The Managerial Class in Higher Education

For those of us who enjoy helping others to learn new things and reach their potential, it is difficult to understand the "managerial" class.

By managerial, I don't mean those exemplary (and rare) administrators who lead by example, demonstrate leadership through their own accomplishments, and get out of the way for those who want to accomplish something. By managerial, I mean those who feel it is their job to force others to implement narrow minded policies; those who want to micromanage by inserting themselves into the work of others; and those who simply want to justify their own existence through the exercise of power.

As an historian, I was always struck by the lesson of the so-called Enlightened Despots of the German states. In Enlightenment-era Germany (late 1700s to early 1800s), there were several dozen separate & independent nations (depending on when you do the counting the number varied). Most of these little nations had a university. So long as the petite princes and kings allowed scholars such as Immanuel Kant, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Justus (von) Liebig to do their jobs, higher education thrived. When states such as Prussia or Austria tried to set academic policy as a matter of politics, higher education declined.

It wasn't simply the Despots themselves who were to blame when things went downhill, of course. Usually, there was a bureaucracy involved--ministers of finance, religion, industry, etc. The ministers had power, but not necessarily any understanding of, appreciation for, or respect for the university professors. In fact, the ministers often saw the university professors as a threat--progressive thinkers who, like Kant, advised people to "sapere aude" (think for yourselves).

It seems that, today, we might be in a similar situation. Many colleagues I have talked with believe American higher education is in decline. Some, as mid-career tenured faculty, have almost totally disengaged from their administrators and colleagues (see for example the renowned critic Harold Bloom's description of his life at Yale and his reception as a speaker at other colleges (http://www.booknotes.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1580). Such faculty will show up and teach their classes (and often do a superb job of teaching), but they will not participate as a member of the academe.

I sometimes wonder if such problems are present at my own institution, Montana Tech. There are many signs that might indicate a serious problem. When I began as a professor with this little engineering school 17 years ago, Tech faculty salaries were on par with our "big sister" university downriver in Missoula. Today, Tech faculty salaries are about $12,000 less than the University of Montana-Missoula. For nearly every one of those 17 years, UM-M enrollment increased significantly. Tech's enrollment has stayed flat. And increasingly we seem to be hiring MS-level rather than PhD-level faculty.

Low salaries make it difficult to attract and retain top-notch faculty. Those who stay become increasingly demoralized as they see their salary stagnate. Demoralization plays out as increasing alienation and disengagement from campus affairs.

Efforts to increase enrollment by throwing more money at recruting have failed. The latest effort is an expectation for faculty to be directly responsible for recruiting students. This prospect has merit, but will not work unless faculty are self-motivated. The policy of "beatings will continue until morale improves" does not work for dogs and horses, let alone for human beings.

Some departments have not a single PhD-level faculty member. While a PhD might not indicate superior competence in teaching, this is a disturbing sign for an institution that expects research and publication from its faculty. There seems to be confusion on this matter, and some still argue that only teaching matters. If that is the case, then the institution's mission statement and promotion & tenure guidelines should reflect that reality.

All hope is not dead. Within my department (Technical Communication http://www.mtech.edu/hss/ptc/tc/media/ptc.htm) I find myself surrounded by supportive, hard working, and highly motivated colleagues. And I know from watching the growth of other institutions -- such as my alma mater Drexel University (http://www.drexel.edu/) -- that tremendous improvement is possible in a short time. For that to happen, administrators and faculty need to support and work together toward a common vision. Finally -- unless faculty are empowered and rewarded in the pursuit of a shared vision -- nothing will change.

The Moulton Journal: "ego snow"

The weather has warmed to normal--this morning it was in the mid-teens: an "extra blue" wax day. I took yesterday off to let a sore shoulder recover a bit, but with a little fresh snow on the trails I could not say "no" again today.

On some days, the snow conditions are such that even a fair skier can execute pretty turns and do about what they want to do. Rick Appleman has named these conditions "ego snow," and today -- at least on the trails -- was a good instantiation of that general concept. Extra blue made for good climbing without herring-boning on all but the steepest section of Yankee Boy. And though it was not an especially fast day, I found it delightful to zoom around the narrow turns on Buzzy without edging to drop a lot of speed.

