Author Archives: sherlockj

UVa President Ryan Has “No Idea.” Golly Gee.

by James C. Sherlock

As a follow-up to yesterday’s story on the slide show for the UVa Board of Visitors on DEI at the University, I think it only fair to offer President Ryan’s preamble to that presentation.

To summarize:

  • He cannot imagine what all the fuss is about; but
  • He assures that DEI efforts at UVa are misconstrued by critics, who he divides into two camps:
    1. those who support the goals of DEI “but are concerned about overreach threatening academic freedoms or seem designed to enforce ideological conformity”; and
    2. “one that asserts that the programs are being used to promote a stringently liberal, if not radical agenda – one that stands in opposition to merit and excellence and unfairly privileges certain groups over others.”
  • He asserts that any fair criticisms will be taken seriously; and
  • He is trying to create a level playing field.

He asserts that:

We ought to define the terms that comprise DEI; assess and resolve instances where DEI efforts are in potential conflict with other core values; and continually examine what is working and what is not and adjust accordingly.

He then proceeds to define the terms diversity, equity and inclusion in a clear attempt to push critics of his DEI program, expanded enormously in a progressive attempt to “never let a crisis go to waste” in 2020, to the edges of reasoned debate.

He professes he has “no idea where this notion” (that equity means equal outcomes) came from. This from a man whose own DEI bureaucracy publishes only statistical outcomes.

“No idea.”

I call this the “golly gee” approach. “Golly gee” indicates surprise, excitement or both from an innocent in the ways of the world.

Seriously?  Spare us. Continue reading

DEI Presentation at Tomorrow’s UVa Board of Visitors Meeting Attempts to Deflect the Discussion

by James C. Sherlock

Tomorrow, June 2, there will be a meeting of the Board of Visitors at the University of Virginia.

The University has published a preview of a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion presentation to the Board.

That presentation is designed quite clearly to deflect the conversation from the true issues.  It attempts to:

  • center the discussions on issues the university president wishes to defend; and
  • define terms in ways he wishes to defend them.

I offer some questions and observations.

Slide: Racial and gender diversity at UVA are relatively new – and our DEI work is even newer.  The presentation is off to a weak start. Setting the stage for the DEI discussion with race and gender is a deflection.

For example, white students have been underrepresented in the undergraduate and graduate school populations at UVa since at least 2010 as compared to whites in the population as a whole in both the United States and Virginia. Females outnumber males in the UVa student population by roughly 60% to 40%.

Those are facts.  They raise the question of the true reason for the recent expansion of DEI bureaucracy.

Let’s see if we can find it. Continue reading

New Offshore Wind Power Project Proposed to Come Ashore in a Virginia Beach Flood Zone

by James C. Sherlock

There is a dominant engineering problem in bringing offshore wind-generated electricity ashore in Virginia Beach. Flooding and water tables very close to the surface are the twin reasons there are few basements in Virginia Beach. And those that have them regret it.

The 2020 Virginia Beach FEMA Flood Hazard Map is 56MB. It is too big to display here. So don’t try downloading it on a phone. But take a look. It is important to the discussion.

Camp Pendleton and Sandbridge are Virginia Beach shore landing spots proposed for offshore wind electricity generated by two different fields. Both will have similar infrastructure pictured below.

courtesy https://coastalvawind.com/about-offshore-wind/delivering-wind-power.aspx

Below is the SCC-approved transmission line route from Camp Pendleton for the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project. The map does not show flood hazard zones.

I am not sure any public version of it ever did. Continue reading

Sentara Does a Very Good Thing

Courtesy Sentara

by James C. Sherlock

Sentara brass will not believe that I wrote that headline. We have a history.

But right is right.

A Sentara mobile care unit will start June 1 to provide primary care service two days a week in two separate locations in Petersburg.

The people of Petersburg desperately need it. That city is rated the Commonwealth’s least healthy jurisdiction.

Without good primary care, a health system never has a chance.

The partners in providing the mobile unit are Sentara, Potomac Health Foundation and Sentara Northern Virginia Medical Center Auxiliary.

Congratulations to all of them. Continue reading

The Virginia NAACP Has Proven Itself an Obstacle to Improving the Educations of Black Children in Virginia Public Schools

Courtesy Northern Virginia Black Chamber of Commerce

by James C. Sherlock

I just read that the NAACP has issued a warning against traveling to Florida.

