UConn President Thomas Katsouleas will leave post, sources say

[ClifSpliffy]

'Katsouleas is a leading scholar in the field of plasma science and has authored or co-authored more than 250 publications. He has deep roots in academe, having served a term as president of the Faculty and Academic Senate at USC during his time in its engineering school.

He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). While at Duke, he also created the Grand Challenge Scholars Program of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), a program now emulated at more than 120 universities across the U.S. and in several countries around the world.'

prolly got frustrated trying to do real stuff while surrounded 24/7 by lawyers and wokey politicians. and blue ribbon committees generating white papers ad nauseum. that can wear a fellow down.

 

[CL82]

Spontaneous combustion and choking on his own vomit are the two leading theories at this point.

 

[Da_Aisijimo_Gou]

Honest question....How do you attract top talent for that position when you’ve had a revolving door of incumbents?

Aside from Pres K's brief stop in Storrs, has UConn actually experienced the suggested "revolving door of incumbents"? In the last decade or so, US university president tenures markedly decreased from prior decades. IIRC, about 4 years. Herbst served about 8 years. Hogan about 4. Austin, a decade?

 

[Duncan Idaho]

Or, we will know the answer going forward.

Spending 77 mil on the hockey arena.

 

[QDOG5]

Luke Murray just started following four provosts on instagram.

 

[CTMike]

Don’t be surprised when they get someone who is willing to be the bad guy and start slashing and burning.

 

[businesslawyer]

"One of the best choices a student can make in pursuing higher education is a research university where they are learning from faculty who are creating new knowledge,” he told The Courant’s editorial board in 2019. “There’s a value proposition when you are gaining the inspiration, insight and wisdom from those who are really leading the way. These are the kinds of experiential learning that you just can’t replicate anywhere else.”

This line kind of struck me. How true is that actually at the undergraduate level?

My fiance is defending her PhD as soon as her family gets time off from work, she also has a JD... I would think she has probably has taken more classes than most people. Her opinion is that the professor MOST attached to research are the worst teachers of undergrads. Even the most unique undergrad majors don't really require professors that are specialized like you would for grad programs.

Just food for thought. I don't really have enough experience to say definitively.

It's not true at all with respect to research. Scientific research and discovery requires skills that have absolutely nothing to do with teaching skills. It's probably closer to true in liberal arts, where writing history books has a closer skill set to teaching than making scientific discoveries, but it's far from the rule in liberal arts either,.

 

[Bonk]

He allowed our football season to be canceled. He shoulda stepped down after that embarrassment.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out!

 

[Hoophound]

I am prepared to embrace the old UConn. A fun, vibrant and unapologetically somewhat above average state university with a personality. I’m kind of tired of the overly uptight, overly conscientious nature of the whole place. Let’s play sports and drink some beer. Bring in a president from West Virginia.

 

[huskymedic]

 

[John Greene]

I am prepared to embrace the old UConn. A fun, vibrant and unapologetically somewhat above average state university with a personality. I’m kind of tired of the overly uptight, overly conscientious nature of the whole place. Let’s play sports and drink some beer. Bring in a president from West Virginia.

UConn has a real identity problem. Many on campus want it to be Michigan academically. Legislators and the voters want it to be half Michigan, half Michigan State.

 

[Bonk]

I am prepared to embrace the old UConn. A fun, vibrant and unapologetically somewhat above average state university with a personality. I’m kind of tired of the overly uptight, overly conscientious nature of the whole place. Let’s play sports and drink some beer. Bring in a president from West Virginia.

Additionally how about we reward CT tax payers by decreasing out of state and foreign admissions and increasing the number of in state people admitted to the Storrs campus. We'd certainly have better school/state spirit, and probably higher retention in terms of keeping our talented grads in Stamford and Hartford instead of dipping to Boston or NYC.

First hand, if I had to go a branch for two years I likely would have chosen to go to Bentley or Fordham instead, which would have likely gotten me a job in NY or Boston after graduating.

