Jackson: UNT to move forward

UNTLifer · August 24, 2005

We have a system Chancellor that doesn't have a background in academia other than being a student making this decision. Based on the most recent Princeton Review, our athletics far surpasses our academics.

It is well publicized that the faculty didn't care for Pohl concerning the tenure issue. Maybe Dr. Pohl was on to something there again considering the Princeton Review. I agree with Dr. Pohl in that athletics is the window to the university. Maybe the BOR needs to look at the person in charge of the system because the view through the window isn't pretty right now. Sure, NT is growing by leaps and bounds, but being the biggest doesn't equate into being the best.

I would like to see LJ stay out of things he doesn't know and do what he was hired to do. Support RV, but don't tell him how to run the Athletic Department, support the Presidents, but don't tell them how to do their jobs, just use your supposed legislative clout/fund raising abilities to further NT's mission and stay out of the professional's way.

DallasGreen · August 24, 2005

Agree, drex...
Too many of the academic community at NT (not all) just cannot see the trees for the forest when it comes to athletics or athletics-related construction. Many of that group feel they are the losers (instead of the gainers) in such construction endeavors like the ones happening now at Eagle Point Campus. Many Denia-ites are NT employees and were probably the ones raising the most hell in the last 2 years concerning Eagle Point Campus' short-term and long range future.
LONG PARAGRAPHS AND LONGER SENTENCES: If any of our fine academians NT's teaching facilities were as old, beat up, adjacent to an interstate and cosmetically not pleasing to the eyes to 50,000 daily commuters off I35-E who would see their teaching venues and just in the same general shape as Fouts Field is today (even with recent cosmetic changes that are basically putting minor touch-ups on major problems with age at the top of that list); anyway, this group at NT would raise all kinds of holy hell, ask to have their buildings checked out as to have them condemned, imploded and ultimately replaced. Yet they most likely have no problems in thinking we could live with Fouts Field for another 50 years. (This group should have to work in DFW like many of us as to understand how one facility off the interstate gives many Metroplexers their "first impression-last impression" perception of NORTH TEXAS). Some of those academians might just ask Lee Jackson, when do we start the new stadium?!?!?!
Also, too many of this select group of NT acadamians do not have the foresight to understand what a new stadium can do for each of their respective academic departments in the area of stimulating alumnus interest, ie, alums from each of their departments they see graduate that would rarely show up at NT with their check books as to say "hello" or visit their major's academic building, touch base with their former professors and all this if not.............for Game Day at NT.
Too many of our NT academians just simply don't have the ability to conjure up a vision past their own personal pet projects as to see how a first class football facility (sorry folks, its Texas--not Indiana to you basketball junkies); like many of this group now teach in could make a new generation of NT alums (and its older nestor alums) feel proud of their school and want to $upport it when he or she graduates.
Venerable Fouts Field has served its purpose for probably a generation too long, but the sooner its gone--the better for the entire NT community, both those who receive their paychecks from NT and those who would give to the overall endowment of our alma mater AND to each of the academic departments that were our alum's majors/minors academically. Just my .02 from the, uh, Far Side.
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In the immortal words of J.C. Matthews-- Never let the alumni grow too strong for they will constitute a threat to the faculty. This is the prototype of a faculty oriented President. If we get one of these the entire system steps back 50 years and we will soon be non-scholarship in the American Southwest Conference begging the DISD to use the Collins Complex. This is a crossroads for UNT. Let the regents know your opinion. The best we can hope for is someone half as good as Norval Pohl whose only criticism comes from a faculty that was used to business as usual and tenure based on years of featherbedding rather than performance. Heaven help us all if the faculty has great influence in choosing our new President as they just ran off the greatest UNT President to serve in my lifetime if not of all time.

Edited August 24, 2005 by DallasGreen

PlummMeanGreen · August 24, 2005

In the immortal words of J.C. Matthews-- Never let the alumni grow too strong for they will constitute a threat to the faculty. This is the prototype of a faculty oriented President. If we get one of these the entire system steps back 50 years and we will soon be non-scholarship in the American Southwest Conference begging the DISD to use the Collins Complex. This is a crossroads for UNT. Let the regents know your opinion. The best we can hope for is someone half as good as Norval Pohl whose only criticism comes from a faculty that was used to business as usual and tenure based on years of featherbedding rather than performance. Heaven help us all if the faculty has great influence in choosing our new President as they just ran off the greatest UNT President to serve in my lifetime if not of all time.
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So very right on and true, Dallas Green.

The part that all but shames me and makes me feel pretty darn bad as an NT alum is how I feel Dr. Norval Pohl was the sacrificial lamb because he stood up for NT Athletics not with just lip-service (as we are all used to in Denton) but with actions to do what he said he would do.

I can't help but feel that that was the main reason our NT academic community turned on him with their low approval rating of him as president. Lee Jackson will probably let that be the first thing our new president hears about on that new presidents first day on the job at our main campus, too.

Dallas Green is right on inasmuch that we "ALL" must write or email NT Board Chairman Bobby Ray with "cc's" to each NT regent and head off at the pass what is NORTH TEXAS' usual tendency to back-step in the area of athletics after we've made substantial strides forward. That is, head off at that pass the tendency for our powers that be from past decades to take us back to the era of lip-service when it comes to NT Athletics as in, uh, tell those NT alums what they want to hear and then (basically) do something pretty well close to the opposite.

<>*<> The NT branding officials and the elitist attitude that came from (especially) one of their committee members who in that now infamous mis-directed email to one of our alums said: "We don't have to answer to that group" should give us all a hint of a whole new attitude of elitism at our alma mater. If that person is reading this: That group you don't have to answer to just happens to be some of the most loyal and visible (in pretty decent numbers, too) that the University of North Texas has ever had. Yet that one mis-directed email should serve as a pretty big red flag for all of us and the entire NT community as a not-so-subtle hint of things to come.

We cannot let this ship hit an ice-berg because it appears that our captain may very well have the capacity to steer us into dangerous waters. Our ship has already hit a few ice cubes and even a few blocks of ice, so aren't those red flags that a major ice-berg could soon be on the horizon at NT? Just my .02 from the western Far Side.

Edited August 24, 2005 by PlummMeanGreen

FirefightnRick · August 24, 2005

QUOTE(DallasGreen @ Aug 24 2005, 08:27 AM)
In the immortal words of J.C. Matthews-- Never let the alumni grow too strong for they will constitute a threat to the faculty. This is the prototype of a faculty oriented President. If we get one of these the entire system steps back 50 years and we will soon be non-scholarship in the American Southwest Conference begging the DISD to use the Collins Complex. This is a crossroads for UNT. Let the regents know your opinion. The best we can hope for is someone half as good as Norval Pohl whose only criticism comes from a faculty that was used to business as usual and tenure based on years of featherbedding rather than performance. Heaven help us all if the faculty has great influence in choosing our new President as they just ran off the greatest UNT President to serve in my lifetime if not of all time.

While I will restrain from hijacking this thread by making any further comments concerning our ALUMNI and GROWTH , I have to say this is one of the best posts of the day in describing our current situation at NT.

Rick

Edited August 24, 2005 by FirefightnRick