UFF-USF

On Friday, the UFF-USF chapter approved a resolution that urged the maintenance of separate identities for the Department of Women’s Studies, the Department of Africana Studies, the Institute on Black Life, and the Institute for the Study of Latin America and the Caribbean. The resolution focuses entirely on the intellectual value of having separate identities. That focus does not mean that faculty and the UFF chapter do not want USF to save money. But faculty do not want the budget crisis to be an opportunity for other changes that endanger our shared academic values.
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Passed by voice vote at the UFF-USF Chapter meeting April 4, 2008:

WHEREAS the study of women, African Americans, Africa, Latin American and the Caribbean are vital areas of research and teaching that are fundamental to the mission of a modern university in an ever more globalized and multicultural world, a goal explicitly recognized in the USF Strategic Plan’s goals of global engagement and impact, as well as the Provost’s e-mails to the faculty the week of March 31;

WHEREAS such programs need to be recognized and supported through their maintenance as clearly discernable, separate and autonomous units with full voice and vote;

WHEREAS sweeping all these units into a special unit under one chair would diminish their importance, identity, strength and vigor and undo the years of hard work and intellectual labor that scores of faculty members, students and administrators have invested in these areas in order to start and develop separate and independent programs that can offer the careful study and elucidation of such vital areas of human endeavor and provide national and international visibility to the University of South Florida;

BE IT RESOLVED that the autonomy and integrity of the Department of Women’s Studies, the Department of Africana Studies, the Institute on Black Life, and the Institute for the Study of Latin America and the Caribbean must be protected in these difficult times, and that great care need be taken not to foster the impression that these units and their subjects of study are of lesser importance to the University and its mission to serve our diverse and internationalized community.

All USF salary data are public records, and last year, USF closed off the public-access on-campus username for GEMS, we were told because the auditor said that username could be a back-door path to private information. The chapter then decided to occasionally draw down the data and make it public, which would serve the public interest without endangering the private information USF has a legitimate interest in protecting. Below are links to Excel files with appointment and salary data for faculty and academic/professional hires from USF’s GEMS personnel data system. The third file is a “new hire” database, which includes 9-month faculty who can be “rehired” in the summer and “rehired” each August.

Faculty appointment data from April 4 2008
Academic and professional appointment data from April 4 2008
New hires and rehires July 1 2007 through April 4 2008 (includes 9-month faculty “rehires” for summer and each fall)

In 2000, Los Angeles prosecutor Richard Ceballos reported to his superior in the District Attorney’s office that the Los Angeles Sherriff’s Department had relied on an inaccurate affidavit to obtain a search warrant. There was sound, fury, and office politics, and subsequently Ceballos was reassigned, transferred, and denied a promotion. He sued, and the case – Garcetti v. Ceballos – was resolved by a 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the majority ruled that Ceballos did not enjoy First Amendment protection for statements he made as part of his official duties.

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In the parking lot this morning, I met an assistant professor I know well who told me that he’s leaving USF. He’s going to a public university in another state where he’ll be paid a good chunk more than what he’s paid here (at a place that is definitely not the flagship university), and where he’ll get credit towards tenure for the three years he spent at USF.

I asked him if he was worried about selling his house. He said that the salary differential was about equal to his mortgage payments here (he’s in a small house), and as soon as he sells the house, even if it’s in a year or more, he’ll get the sale price and also an instant bump in effective take-home pay. USF couldn’t match the salary, and that is consistent with the administration’s behavior in the past (which is to match offers very, very rarely).

He said he was leaving because he saw the state “sinking into a hole,” and while we talk up the status of USF, “the pay is far below the rhetoric of Research I.” That certainly is true: according to AAUP statistics, USF salaries for assistant, associate, and full professors are all in the fourth quintile of Research I universities.

So I wished him well and said that while we’d miss him, I certainly understood why he’s leaving. I just hope the legislature understands, too.

Follow-up: Within minutes of writing this entry, I received an e-mail from another colleague: I’m also leaving USF, and what you wrote … could have been a conversation with me.

In the past two weeks, the university told deans and chairs to cut the summer schedule dramatically, or rather cut the budget for summer teaching. For students, this reduces their choices available. For faculty who have a regular 9-month contract, there are two important things to keep in mind:

• Faculty should be paid at a pro-rated basis for a summer course. A three-hour course should be worth three contact hours, or 12.5% of your academic-year salary. If an administrator has approached you with a request to be paid less for summer teaching, please contact the chapter’s grievance chair immediately.
• Equitable opportunities. Chairs must treat in-unit employees on an equitable basis in making summer appointments. That does not mean that nine-month faculty are guaranteed their pick of teaching opportunities, but that if two faculty are equally qualified to teach a range of courses and say that they are interested in teaching during the summer, it would be wrong for the chair to offer two courses to one faculty member and no courses to the other. Below is the language from the Collective Bargaining Agreement:
  • Available supplemental summer appointments shall be offered equitably and as appropriate to qualified employees, not later than five weeks prior to the beginning of the appointment, if practicable, in accordance with written criteria. The criteria shall be made available in each department/unit. [A memo issued by Dr. Kofi Glover on this summer's appointments was issued in the fall.]

For many 12-month faculty, summer teaching appointments are part of the regular assignment for the year. Given the uncertainties, it is to be expected that even after the last two weeks’ cutting of the summer schedule, there will still be some uncertainties for 9-month faculty, but when most 9-month faculty have their summer schedules, 12-month faculty certainly should.

In February, the chapter Vice President Mark Klisch and I met with Provost Ralph Wilcox and Senior Vice Provost Dwayne Smith to talk about the financial struggles in the university system and USF. The discussion ranged broadly, and I followed up with a memo, which is linked below. Despite the date (which Microsoft Word helpfully changed automatically to appear as if I wrote it today), this was sent in February.

Memo from Sherman Dorn to Ralph Wilcox February 2008

UFF-USF chapter meeting
April 4, 12 noon
EDU 413 (Tampa)

Draft agenda

1. Agenda amendment/approval
2. UFF Senate
3. Budget et al.
   1. Women’s Studies, other departments
   2. “Financial exigency” as a term
   3. Other urgent issues
4. Reports
5. Other business
6. For the good of the order

UFF/USF Chapter Meeting

March 21, 2008

In attendance: S. Dorn, S. Fernandez, M. Klisch, J. Martin, G.McColm, M. Moats, J. Notaro, E. Odgaard, R. Welker, K. White, S. Wohlmuth.

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Congratulations are due to programs receiving recognition in the latest ranking of graduate programs in U.S. News & World Report. The U.S. News rankings on grad programs are most sensitive to grant and reputational statistics, and the programs listed this year do very well in at least one of those measures.

April 4: the programs listed by the provost:

• Education
• Fine Art
• Audiology
• Public Health
• Rehabilitation Counseling
• Speech-Language Pathology
• Clinical Psychology
• Physical Therapy
• Social Work
• Nursing
• Library and Information Sciences
• Industrial and Organizational Psychology
• Psychology