Someone new is skiing The Moulton, or at least someone with a new set of skis. They are short and fat like tele boards, but whomever was wearing them did a lot of skating. They did not seem to leave the telltale "fishscale" marks of no-wax skis. Could this be something new?

Other than a croaky raven and a solitary moose (ho hum), not many critters were out and about today. Looking down the Deer Lodge valley, it appears we might have some weather moving in. But as Paul Sawyer likes to say, "The best way to prevent a snowstorm is to predict it."

The Moulton Journal: 11 minute Yankee; pine beetle mystery

A morning of skiing is a lot like an orgasm: it's hard to have a bad one.

Years ago, Rick Appleman (who skis with the grace of a cat) suggested that 11 minutes is a pretty good time for the Yankee loop. Arghhhhh!!!! He poisoned my mind, and since then I occasionally carry a watch so that I can time a run on Yankee. I've found that anything under 12 minutes feels pretty darned good especially as I slide into Little Nipper (it makes a nice "cool down") and my heartrate drops below 200 or so. Today was about 11 & 1/2: not a great time by Applemania standards, but my heart & lungs felt pretty good about it.

Here's a mystery: What is causing these de-barked patches on the lodgepole pines?

My hypothesis is that pine squirrels are scraping off the bark to get at beetles & grubs (aka larvae). Do squirrels eat beetles? I dunno, but the scraped trees do seem always to have squirrel tracks to and from them. Perhaps the bark is simply flaking off as the trees die, but the bare patches look to have been scraped by little claws and there are occasional piles of fresh bark scrapings.

The Moulton Journal: Butte directions for cross country skiing

Great ski yesterday, the trails were fast and green wax perfect. There was a flock of black-backed woodpeckers feeding in lodgepole pines near Nipper Junction and damn I had forgotten the camera. What a joy to watch them, though, benefitting from the mountain pine beetle outbreak. I'll bet the population of woodpeckers has increased hugely in recent years.

How do you get to The Moulton's cross country ski trails?

As someone pointed out, asking directions in Butte can be tricky.

First of all, despite the wonderful outdoor recreation at our backdoor, surprisingly few Butte folks are outdoors-men and -women. And if the outdoor recreation does not involve motorized recreation, there are fewer still.

Secondly, local directions are confusing. For example, Jan & I had recently moved to Butte and we wanted to change our license plates. We asked a kindly man on the street for directions to the motor vehicle registration bureau, and he replied, "Go up the street and turn left a block before where the Miners' Union Hall used to be." !!!! Ahh, Butte--where memories are alive.

So here's a map and a few added notes:

• The Moulton Road is full of twists, ups & downs, blind curves, and careless drivers (and sometimes moose). Drive cautiously. If the road is not too snowy or ice, then 25 mph is about right.


• The Moulton Road is maintained by Butte-Silver Bow. Most of the time it is plowed and gravelled. It's not high on the priority list, though, and after a big snowstorm can be nearly impassable.


• A good map and ski trail directions are posted in the ski area parking lot.


• There is logging on the private land just beyond the ski area parking lot. You must cross this area to get to the ski trails. Be careful. So long as the snow is not too deep, I've been driving a half-mile or so beyond the parking lot to avoid walking through the logging area. There are a few turnouts where you can park. Do not, of course, block the road.

The Moulton Journal: A Buzzy Day

Another cold morning, so I nursed that second cup of coffee and ate the last few Christmas cookies while waiting for the sun to warm things up a bit. Plus we got home late from the Indigo Girls concert in Missoula last night, and sleeping in a bit felt "closer to fine." By the time the sun was bright and the mercury on the porch hit 10 deg F (in the sun), RTD & I were ready to go.
Looks like the loggers took today off, can't blame them what with this being the third morning in a row way below zero.

Maybe I'm getting used to it or maybe it warmed more quickly this morning, but skiing did not feel cold (or slow) at all. Despite the holy mitten. I rooted around in my winter gear in the basement and found a new pair of leather choppers complete with wool liners. Actually, given the feel (and a few intelligent questions), the new liners seem to be some sort of smartwool. I have the choppers made of elk hide (http://www.uberglove.com) and they are pretty tough--the current pair made it through five years, I think, of skiing and hunting and winter camping. Hate to get rid of the old friends, maybe I can turn them into some sort of pouch.

