University of Oregon College of Arts and Sciences, or CAS, has created a position for a new Associate Dean of Strategic Initiatives (ADSI). The new job will be filled by Carol Stabile who is a professor of women and gender studies and the interim division dean of social sciences. Stabile was appointed to the position by CAS Dean Andrew Marcus and will take on the new position beginning on July 1.

News of the Stabile’s appointment was first reported by UO Matters, a blog run by UO Faculty Senate VP Bill Harbaugh, but some of the facts were inaccurate, such as the name of her new position.

Stabile was appointed without an open search and was the only candidate considered for the position, which Marcus says is within his power as the dean. The appointment was authorized by the provost, according to Marcus.

Before making the appointment, Marcus gathered input from members of the CAS dean’s office and the provost’s office.

Marcus says that he wanted Stabile for the job and did not go through an open search because he knew it would result in him choosing her, and would require people to put in more work than just appointing her.

Talks of creating the position began back in February of this year in the CAS dean’s office. Around that same time, Marcus reached out to Stabile about if she was interested in the position. As of May 30, there has not been a formal notification to faculty.

This was because Stabile had asked Marcus to wait to notify anybody until she had a chance to tell her department at the University of Maryland where she has been on leave from this year.

The ADSI will be part of the dean’s leadership team and will be tasked with developing, planning and implementing new strategic initiatives for the CAS. Stabile will not have permanent oversight of staff or budgets decisions.

“She will; however, be in a sense our imagineer… the engineer who can help us imagine what we might become and then actually put time into those initiatives,” said Marcus.

After hearing about the planned appointment, a group of faculty members sent a letter to Marcus.

According to Marcus, Stabile was the right candidate for this job because she has been a leader at the university in many ways and she has an extraordinary vision in seeing new directions.

“This was a position that I created because I felt like we had a remarkable opportunity of the right person and a need coming together at just the right time,” said Marcus.

Prior to being appointed to the position, Stabile has held other positions at the university including the head of the Center for the Study of Women in Society and the head of Women and Gender Studies department.

“This is a position that is going to reap long-term benefits for the college and the university,” said Marcus.

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Over the last week, at least six University of Oregon students received emails through their Uoregon accounts attempting to scam them.

The emails asked for about $400 in Bitcoin and threatened to share embarrassing videos on social media if the amount was not paid within 24 hours. All of the emails featured improper grammar and came from people who said they were not native English speakers.

According to UOPD spokesman Kelly McIver, these scams are clearly extortion, but it is not likely that the perpetrators can be identified.

At least two of the students who got these emails received them from accounts that appear to be from another country.

This can be determined by looking after the .com of the email address. Something like .br means the account is from Brazil, according to Leo Howell, the chief information security officer at UO.

Howell says that if anyone receives an email like this, they should not pay the scammers and that the best thing to do is seek help from university resources such as UOPD and Information Services.

There are multiple ways scammers can find an email address. The least effective way is by guessing it, according to Howell.

“If you look at email addresses, they are patterns. It’s either first name, last name or some combination. It’s not very difficult for hackers to actually get a student’s email address,” said Howell.

These kinds of scams are extremely common and can be sent to anybody. Scammers often send them to a large amount of people in the hopes that a few will pay, according to Howell.

Howell also said the groups that run these scams are organized like corporations, where different people have different roles in crafting the emails.

McIver says that in his experience, he has frequently seen international students be the victims of email scams.

In order to protect themselves from receiving scam emails like these, students should be careful about which websites they visit and be more vigilant about what they do in front of a screen, according to Howell.

Many email services have spam filters which let the user block emails from international accounts, which can reduce the risk of receiving spam. The Uoregon email system has a filter that looks for obvious forms of spam, but some scammers are clever enough to get past that.

“The most effective control that is out there today is to set up two-factor authentication. … those kinds of things reduce your chance for a breach by like 98 percent,“ said Howell.

If you have received an email like this, you can report it to UOPD or UO Information services.

“We like to know if it is happening and to be able to keep some track of that because then we can work with them. … If we see a lot of those reports coming in, we can be checking with Information Services and saying ‘are you getting a lot of reports on this on phishing?’ We can collaborate on a message out to the community,” said McIver.

This post has been edited for accuracy.

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Last week the University of Oregon announced that they will be searching for candidates for 39 tenure-track faculty members for the 2018-19 school year.