 

[Guapo]

Phd. She doesn't use her JD so much any more.

She should be a Patent Attorney

 

[JohnFSilver]

But Katsouleas was frequently frustrated by high labor costs at UConn, linked to the state’s chronic underfunding of pension and health care benefits, and said the university was losing out on research grants because of them.

Are our labor costs higher due to past underfunding or because the legislature mandates higher than market wages as a matter of public policy? We've seen that with the stadia build out. UConn's new hockey arena is more expensive and has lower capacity than arenas at private institutions because of it. In any event if it is causing us to lose grants the legislature needs to create an except for public research projects. UConn could be an engine of development for the state if can be competitive for grants. That was the whole idea behind the tech campus.

Like colleges and universities across the country, the COVID-19 pandemic put a strain on UConn’s finances. A free tuition program for students from low-income families was halted, and administrators reached out to the General Assembly for tens of millions in extra financial help.

In my opinion this program was always a bit of bad fit at the state's flagship university, though providing access to higher learning for low income families is a laudable and appropriate state goal. Note that UConn already has many programs to do just that. How New Jersey addresses it with the "Stars" program. Good students can attend county colleges for free and, if they maintain a sufficient GPA, can attend Rutgers at no cost in their junior and senior years. That is more cost efficient since it doesn't require room and board costs and the tuition cost of the county colleges are much cheaper than the four year schools. The Katsouleas plan is one of those ideas than sound great, but are ill-considered.

Underfunded. From the 1980s. We knew this was coming, and no one did anything about it until 2010.

 

[BigErnMcCracken]

She should be a Patent Attorney

Didn't he say she studies political science and sociology? Patent attorneys are hard science/engineers.

 

[JohnFSilver]

UConn has a real identity problem. Many on campus want it to be Michigan academically. Legislators and the voters want it to be half Michigan, half Michigan State.

I like this. There is a growing rift. There are some people who want UConn to be an elite public university.

Then, there are others who are really really upset when so many state students get rejected out of UConn. I think it bothers a lot of people that good, smart students can't get into UConn. Especially with the money they are poring in there. Not a ridiculous view. I want my kids to go to school there, but they are good students and as they go forward are not top of class.

Add that to the fact CSU schools are underfunded and might not offer all the majors, it becomes difficult to find a reasonable solution in state

I can see both sides of the coin.

 

[HuskyHawk]

I can't really speak for other subject areas, but I majored in Biology at UConn (specifically Ecology and Evolutionary Biology). I personally found it helpful that many of my professors were making great strides in ecological and evolutionary research and I was getting first hand knowledge from them about topics interesting to me before their publications came out. In different classes I was taken to their research sites and this experience provided really valuable information for me to really be well prepared and hit the ground running when I got my M.S. at a different university immediately after. I probably would have continued for a PhD if it wasn't for the fact that I was dating someone seriously and just wanted to get my life started.

Agreed. My sister is a researcher and professor for UGA (at Savannah River Site) and when she was at Colby in Maine won top teacher at the school from students two years in a row. If you've got passion for the field, you can be great teacher and researcher. But it helps if those "classes" are lab based, experience based learning. Hands on, rather than textbook based. She also had great experiences studying evolutionary biology at UConn. I think Ted Taigen was her faculty advisor.

That said, to @husky429 's point, some researchers consider their classroom obligations to be a nuisance, a bother that they must engage in. I think some great teachers probably feel that way about the expectation to publish and obtain grants, it interferes with teaching. They really do require different skill sets.

 

[Guapo]

Didn't he say she studies political science and sociology? Patent attorneys are hard science/engineers.

Ah I saw phd and jd and just assumed science/tech. My bad.

I work in IP so that’s probably why lol

 

[HuskyHawk]

I like this. There is a growing rift. There are some people who want UConn to be an elite public university.