A dusting of fresh snow came sometime yesterday, and it was nicely bonded to the old stuff. The cold weather made for good climbing with green kick wax, and the cold weather had taken what little crust had been on the snow. A Buzzy day! You don't have to be, but sometimes it helps. No sign of Rick Rossi's tracks along Buzzy or the pole-line, and I haven't seen his vehicle at Moulton for a week. He must be over to the Bighorn for his annual winter fishing trip. Rick is Math dept head at MT Tech and skis everyday when he's in town, it seems.

Paul grooms Buzzy only rarely, and some years not at all. That's OK as it provides a nice off-trail experience. Some years ago he regularly gave it a once-over with the bedsprings, but I don't know if he grooms with them at all anymore. Once upon a time, almost all the grooming at The Moulton was done with an old set of bedsprings towed behind a snowmachine. But in recent years Paul has adopted the fancy roller and corduroy groomer provided by the ski club. They do a better job, I suppose, but maybe it's hard to groom a narrow, steep trail like Buzzy?

One-way trail sign on the Buzzy segment leading down to Big Nipper.

For most of the morning, green kick wax was perfect. As it warmed up, though, the combination of old snow and sun didn't leave much kick. But by then it was all downhill to the Rover and the lack of stick made for good skating. Life is good, and yes, today was "closer to fine."

The Moulton Journal: a cold, slow ski

Skiing was cold and slow this morning, maybe because it was about -20 deg F. Even polar wax is slow on days like this, the skis give plenty of stick & kick, and not much glide. Makes it hard (for me) to skate anything but a downhill grade. But it's always good to be outside, even though the hole in my right mitten was letting the heat out and freezing my thumb. And my feet got a little cold on the long downhill run back to the truck.

It's good to see some cold weather, maybe it'll knock the mountain pine beetles (Dendroctonus ponderosae) back a little (though it's way too late for most of our lodgepole forest).

Here's a pic of a tree with lots of beetle "pitch tubes"--they're the little light colored spots of pine sap. As the beetles bore their way into the bark, the tree tries to expell them by exuding resin. When there are a lot of beetles, however, the trees are overcome and this simple defense mechanism does not protect them.

And here's a close up of a pitch tube.

Loggers were working this morning, cold or no cold. Tough job.

Chokecherry Jelly (poem)

Chokecherry Jelly

Brent scouting a place where elk hide,

along the river finds chokecherry paradise,

slick leaves hording sunshine.

Spring's profusion of blossoms scent the air,

bring joy to humble bees and European cousins,

they feast on sun's nectar.

Late summer fruit hangs on branches heavy,

tart fruit that puckers the mouth,

shocking flavor rocks you off balance.

Fruit that brings joy to Native Peoples and European cousins,

they feast on sun's essence.

Lewis & Clark & Sacagawea knew this joy,

knew this medicine that moves through all things.

Karina too knows as Brent drives up,

pick-up bed packed high,

hours then in kitchen mashing cherries, straining stones,

standing over steaming pots air thick with pungent sunshine.

Adler and Kenia know this joy,

hunched to table gobbling stacks of flapjacks

smeared with chokecherry jelly--

a child's first taste of sunshine.

Butte, Montana: A Geography of Somewhere

When you're in Butte, you know where you are. You know where you are as you look out to the East Ridge (of the Great Divide), to the Highland Mountains, or to the Pintler Range. You know where you are as you look up to Big Butte and the giant, lighted letter "M." (The "M" is emblematic of the School of Mines, nowadays known as Montana Tech.) You know where you are as you order breakfast at the M&M, watching the cook from the local pre-release center crack the eggs one-handed.

And you know where you are as you ski the trails at The Moulton, just a few miles north of town. When the great local pioneers of cross country skiing laid out the trails at The Moulton, they named these trails and their dips & turns after local mines and mining features. Names such as Claimjumper, Sluice Box, and Nugget dot The Moulton trails.

Though not a huge area, The Moulton ski area has many kilometers of trails. The great local pioneers of cross country skiing were masters at enfolding the universe into a compact strand. And the trails are varied, with a nice mix of beginner, intermediate, and "most diffucult" terrain.

