumna. The video is below.

"If you want a really good speech about how to be successful, I suggest that you Google Steve Jobs," she said. "He really killed it.

"Today, I’m going to talk a little bit about why I think failure is important."

Dessa, who earned her B.A. in philosophy in 2003, also recounted a key conversation with Professor Valerie Tiberius and described how her studies have informed her imagination.

Also, check her out in cap and gown.

'The happiest day' for MnSCU board

Posted by: Jenna Ross Updated: May 17, 2012 - 10:45 AM

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The folks in charge of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system were downright ebullient Wednesday.

Trustee Cheryl Dickson called it "the happiest day I have ever served on this board."

"This day is going to be remembered as one of the finest days in MnSCU leadership that we’ve seen in a long, long time," she continued.

Why all the fuss? The Board of Trustees had just appointed two new presidents: Scott R. Olson as president of Winona State University and Peggy Kennedy as president of Minnesota State Community and Technical College.

Olson has served as provost and vice president for academic and student affairs at Minnesota State University, Mankato. But the trustees knew him best from his interim job as the system's vice chancellor for academic and student affairs.

"To say that he was one of our favorites, everybody knows that that’s true," said Trustee Christine Rice. "He brought his enormous passion and talents and dedication to that job."

Kennedy had been interim president of Minnesota State Community and Technical College, a collection of campuses known simply as M State. Dickson noted that Kennedy "emerged as the favorite when she wasn’t even a candidate," initially.

The board repeatedly praised the fact that these two new presidents were already MnSCU employees.

"It’s exciting to have such a pool of talent within the system that we can pull forward," said Trustee James Van Houten.

Document: The rights and responsibilities of transferring in MnSCU

Posted by: Jenna Ross Updated: May 15, 2012 - 9:24 PM

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It's a bill of rights for transfer students. But it is also a bill of responsibilities. And it extends both rights and responsibilities to colleges and universities, as well.

The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities has been fashioning a new policy on "transfer rights and responsibilities" as part of the public system's ongoing effort to smooth students' switch from one school to another.

The full Board of Trustees will consider the policy at a meeting Wednesday.

See the full document here:

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Dean argues that design thinking ought to guide STEM education

Posted by: Jenna Ross Updated: May 8, 2012 - 5:30 PM

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Tom Fisher, dean of the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, is arguing that STEM education ought to start with design.

In new piece for the Huffington Post, Fisher contends that the fields of science, technology, engineering and math ought to better incorporate social, economic and environmental values.

Designers and architects, with their eye toward "the triple-bottom-line of bringing social and environmental benefits as well as economic ones," should be added to the STEM mix, he says.

Here's an excerpt:

We need to ask, though, what kind of STEM we want to grow. If we germinate it from the same soil that gave rise to post-World-War-II American industry, we will simply grow more of what we already cannot sustain.

We do not need more scientists creating more high-fat processed foods or more technologists devising more efficient ways of killing people. Nor do we need more engineers figuring out how to enlarge our already enormous ecological footprint or more mathematicians inventing increasingly esoteric forms of financial arbitrage. The STEM fields do indeed contribute to our technology-based economy, but whether they do so for good or ill depends upon how we grow these new educational shoots and to what end.

His post also touches on the practicality of the "millennial" generation and the importance of the perfect metaphor.

Appeals court rules for U of M in case over 'unreliable websites'

Posted by: Jenna Ross Updated: May 4, 2012 - 11:06 AM

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The Eighth U.S. Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday in favor of the University of Minnesota in a case over a university center posting a list of "unreliable websites."

The university is hailing the legal victory as a win for academic freedom.

The Turkish Coalition of America had sued the university in 2010, claiming that the U's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies violated the group's First Amendment rights by "blacklisting" its website because of its pro-Turkish viewpoint on the killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire a century ago.

This week, the appeals court agreed with the district court in dismissing the Turkish group's claims.

The appeals court rejected the Turkish Coalition of America's comparison to other cases in which school boards removed books from libraries. "Here, in contrast, 'the spectrum of available knowledge' for students at the university was unaffected," the ruling said. "There is no allegation that the defendants impaired students' access to the TCA website on a university-provided internet system."

It also found that the group's defamation claims failed.

In a statement, the U's general counsel Mark Rotenberg said the decision "confirms the right of universities and their faculty to offer scholarly criticism and critique on websites without fear of legal exposure."

Read the full decision here:

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