The Liaison Committee on Medical Education is currently meeting through October 15th. On their agenda is what to do about the report of the ad hoc survey team that visited the medical school last May to follow up on the deficiencies of the full review in 2013 that lead to the school being placed on probation. Through an open-records request, I obtained a copy of the survey team’s report. To me, It looks quite favorable. Obviously, being placed on probation lit a fire under the powers that be. Although the report makes it clear that the LCME “may come to different conclusions when it reviews the team’s report and any related information,” I will be frankly surprised if probation is not lifted. As a result of the full site visit in April 2013, a total of 19 standards were found to be deficient in some way. Nine standards were unequivocally noncompliant, and an additional 10 were judged to require monitoring. A few of the deficiencies were embarrassingly bad by any standard. The current follow-up survey team did not declare any standard to be in a state of noncompliance, but did recommend that four required further monitoring. Continue reading “Decision on Lifting of UofL Medical School Probation Imminent.”

Joe Gerth is reporting several block-buster announcements in today’s  on-line Courier-Journal regarding the UofL Board of Trustees.

1. Kentucky Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Jack Conway has apparently announced the opinion of his office that Governor Beshear “broke the law” in not re-appointing an African- American to the UofL Board of Trustees.
2. Newly appointed Trustee Paul Diaz counts as a “minority,” but that the Board is still unbalanced. The proper standard is not yet announced.
3. Established Board member Steve Wilson has resigned.
4. Governor Beshear says he will appoint an African-American to replace Mr. Wilson.

As of this writing, this is still breaking news. I found no confirmation of any of this on the Attorney General’s or Governor’s official websites and I have no independent verification of any of the reported facts.   Indeed, specifics are still changing as of late this afternoon as to what would or should be considered a proper balance of race on the UofL Board – specifically whether a statewide or local standard should be considered.  Nonetheless, the situation presenting itself is one of the two possible solutions to a difficult solution that I proposed earlier this month.

[Addendum 9-30-2015: Several documents and responses became available confirming the above. Links to these are at the end of this article. Based on the relevant statutes, I come to different conclusions than the Attorney General and Governor and will discuss these further in future post.]

There will be much more said about this in coming days by many, but I offer the following comments at this time. Continue reading “Big  Changes Coming For University of Louisville Board of Trustees.”

In December 2014,  with a background of increasing concerns expressed publicly by several University of Louisville Trustees that they were not given the information needed, nor the opportunity to discuss issues central to the Board’s legislatively mandated oversight responsibilities,  a draft proposal was put before the full Board by several of the newly appointed Trustees to reevaluate the how the Board was performing its obligations. The proposal had the following overall goals:

• Ensure that the board is acting under current national best governance practices in exercising its powers under KRS 164.830.
• Demonstrate a deep commitment to improving the academic experience and outcome for our students.
• Foster greater openness, dialogue, discussion, education and accountability with the board to allow us to better assist in exercising our duties.

The remainder of the two-page document offered concerns and suggestions to be considered.  These seemed pretty reasonable to me.  Indeed, one could reasonably ask why such issues should have to be raised in the first place!  Nonetheless, this modest proposal was immediately attacked by old-guard members of the Board who seem to act as President Ramsey’s “best-friends-forever” rather than as trustees with a fiduciary responsibility to the University of Louisville and its public. The questioners were in my opinion essentially told they were insufficiently informed, and had no business meddling with the operations of the University. Continue reading “Report of UofL Board of Trustee Committee on Governance Released Amidst Confusion.”