Then, there are others who are really really upset when so many state students get rejected out of UConn. I think it bothers a lot of people that good, smart students can't get into UConn. Especially with the money they are poring in there. Not a ridiculous view. I want my kids to go to school there, but they are good students and as they go forward are not top of class.

Add that to the fact CSU schools are underfunded and might not offer all the majors, it becomes difficult to find a reasonable solution in state

I can see both sides of the coin.

I see some problems along this line.
1. Connecticut doesn't have a Michigan State, Kansas State, Iowa State, U Cincinnati, etc. level public behind UConn. The drop off from UConn to Central or Southern is massive. The smart move would be to rebrand one of those and put money into it. Differentiate it, make it really good at a couple of things, perhaps better than UConn.

2. The other problem is the USNews ranking gaming that is so critical to these schools now. Kansas gets clobbered in USNews, because it is required by the state to accept any KS HS grad with certain GPA and AP score. Then, lots of those kids flunk out as freshmen. Both of those things hurt your ranking. If you increase the % of in state kids, you likely drop your ranking.

3. Local perception and employer recognition. While UConn itself has improved in this area, it is still well behind many private schools. That's not really true in Michigan. Michigan State grads don't struggle to find jobs because the employers in state prefer private school kids. UMass has this problem, probably to an even greater extent.

 

[Guapo]

I like this. There is a growing rift. There are some people who want UConn to be an elite public university.

Then, there are others who are really really upset when so many state students get rejected out of UConn. I think it bothers a lot of people that good, smart students can't get into UConn. Especially with the money they are poring in there. Not a ridiculous view. I want my kids to go to school there, but they are good students and as they go forward are not top of class.

Add that to the fact CSU schools are underfunded and might not offer all the majors, it becomes difficult to find a reasonable solution in state

I can see both sides of the coin.

Here in Georgia, we have an incredible program called the Hope Scholarship, funded by the lottery.

if you graduate High School with a certain GPA (I forget what it is exactly) and maintain a 3.0 GPA in college, you get free tuition to any in-state school.

the program has made UGA extremely competitive to get into (and to a lesser extent Tech, which was already very competitive), so it has the double impact of improving the academic profile of the school while also benefiting in-state students.

this also has down stream positive impacts as well as its improved Georgia Southern, Georgia State, Kennesaw State etc etc in the same way

 

[Rocktheworld]

Okay so not actual “research”, and at best a loose connection with the scientific method of hypothesis formation and testing. Doesn’t shock me that that is her view on “researchers” being bad teachers. Me coming from a world of actual (behavioral) science, I would prefer to be taught by someone who is in the lab to some degree. At the very least, being so necessitates that they are thoroughly involved in the current literature and broader developments within said literature.

She seems to split time between poli sci, sociology, philosophy departments.

 

[BigTenFan]

I see some problems along this line.
1. Connecticut doesn't have a Michigan State, Kansas State, Iowa State, U Cincinnati, etc. level public behind UConn. The drop off from UConn to Central or Southern is massive. The smart move would be to rebrand one of those and put money into it. Differentiate it, make it really good at a couple of things, perhaps better than UConn.

2. The other problem is the USNews ranking gaming that is so critical to these schools now. Kansas gets clobbered in USNews, because it is required by the state to accept any KS HS grad with certain GPA and AP score. Then, lots of those kids flunk out as freshmen. Both of those things hurt your ranking. If you increase the % of in state kids, you likely drop your ranking.

3. Local perception and employer recognition. While UConn itself has improved in this area, it is still well behind many private schools. That's not really true in Michigan. Michigan State grads don't struggle to find jobs because the employers in state prefer private school kids. UMass has this problem, probably to an even greater extent.

Big Ten Universities tend to be more outcome driven. They have strong regional ties- UConn grads typically stay in CT.

 

[Duncan Idaho]

Northeast is not dominated by state U but rather in the Ivies and the wealth in the number of very fine smaller liberal arts colleges and universities.