Which must have come as a surprise to the 3.5 million Black citizens of that state.

It did not surprise the NAACP board of directors chairman Leon W. Russell, who lives in the Tampa area. His defense: “We haven’t told anybody to leave.”

I decided to check the Virginia NAACP agenda for education.

I checked to see what they advocate to change the lives of the tens of thousands of Virginia Black public school students who can neither read nor perform math at grade level. Some of these public schools in inner cities have not provided a basic education to Black students for generations.

Certainly the NAACP must be pushing hard for basic changes. Not just pressing for more funding, but also for measures to ensure that children go to school and giving parents alternatives to schools that have failed them and their children.

Right?

Wrong. Continue reading

UVa Takes on A Daunting Task – Reforming Its Own Management and Administrative Structure

By James C. Sherlock

A favorite topic of mine is management and administrative overhead in state government institutions of higher learning.

While a major university is a very large business with significant management and administrative needs, the overhead numbers seem higher than necessary.

Overhead has certainly grown over the last few decades at a rate far in excess of the increases in tenured instructional and research faculty and students.

This excessive overhead is expensive in multiple ways including:

  • very high dollar costs;
  • the time that line academics consume for meetings with and reports to the leaders, managers and administrators; and
  • general slowness of decision cycles.

To investigate, I singled out the flagship University of Virginia for an informal audit.

The University, to its credit, has decided to take on the task of streamlining and rationalizing its management and administrative structure.

That castle will prove very difficult to storm.  Yet a siege may take literally forever.  The defenders are powerful, well-entrenched and well-provisioned.

Continue reading

An Utterly Inspiring Woman

By James C. Sherlock

Lance and Cheri Shores courtesy Virginian Pilot

Cheri Shores died Saturday, May 13.

She was simply one of the most gracious, generous, skilled and inspiring people I have ever met.

Cheri and her husband Lance in 2006 opened their first Citrus restaurant in Virginia Beach a couple of blocks from where my late wife and I lived.

Jo Ann was limited in her mobility, but it was close enough for us to go together.  We came to know Cheri, who was always there, like a neighbor.

Our first visit to that restaurant the week it opened was a revelation – a breakfast and lunch place that served gourmet quality meals at a blue-collar price.

The signature home made chicken salad at the center of a plate of fresh citrus was an inspiration.

A welcoming presence, and an absolute delight, was Cheri Shores.

She was the designer of the restaurant, the source of many of the very special menu items, a co-owner, the manager, the accountant, and a teacher and confidant to her staff

She was the soul of that place.

She and her husband came up with the idea of a breakfast and lunch restaurant, she once told me, so they and their employees could spend time with their kids.

Those employees were devoted to her.  And she and Lance to them.

Before her very untimely death from pancreatic cancer, after supporting them all through COVID, she and Lance retired and gave their two, constantly-packed restaurants to their employees.

That is not a surprise if you knew them.

The Virginian-Pilot has written a touching and fitting tribute.

Read it and be moved.

Which of These Persons at UVa Oversees the Educational Development of the Rest?

by James C. Sherlock

In order to illustrate the truly insulting nature of the DEI program at the University of Virginia, I offer the following quiz.

See if you can pick out the person pictured who:

directs a range of educational programming focused on educational development for staff, faculty and students.

Nana Last, Professor of Architecture

Ira C. Harris, Professor, McIntyre School of Commerce

Sankaran Venkataraman, Professor, Darden School of Business

Sandhya Dwarkadas, Professor and Chair Department of Computer Science

Tisha Hayes, Professor of Education

Trinh Thuan, Professor Emeritus, Department of Astronomy

Kelsey Johnson Professor of Astronomy

Haibo Dong Professor Aerospace Engineering

Sly Mata, Director of Diversity Education, Division for DEI

Nicole Thorne Jenkins, Dean, McIntyre School of Commerce

Devin K. Harris, Professor of Engineering

Mool C. Gupta, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Tomonari Furukawa, Professor of Engineering

Allan Tsung M.D., Professor and Chair Department of Surgery, Medical School

Sallie Keller, Professor of Data Science

Harsha Chelliah, Professor School of Engineering

 

 

 

 

 


Bottom line.  
Good guess.

