Talk:Russell K. Osgood

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I fixed/changed a whole bunch of things. I also tried to change the tone from the "Osgood vs. the world" deathmatch battle to a more subdued one. Additionally, previous edits credited Osgood with having some overarching power that controls everything at the College. I fixed many things that were more than just him. (However, this means many of these statements, which I have kept for the moment, should arguably be removed from a page about Osgood.)

Here are some explanations:

- The strategic plan did not come from Russell. It was worked on by faculty members, students, alumni, trustees, administrators, and more. The Board of Trustees ultimately approved it.

- The strategic plan is designed as a five year plan. Thus, there really aren't "short term" or "long term" goals.

- Corrected misstatements about the College's attempt to recruit wealthier students. This is not what some students "feel", this is a fact. Also, this is not just Osgood. Let me know if I should add a note explaining the "tuition discount rate". I deleted the line that attempted to characterize the feelings of the entire student body - this is rather impossible to do. (I don't like the "doing the trustee's bidding" line I put in - if somebody could think of better wording that would be awesome.)

- Who has said that Grinnell is the best liberal arts college in the country? We probably shouldn't include that unless we can link it to a reference, as that is a big claim.

- Nobody, including Osgood, is trying to make Grinnell a "more career-oriented institution." I sit in on a lot of strategic planning type meetings, and have never heard this even menitoned. We are strenghtening the CDO (adding another position in the next year or 2), but this is b/c the area is relatively understaffed. Again, find something backing this up and put it back in, if you want.

- I spend a lot of time talking about the College's endowment, and I can tell you that it would be very difficult to define the "world's best endowed institution." Does that refer to absolute size? Size per capita? Return rate? I tried to make this paragraph a bit more objective.

- The current building phase, the third in the College's history, was begun (both fundraising and building) during Pam Ferguson's tenure, not Osgood's.

- Which five buildings are designed by Pelli? Campus center, athletic center, Bucksbaum. I think that's it. If you can remind me of two more, we should put the "five" number back in, but I think its incorrect.

- Saying that a building on 10th Ave doesn't look like a bank downtown on 4th is kinda absurd. No town tries to standardize it's architecture over that size of an area, and I think the comparison is wrong.

- I think it's too early to write the history on Osgood's popularity, so I took out that line. Also, leaders of all sorts of institutions, prestigious and not, like Osgood, so I removed the "prestigious" line.

This is all debatable. Though I think some of it was incorrect, I could be very wrong in areas too.

- Matt Cleinman

[edit] Salary

I deleted the comment that Russell Osgood is the highest-paid college president in the Midwest, because he is not. He earned $509,130 in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2004 (see the Des Moines Register article "Large Compensation Packages Frustrate Some at Private Schools" from February 20, 2006). In a similar period, the president of the University of Michigan had a salary of $724,604 (source). —Babcockd 04:25, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

University of Michigan is not a College. Pdbailey 01:04, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

From a technical standpoint, one could certainly argue that; it's a university made up of colleges. As the word is used coloquially, however, I respectfully disagree, and I think that referring to President Osgood as the highest-paid college president is misleading at best. In the U.S., people frequently refer to a university as "college" or attendance at a university as "going to college," particularly if working towards an undergraduate degree. For example, the source I linked to in the article is called "College president pay: The $million club," but describes pay at all postsecondary institutions. A quick check of a dictionary gives the first definition as "An institution of higher learning that grants the bachelor's degree in liberal arts or science or both," (source) which certainly describes the University of Michigan . If you can come up with a category of Midwestern postsecondary institutions that Russell Osgood is the highest-paid president of, feel free to add it to the article, but I think "college" is too general, as it would certainly give many readers an incorrect understanding of the facts. —Babcockd 19:38, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

One usually earns a bachelor's degree from a college (most universities distinguish between their colleges and graduate departments). And so when you go to a university to earn a BA or BS, you are at a college. But the other schools are not all colleges. The thing is that others are presidents of the colleges, and the universities as well. So what word would you use to describe all these presidents? Well, the only one that applies is president of a college. You will notice that when talking about is someone who is the president of a college and a university, they say that explicitly. Pdbailey 21:37, 2 July 2006 (UTC)