 

[Rocktheworld]

Big Ten Universities tend to be more outcome driven. They have strong regional ties- UConn grads typically stay in CT.

Oh we do, huh? lol not too sure about that.

 

[CL82]

Underfunded. From the 1980s. We knew this was coming, and no one did anything about it until 2010.

Agree, but how does that impact current wage cost? I don't see it.

 

[Guapo]

UConn’s sales pitch should be pretty obvious; it’s the closest approximation to a big time school experience with sports culture/school pride etc. as you’re going to find in New England and, maybe, the Northeast (as I think UConn has “that” more than Rutgers does)

 

[CL82]

Agreed. My sister is a researcher and professor for UGA (at Savannah River Site) and when she was at Colby in Maine won top teacher at the school from students two years in a row. If you've got passion for the field, you can be great teacher and researcher. But it helps if those "classes" are lab based, experience based learning. Hands on, rather than textbook based. She also had great experiences studying evolutionary biology at UConn. I think Ted Taigen was her faculty advisor.

That said, to @husky429 's point, some researchers consider their classroom obligations to be a nuisance, a bother that they must engage in. I think some great teachers probably feel that way about the expectation to publish and obtain grants, it interferes with teaching. They really do require different skill sets.

I always got a chuckle of when people say that Professor XYZ is so brilliant that is why his class is so hard to follow, when the answer is likely that he or she is just a bad communicator.

 

[Rocktheworld]

Northeast is not dominated by state U but rather in the Ivies and the wealth in the number of very fine smaller liberal arts colleges and universities.

It’s telling when the state university of an area who has had residents since the 1600s is younger than that of states who didn’t become American territories until 150+ years later (using Michigan as an example). Northeast always had universities before “state universities” were a thing and everyone went to ivies and other privates.

 

[Da_Aisijimo_Gou]

Additionally how about we reward CT tax payers by decreasing out of state and foreign admissions and increasing the number of in state people admitted to the Storrs campus. We' certainly have better school/state spirit, and probably higher retention in terms of keeping our talented grads in Stamford and Hartford instead of dipping to Boston or NYC.

Minor consideration, how much do UConn's 25% or so out-of-state/US students' higher fees subsidize or lower costs for in-state students? Which % of recent in-state graduates (pre-SARS-2) stayed in CT versus moving to perceived more enticing and/or faster growing locations?

As normal-er work and living conditions gradually return, will most new UConn graduates still stay in CT? Just my unsubstantiated perspective, but my sense is many youngish movers and shakers will continue moving to fast(er) growing and/or mover and shaker locations versus staying in slow growth Hartford, New London, Waterbury, Torrington, etc.

 

[CL82]

I see some problems along this line.
1. Connecticut doesn't have a Michigan State, Kansas State, Iowa State, U Cincinnati, etc. level public behind UConn. The drop off from UConn to Central or Southern is massive. The smart move would be to rebrand one of those and put money into it. Differentiate it, make it really good at a couple of things, perhaps better than UConn.

2. The other problem is the USNews ranking gaming that is so critical to these schools now. Kansas gets clobbered in USNews, because it is required by the state to accept any KS HS grad with certain GPA and AP score. Then, lots of those kids flunk out as freshmen. Both of those things hurt your ranking. If you increase the % of in state kids, you likely drop your ranking.

3. Local perception and employer recognition. While UConn itself has improved in this area, it is still well behind many private schools. That's not really true in Michigan. Michigan State grads don't struggle to find jobs because the employers in state prefer private school kids. UMass has this problem, probably to an even greater extent.

Agree regarding your first point. Build up the other state sponsored entities and differentiate so they become part of a single integrated system rather than compete against each other.

Where UConn is getting killed in UNWR rankings is the state funding component. As the state lowers its funding, our ranking drops.

As to your 3rd point, UConn could do much, much better. Penn State is a good school to emulate here. They do a lot of work to maintain and enhance the schools brand.