Faculty Assembly Report
November 21, 2003 (First meeting due to hurricane)
WCU's delegates to UNCs Faculty Assembly, Mary
Adams,
Marie Huff, and Mary
Anne Nixon, represent our faculty's concerns at the
system level, reporting what they learn from system administrators
and other delegates annually and making resolutions and
recommendations. Because we believe the knowledge we gain
in Chapel Hill to be potentially more powerful than our
recommendations, we'd like to share our findings in report
form as soon after meetings as possible.
Below you'll find a short summary of discussions
we thought of greatest concern for the WCU community at
the last session, along with links to the web pages for
the Faculty Senate and the Office of the President for you
to read more.
These notes are not the official assembly
minutes. When they're available, you can read official
Assembly minutes at the UNC main site.
Download
a printable copy of this report (Word)
From the Legislature
- Mold remediation. Two schools have been inundated by
deadly mold, and a stalemate between the Office of the
President and the Governor about who was to pay for it
ended suddenly in the middle of assembly. The Governor
announced he would pay for it because the university seemed
unable to come up with a solution.
- Repair and Renovations. The legislature adjourned for
the year without approving much-needed funds for a backlog
of repairs. The Board of Governors passed a resolution
urging them to provide such funds.
- Education oversight committee: The legislature appointed
a 20-person joint committee to study the methods used
to appoint the Board of Governors.
Raises and salaries
- After four slow years, faculty and staff raises were
high on everyone’s list this term, but all we could
get from Office of the President staff were assurances
that they were doing everything they can.
- California, we were told, is much worse off. However,
President Broad assured us funding was preserved for
- enrollment growth, including focused growth institutions
like ours
- endowed professorships at focused growth institutions
- We heard rumors that chancellors received up to a 12%
raise this year, but information we received as of June
03 listed few raises for our administrators.
- In the 2003-5 Budget request, UNC has asked for 6% raises
per year for faculty, pointing out that we are now 12.8%
behind the national average. The WCU request shows that
instruction is still our biggest single expense. Note,
however, that costs for administrative support are now
more than half as much as those for instruction.
- J.B. Milliken, UNC system lobbyist, urged those concerned
about salaries to study the UNC Advocacy Notebook for
talking points to use on our politicians
Technology
- Market for e-learning is up in Business, Health, IT,
and Education. The system is subsidizing startup costs
for some programs in those areas.
- The UNC Office of General counsel will be scrutinizing
the faculty’s role in system Intellectual Property
documents. “As long as they are so closely linked
to Tenure and Promotion decisions, I believe faculty ought
to be driving Intellectual Property Issues,” says
President Broad.
- The Assembly’s Technology committee passed a resolution
urging the UNC TLT (Teaching and Learning with Technology)
collaborative to survey faculty’s software needs
in order to expand our current centralized software licensing
and distribution system.
- Merlot is willing to pay to train faculty to become
external reviewers for teaching and technology portfolios.
Campus construction
- The president told us to “expect disaccommodation.”
Benefits and Retirement
- The good news: the legislature has begun returning
retirements funds to TSERS (Teachers and State Employee
Retirement System).
- The bad news: A redefinition of terms in the Disability
Act seems to imply that, whereas once employees only had
to show they were unable to do the job for which they
were hired, they must now show they are unable to do any
job in the state in order to collect disability. This
revision only affects new faculty (that is, those not
yet vested in our current system).
- 401K News: the system is switching from BB&T to
Prudential. If you have $$ in a BB&T account, your
assets will rollover to Prudential unless you specify
otherwise by December.
- The ORP (optional retirement plan, or TIAA-CREF) will
now be available to new EPA non-faculty hires.
- You can now take after-tax deductions from your check
to put in a college savings plan. This involves “some
tax savings.”
- The system is trying hard to get some of the HMO’s
and PPO’s back into participation with the system.
Tenure and Post-tenure review
- UNC Charlotte participated in a UCLA faculty morale
study. The gender and race of respondents had a huge impact
on results; women were far more likely than men to be
dissatisfied with their salaries.
- A preliminary study of Post-tenure review reveals that
“on the whole, the process has been successfully
implemented and most campuses have developed workable
post-tenure review processes as part of a comprehensive
faculty evaluation system.” However, the study reveals
that “results have not been consistent across institutions”
and that the largest institutions account for most of
the faculty found deficient.
- The Office of the President asked for assembly support
to make a more comprehensive survey. Though many suspected
the drive toward consistency was actually a drive
toward more deficient ratings, the assembly passed
the resolution, figuring it was best to seem supportive
of a survey that was doubtless going to take place
anyway. However, several members wanted the resolution
clarified so that it could not be taken as an endorsement
of Post-tenure review itself.
- TIAA CREF just completed a UNC study of the retirement
concerns of academics over 50. They now plan to do a study
of early career (from hiring to about two years after
tenure) faculty in our system.
Miscellaneous
- Several institutions expressed frustration that the
Homeland Security Office has made no RFP's (Request for
Proposals?) to spend its money in this state. President
Broad pronounced their process mysterious and speculated
that Homeland Security may just select institutions to
make proposals, rather than inviting competition.
- The Assembly formed a task force to study issues related
to athletics on the campuses. You can share your concerns
by going to the Faculty
Assembly web page and selecting "committees"
from the People menu, or by going to the E-Forum on Athletics.
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