“We value our students, we want them to have tremendous experiences,” said UO Provost Jayanth Banavar. “All this is sort of the mechanics of how we go about doing it.

These announcements are part of the second year of the school’s Institutional Hiring Plan. The hiring plan is an initiative that centralizes the process so that the provost’s office is in charge of how many new faculty members each college can bring on in a year. Previously, the process had given each college more control of how many faculty members they could hire.

Banavar says that they considered a number of different things when deciding which positions to search for, including if there had been faculty members who left, how the new positions would benefit students, what positions are important for the future of the university and what do the deans and faculty think are the most important positions to students.

The process began in November 2017 and involved faculty members and deans from each college and multiple members of the provost’s office, according to Banavar.

The final list was determined by Banavar with advisement from other members of the provost’s office.

In addition to the 39 job searches for next year, the UO is also continuing as many as 17 searches from this year that have not yet been completed. About 40 faculty members leave the UO every year, because of retirement or new jobs and some of the new searches are replacing those who have left.

“The goal is to take care of our students, and so there has to be a balance between the needs of the university on many fronts and how much money we can invest in bringing in faculty,” said Banavar.

Five of the new positions will be for the Knight Campus, planned to open in 2020, and were funded by a $500 million gift from the Penny and Phil Knight. Also, seven of the new positions are part of a Presidential Initiative in Data Science which is funded by part of the $50 million anonymous gift given to the school at the beginning of the school year, according to the hiring plan. Some of the new business school positions are funded by the extra tuition money brought in through differential tuition that business school students pay.   

“How do you determine which 39 new slots you should have recruitments in because it’s a big university?” said Banavar.

Of the 39 new searches, 18 will be in the College of Arts and Science, one will be in the College of Education, two will be in the College of Design, one will be in the School of Law, six will be in the School of Business, three will be in the School of Journalism and Communication three will be in the School of Music and Dance.

“We are very open to getting ideas and suggestions and improving this as time goes on, but I was very pleased with the way it went,” said Banavar.

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The first look at designs of the University of Oregon Black Cultural Center have been unveiled. Construction does not have a set start date but will break ground sometime this fall.

It will open in Fall 2019 and will cost $2.2 million. $1.7 million of the funding has come from donations.

The center will be 3,200 square feet and located at East 15th ave. and Villard Street. The decision to build the center came in direct response to one of the demands made by the Black Student Task Force in 2016.

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The newly renamed Student Care Team is a group of campus staff members from a number of different departments that helps University of Oregon students who are struggling academically, mentally or emotionally.

The group was formerly known as the Dean’s Consultation Committee. Despite the name change, the group still serves the same function.

“Our emphasis is on care for the student and how to help the student stay at the U of O and be successful,” said Renae DeSautel, the chair of the Student Care Team.

Some examples of concerns that students might take to the team are suicide attempts, events that impact campus community or it’s safety and events that impact a student’s ability to stay in school.

The team meets every week and is made up of about 10 people. On the team, there are members from the University of Oregon Health Center, Counseling Center, University Housing, UOPD, the Dean of Students Office, Academic Advising, International Affairs and the Accessible Education Center.

The Student Care Team helps a small number of students whose cases are the highest level of concern. Multiple members of the care team often interact with the students that the group decides to help. Members of the UO Health Center and Counseling Center can’t share student information with the group because of confidentiality reasons.

Students can’t be directly referred to the Student Care Team by those outside the group, but members of the group will refer students who have had the biggest concerns.

“We are able to more holistically figure out what is the best avenue to support that student in their success,” said DeSautel.

The name of the group was changed because many people didn’t know what the old name meant and it didn’t represent what the group was doing. Many other colleges around the country like Oregon State University have similar groups, most of which are also called Student Care Teams, according to DeSautel.

During fall term, the team evaluated about 100 students and generally reviews about 10-20 student situations a week.

“We are encouraging folks to share concerns about students as a mechanism for us to be able to reach out and help,” said DeSautel.

If you or others are concerned about a UO student’s well-being, you can refer them to the Dean of Students.

“I want students to support other students when they could use assistance, and I also want to make sure that we’re honoring that student relationship and people being supportive,” said DeSautel.

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The University of Oregon is changing course evaluations to make them more useful and eliminate implicit bias. The changes, if approved, will remove the number-based rating systems that are in place and replace them with more specific questions that require written answers.