A brief digression about dead trees: all around Butte -- The Moulton included -- you will see a lot of reddish colored lodgepole pine trees. Hundreds of thousands of acres of trees are dead and dying from a severe mountain pine beetle outbreak. This outbreak is a "natural" and cyclic occurence in lodgepole pine stands, but it has been exacerbated by several factors: drought, mild winter temperatures, and uniformly aged stands of trees. All of these causes are largely anthropogenic. The first two -- drought and mild winters -- are linked with global warming. The last -- uniform stands -- is caused by widespread clear cutting that levelled the area forests in a short time.

There is little to be done about the dead trees and pine beetle outbreak. Logging can help to salvage some economic value from the dead and dying trees, but it will in no way lessen the outbreak. In terrain that is not too steep, too wet, or too remote, logging will not cause much harm either. Much of The Moulton -- especially the private lands -- is currently being clear cut, a logging method that removes virtually all trees from a given area. Trees that are not logged are creating a situation ripe for a large landscape wild fire. That too is part of the natural cycle for lodgepole pine forests. As the trees are cleared, the land will grow up in grass and then woody shrubs and aspen, and then probably revert to being a uniformly aged lodgepole pine forest. Eighty years from now, the beetles will probably once again wipe out the trees.

Anyway, the nature of an area can change a lot over the short course of a human life. So The Moulton I know today will of course look considerably different from The Moulton I know 25 years from now. So it goes. Never mind all the houses springing up on the wildland fringe. Many people wanted to live in the woods, though now (given the threat of fire) they are clearcutting the forests around their homes. So it goes.

Back to the ski trails! I especially like the "upper" (north) section of trails. This area begins at Amalgamation Junction. Sometimes, once I get up to the junction, I'll ski the In Vein loop. As Rick Appleman likes to say, sometimes it is In Vein, and sometimes it is In Vain...

Though all the names for trails and trail features are taken from local history, these names are also very fitting. For example, I was once a little dazy, just skiing along, when I hit an icy stretch on a sudden downhill and quickly learned why it's named Wake Up Jim!

Hmmm.... Wonder why this section of Big Nipper is called Widow Maker? (A nipper was the guy in the mine who carried the tools from particular work sites back to the tool crib fore exchange or sharpening etc; a widow maker is a slab of rock that falls from the roof of a mine--also known as a "Duggan" after the name of a local mortuary.)

Yankee Boy, my favorite trail on the hill. Lots of steep climbs, downhill runs that become steeper and curve more as you get further into them, and lots of flats to skate or get long kick & glides--this trail has it all. It also seems to fit the rather perverse Vermonter sense of humor embodied by Paul Sawyer--a man who once brought a moose turd pie to a potluck supper!

Oh yeah.... When these trails are marked "One Way," you want to believe it. The trails are narrow in places -- just 8 feet wide -- and a skier coming around a steep downhill turn will need every inch of that space. Sometimes, I need just a little more...

Get the Lead Out!

There is no need for condors to be dying of lead poisoning (HCN, 2/18/02: Condor program laden with lead). This is a problem that is also increasingly documented for other birds -- such as bald and golden eagles -- that scavenge hunter's kills. There are already several alternatives to lead bullets on the market. For more than a decade, solid copper bullets have proven effective on all game. Though currently expensive for shooters who do a lot of target shooting, the cost to hunt with copper bullets is negligible when compared with what hunters pay for rifles, four-wheel-drive vehicles, a tank of gas, and other gear.

Once they understood the harm done to waterfowl, hunters readily abandoned lead shot. Conservation organizations such as Ducks Unlimited have done a great job in publicizing the harm done by lead shot. Groups such as the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation could effectively do the same for the move away from lead bullets.

Few hunters and conservationists, myself included, want to be responsible for poisoning condors, golden eagles and other scavengers. Hunters such as Teddy Roosevelt, William Hornaday and Aldo Leopold were leaders in the conservation movement. The National Rifle Association has been fighting any curbs on lead bullets, but the NRA is plumb crazy on this issue, and should either lead or get out of the way.

Moulton Moose

The elk seem to have left the Moulton area for the season, and we've seen no lion tracks yet this year. But Emily & I did run into this moose cow & calf.