I've found it hard to get too worked up about the firing of UW President Laurie Nichols . . .

and I'm not sure why.

I probably ought to be concerned, as something is going on and I'm completely clueless about it. As the state's only four year university, what happens at UW really matters.

And I did take offense when the prior President, Bob Sternberg, who resigned received so much faculty heat, basically bringing about his resignation.  The heat was, in no small part, due to faculty getting upset about his trying to focus the direction of the land grant school on what counts in the state, which they didn't like.  During that period the law school's Dean Easton resigned over what he saw as interference of that type and I frankly think that Sternberg had the high side of that argument.  No matter, they both went.

Nichols has been best by all sorts of problems at UW during her term in office, including the need to eliminate degree programs and the entire weird flap over the schools recruiting slogan, which turned out to be a huge success, but which brought some really predictable and dim reactions.  You' can read about that here:

The University of Wyoming adopts an unneeded slogan and some faculty reveals themselves to be trendy twits

 Black cowboys.  Oh my, this would suggest that certain faculty members at the University of Wyoming are, well, ignorant, sanctimonious, twits.

One third of all cowboys in the Frontier Era were black or Mexican.

It continues on from there.

Part of the reason that I may be exhibiting less interest than I should be is that there was no build up of controversy prior to this event and when it occurred, the first negative reactions I read came from the same predictable corner that the reaction to the slogan did.  Indeed, one of the exact same faculty members was quoted, and I'm tired of him.  So that may have colored my view a bit.

Be that as it may, Nichols seemed to be doing a good job. She weathered the slogan flap and turned that around, or at least it turned around, and she did a seemingly good job of scaling down where need be.

On scaling down, UW went from 30 departments to 21 by necessity.  That's a hard thing to do, and I don't agree with all of the changes.  Probably nobody would.  In today's paper it was revealed that the degree program in geography will be housed in the Department of Geology and Geophysics, the Department of Geography having been eliminated.

That's a bad idea as other than sharing the Greek root "geo" in their names, Geography has nothing whatsoever to do with Geology/Geophysics.  I'd not do that.

I'm not too sure what I think of the expanded degrees in the community colleges where the university has a presence as well.  In some ways I think that's good, and in others bad.  UW seems to make sure that its heavyweight degrees don't stray off the Laramie campus, and I can see why, but if we're going to offer four year degrees at an increasing rate in the community colleges, that's going to have to change.  Indeed, while it's been a losing fight, the time has really come for one of the community colleges, and Casper College is the best candidate, to become a university.

Well, at any rate, the Trustees really do owe the state, and Nichols, an explanation.  There's some reason for their decision, even if its trivial, and as the state only has one four year university, they should let us know what it is.