“Those scores have nothing to [do] with how much a student learns in a class and that’s really problematic because our intent as [a] university is to try to get better at teaching,” said Bill Harbaugh, Teaching Evaluation Task Force co-chairman and Senate vice president.

The UO Faculty Senate has been working on making changes to course evaluations since last May, when the Senate formed a task force to improve them. ASUO Election Commissioner Ram Sharma says that he thinks UO should make more people aware of the possible changes before going through with them.

From May 1 to May 3, the university will hold a series of four town halls, each one focused on informing a specific part of the campus community. The town halls will also be used to gather feedback about the upcoming changes.

The decision to improve evaluations came after Harbaugh discovered a study that showed trends of discrimination in college course evaluations.

“If this information is not telling us what is good teaching then we have to wonder why we are collecting it and fix the way we are collecting it,” Harbaugh said.

In the winter term, UO began testing the new format of course evaluations in about 20 courses that were taught by faculty who have been involved in changing the course evaluation process. The format being tested incorporates some of the proposed changes and ask students to share three things that are going well in the class and three things that aren’t.

“It focuses them to think about specific issues rather than general ‘did you like this class’ kind of questions,” Harbaugh said.

One additional change that will be made is removal of the long wait for grades for students who don’t fill out course evaluations.

The task force is also looking to change when the evaluations are done and are planning to move the main evaluation to the middle of the term. In this case, the information from evaluations would be immediately available to the faculty member teaching the class.

In addition to students evaluating teachers, UO has teachers observe and review each other’s classes.

“It’s not very well organized, so different professors use different systems for doing that, and we suspect that those evaluations are not really any more accurate than the student evaluations,” Harbaugh said.

UO is also planning to improve the way these evaluations are done by creating specific questions about the teacher’s performance during the class.

“I think most faculty are enthusiastic about the idea of replacing numerical scores,” Harbaugh said.

Harbaugh said that many of the students the task force has talked to don’t understand the purpose of course evaluations. Sharma said that course evaluations are important to students because it gives them a chance to be open about the quality of teaching that classes and teachers offer.

The Senate plans to vote on a resolution to make the changes official sometime before the end of spring term and have the changes take effect for the entire university beginning in fall term of next school year.

Harbaugh said that he is concerned about low response rate if the new changes go through because one student providing useful feedback can help improve teaching.

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On Monday the Eugene City Council voted to approve a new law that will allow ride-sharing companies such as Uber and Lyft to operate in Eugene. The law passed with a 7-1 vote and will make changes to background checks for rideshare drivers, vehicle inspections and licensing requirements.

The law passed over three years after Uber stopped operating in Eugene after it was determined that the company was in violation of the city code because it did not have a Public Passenger Vehicle Company License.

Uber and Lyft are yet to say when or if they will start operating in Eugene.

“I think this is going to be a great addition to our transportation model,” said City Council member Jennifer Yeh.

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The University of Oregon is in the process of hiring an associate vice provost for online and distance education. The position is new and part of UO’s effort to better coordinate and support online education.

Part of the role of the new AVP will be to determine what students are looking for in online education.

“The primary goal for online education is to support undergraduate student success,” said Scott Pratt, executive vice provost for academic affairs. “What online will do as its first priority is provide online and hybrid course options for our current students.”

Two other goals of online education at UO are to create a few targeted masters online and hybrid programs and create online-only undergraduate degree programs.

“I think our expectation is that our undergraduate students will have online education as a part of their program, not the whole of their program,” said Pratt.

In the long run, Pratt said that there should be some options that allow students to earn a degree online.

UO offers no degree programs that are exclusively online, while Oregon State University offers 50 of them. OSU is ranked in the top 10 universities nationally for online education, according to OSU.

UO is looking to hire someone for the position that has had previous experience developing programs at another research university, according to Pratt.

In 2015, over 6,000 UO students took an online course. Last year that number grew to around 8,000, according to Pratt.

The university is testing late-add courses that are less than four credits to give more class options to students who drop classes. These classes would satisfy general education requirements and will be shorter and allow students to do them on their own time.

This term, there were 79 courses that were listed as distance or online education, according to DuckWeb.

“We are kind of late to the game, and so we have done a lot of looking at how a place like ours — a research university — doesn’t have a well-developed online program at this point,” said Pratt.

“Arizona State and Oregon State both have huge online programs. We are not in a position to compete directly with the kinds of things they do, but there are other things we can do,” said Pratt.