There is every evidence that Mr. Mata is a fine man. His biography is inspiring.

But the people pictured above who are not Mr. Mata excelled and earned their plaudits and appointments before there was a UVa Division for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).  Even before James Ryan was President. Continue reading

Read It and Weep – DEI at UVa

Navy helicopter overflies UVa Disharoon Park as team stands at attention for national anthem. Photos By Sanjay Suchak, sanjay@virginia.edu

by James C. Sherlock

Kerry Daugherty’s column this morning was heart-wrenching for anyone who cares at all about kids’ educations.  The Norfolk School Board voted 6-1…

to begin teaching gender ideology, masturbation, sexual identity, homosexuality, abortion and lesbianism in middle and high schools.

To kids who cannot read or perform mathematics at grade level.

Now we get a look at what awaits any kid who escapes Norfolk public schools with sufficient skills and diversity credits to get accepted into the University of Virginia (UVa).

They will be welcomed by a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) bureaucracy so large, powerful and widely distributed that a DEI factotum will:

  • review and grade their application in the recruitment process;
  • exercise authority over the curriculum and faculty;
  • monitor their progress; and
  • interview each candidate for graduate school and meet with each annually to assess political views.

If I just told you how this works as above, you would think I was making it up.

So I will quote from UVa’s website. Continue reading

Clear Violations of Title IX in Employment at UVa

Courtesy UVa Office for Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights

by James C. Sherlock

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX) prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.

It covers employees as well as students.

There is clear work to do at UVa for its Title IX staff.

We’ll sample the problems.

Arts and Sciences. A look at the leadership team of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences must especially be troubling to the Title IX staff, if indeed they examine it.

Dean Christa Acampora, her senior special assistant, her chief of staff, and Senior Associate Dean for Administration and Planning are all women.

All six of the Associate Deans are females:

  • Associate Dean for Social Sciences (Professor)
  • Associate Dean for Arts & Humanities (Professor)
  • Associate Dean for the Sciences and Research (Professor)
  • Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
  • Associate Dean for Undergraduate Academic Programs (Professor)
  • Associate Dean for Graduate Education (Associate Professor)

Correct. In Arts and Sciences, a female Associate Professor is Dean for Graduate Education, not a professor.

Since A&S does its own hiring and promotions, it should be pretty easy for the Title IX office to find the people to interview about discrimination on the basis of sex in that department.

School of Education and Human Development. The Dean and four of the six members of her leadership team at the ed school are women.

One of the two males among those seven people in leadership positions in that school is the Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Which is almost amusing if you think about it.

School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Compared to those two schools, the engineering school leadership is relatively balanced. It includes:

  • a female Dean;
  • a female Senior Executive Assistant;
  • women hold four of the eight department chairs;
  • women are two of the seven Associate Deans;
  • a female Assistant Dean for Graduate Affairs;
  • a female Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Affairs;
  • a female Director of Operations, Engineering Systems and Environment;
  • a female Director, Center for Applied Mathematics.

Bottom line. I believe in enforcement of all laws.

And I am not even a male professor trying to get promoted in UVa’s School of A&S or of Education.

Nor am I Rachel Spraker, Senior Director for Equity and Inclusive Excellence, who leads UVa’s employment equity team.

It will be interesting to see what role the Provost, the immediate past Dean of A&S, plays in this.

Title IX is there to be enforced. Perhaps the Title IX office at the federal Department of Education will be interested in enforcing it.

I’ll check.

Leapfrog Group Safety Scores for Virginia Hospitals

by James C. Sherlock

The latest Leapfrog Group safety grades are out for 72 of Virginia’s hospitals.

The Leapfrog Hospital surveys are the next-best source to the ratings based on broader data offered by  Medicare Compare. Leapfrog Group data accuracy measures are explained here.

The grades represent cumulative scores of hospital safety, quality, and efficiency measures assessed by an organization founded to improve patient safety.

We’ll examine the just-posted scores for Virginia hospitals. Continue reading

Major Actions to Reduce Corporate Overhead Offer Lessons and Opportunities to Virginia Government

Courtesy Wall Street Journal

by James C. Sherlock

The chart above shows that management and administrative overhead growth has been a trend not limited to government. The difference is that corporations are making quick and decisive strides in reversing the trend.