The hiring process will be overseen by a 10-person search committee made up of members of the UO faculty and staff. The AVP’s pay will correspond with their experience.

The university is hoping to hire someone for the position before the start of fall term next year.

There will be a town hall on May 2 from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. to allow students and faculty to learn more about the search and the university’s vision for online and distance education.

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A newly formed student coalition, Jews Against White Supremacy, will host a walkout on Friday, April 20 with a number of other student activist groups. The walkout is against gun violence and white supremacy, and it correlates with the National School Walkout that is also scheduled for that day.

April 20 is also Adolf Hitler’s birthday and is “a day white supremacists celebrate,” according to a press release from JAWS.

The walkout will be held at 10 a.m. at the EMU and will include student speakers affected by white supremacy and gun violence.  

In addition to organizing the walkout, the JAWS is asking that University of Oregon ban white nationalist Jimmy Marr from campus. Marr parked a van painted with swastikas near the EMU on April 20 last year.

On April 3, JAWS met with University of Oregon President Michael Schill and Vice President and General Counsel Kevin Reed about concerns of white supremacy on campus.

They asked if Marr’s presence last year violated campus policy regarding discrimination. Reed said those policies apply only to the students, staff and faculty of UO. Marr has not been banned from campus since the meeting.

JAWS also asked the administrators they met with to investigate if Marr’s presence last year violated campus policy regarding discrimination. Reed informed them that UO speech policies apply only to the students, staff and faculty of UO and that Marr’s actions did not violate the first amendment either.

After meeting with the students, Reed sent them a statement in which he further explained his decision. The statement explained that while Reed understands JAWS view, he could not ignore the decades of legal precedent that universities do not ban words or ideas by members of the public in public spaces.

This post has been updated to clarify that Marr’s presence didn’t violate the first amendment and further explain the Reed’s decision 

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If you’ve ever wondered how a complete stranger is able to find your phone number, you’re probably not aware that it and other personal information is available to anyone via the site UO Find People.

If you are a student at the University of Oregon, anyone who knows your first and last name can find your phone number, email and other personal information. They can do this through the website, UO Find People. The directory is intended to connect anyone, whether it’s a professor’s office or a classmate’s phone number, says UO spokesman Tobin Klinger.

If a student has fully opted into the service, the search will display the phone number, email, major, address and whether the person is in an undergraduate or graduate program.

ASUO election commissioner Ram Sharma said he has been aware of the site and that there are some pros and cons to it.

“On one hand, yes, I do feel weird that someone can type in my name and get my number and that stuff. On the other hand, I can see it being useful,” said Sharma via text.

Oliver Aguire, Brian Cruz and Taylor Camarena are all UO students who had no knowledge of it and felt weird that anyone could find their phone number or email address.  

“I don’t think I’ll be using it. Honestly, I think it’s kind of weird, but it could be useful to students,” said Aguire, a freshman majoring in business.

For faculty and staff members, the site provides the job title, department, office address, email and phone number.

The page is often used by Daily Emerald reporters when trying to contact sources affiliated with the university. On average, the site has about 103,000 page views per month. This equates to about 3,000 page views per day.

Only one percent of those who have their information on the site completely opt out of the service. Klinger says that the service is fairly known by members of the UO faculty and staff.

Klinger said that university websites are expected to have some kind of site that allows people to get direct contact information for students or faculty members.

Many other universities have similar services and are often called directories. Both Oregon State University and Portland State University have similar services available.

UO is able to share the information because during the registration process, students are presented with options of how much of their directory information they want available on the site. Cruz, Aguire and Camarena all said they do not remember doing this during the registration process.

Klinger says that the site does not receive any specific promotion.

“Generally speaking, as consumers of information on the web, we have an expectation when we visit any organization website that there is going to be some component of it that leads you to the ability to contact specific people,” said Klinger.

If a person wants to remove some or all of their information, they can go to DuckWeb, choose personal information, then online directory profile and follow the instructions from there. Students can also update their information through DuckWeb.

“It’s an essential and universal part of university websites because that ability to connect with people is essential to carrying out the business of the university,” said Klinger.

When a student opts completely out of directory information, that includes all information about their status as a student at the university. Klinger said that he has gotten calls from parents of students who made the Dean’s List but had not been recognized by their hometown media because they had completely opted out of sharing directory information.

“Back in the day, we used to call them phone books,” said Klinger.

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