It is axiomatic that government should minimize overhead to maximize efficiency in delivery of services. And to lower its costs.

Efficiencies need to be found:

  • to maximize value for citizens;
  • to speed decision-making;
  • to minimize administrative consumption of the time and attention of front line workers; and
  • to restore freedom of speech suppressed by government bureaucracies assembled for that purpose.

All senior government managers would sign up for those goals — as theory. But execution is hard. Internal pressures against change are seldom exceeded by external ones that demand it.

An excellent report in the Wall Street Journal makes an observation that they may wish to consult for inspiration.

Companies are rethinking the value of many white-collar roles, in what some experts anticipate will be a permanent shift in labor demand that will disrupt the work life of millions of Americans whose jobs will be lost, diminished or revamped partly through the use of artificial intelligence.

‘We may be at the peak of the need for knowledge workers,’ said Atif Rafiq, a former chief digital officer at McDonald’s and Volvo. ‘We just need fewer people to do the same thing.’

Continue reading

Virginia Lacks Regulations for the Safe, Scientific and Effective Diagnosis and Treatment of Transgender Youth

UVa Children’s Hospital Courtesy UVa

by James C. Sherlock

To get this out of the way, I personally support qualified diagnosis and psychological treatment for gender dysphoria in children and adolescents.

I oppose puberty suppression, cross-gender hormonal treatments and transgender surgical procedures in minors.

That said, transgender individuals, like everyone, deserve skilled, safe and standards-based medical care.

Virginia laws and regulations protect people from all sorts of things, but somehow they do not protect transgender persons from bad medical treatment. It seems axiomatic to regulate transgender medical practice to the most up-to-date and widely accepted professional standards.

But that is not the case in Virginia. It is not that the standards are out of date; they apparently do not exist.

I searched the regulations of the Department of Health for the term “transgender” and it came up “no results found.” But VDH protects us from bad shellfish.

The Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Health has lots of regulations, but a search for the term “dysphoria” comes up empty. Continue reading

Glen Allen Va’s “Do No Harm” Doing a Great Deal of Good

by James C. Sherlock

Do you assume that Virginia’s medical schools are strict meritocracies, taking only the most well prepared and accomplished applicants?

And that their efforts are then focused entirely on creating the most skilled physicians possible?

If so, you are mistaken.

The Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), written by the American Medical Association (AMA), a proudly progressive organization, measures everything they know to measure.

The AMA knows MCAT is by far the best predictor of success in medical school and brags about it. The MCAT itself was redesigned in 2015 to include sections that required test-takers to have an understanding of the social and behavioral sciences.

The current MCAT sections breakdown is as follows:

  • Section 1 – Biological and Biochemical Foundations of Living Systems (BBLS);
  • Section 2 – Chemical and Physical Foundations of Biological Systems (CPBS);
  • Section 3 – Psychological, Social, and Biological Foundations of Behavior (PSBB);
  • Section 4 – Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills (CARS).

Remember that women and minorities who take the MCAT are not so “disadvantaged” that they do not feel ready to apply to medical school.

The AMA hoped the change would produce more women and “underrepresented” (as opposed to Asian-American) minorities with high MCAT scores.

Fair enough.

Yet the rest of the woke medical leadership refuses to accept the results of AMA’s MCAT because that test still does not yield the “correct” candidates. Continue reading

Increase Teacher Pay in Virginia to Meet Legislated Minimum Standard of National Average Compensation

by James C. Sherlock

We have major teacher shortages in Virginia, and we need to address them to ensure not only quantity but quality.

To do that we need to fund our legislated state goals of competitive teacher compensation.

Code of Virginia § 22.1-289.1. Teacher compensation; biennial review required.

It is a goal of the Commonwealth that its public school teachers be compensated at a rate that is competitive in order to attract and keep highly qualified teachers.

As used in this section, “competitive” means, at a minimum, at or above the national average teacher salary.

The Department of Education shall conduct a biennial review of the compensation of teachers and shall consider the Commonwealth’s compensation for teachers relative to the national average teacher salary. The results of these reviews shall be reported to the Governor, the General Assembly, and the Board of Education by June 1 of each odd-numbered year.

That should certainly be the goal, but we need to fund it. Carefully.

Some divisions already meet those minimum standards.

Many can’t afford to do so. Continue reading