UFF-USF

March 5: Below are an e-mail circulated by HR Friday and a Word version of the application attached to the e-mail:

• HR e-mail March 5, 2010
• Retirement Incentive Application (March 5 distribution, Word version)

February 17: Below are the documents for the Early Retirement Incentive program, downloaded for the USF St. Pete HR website:

• ERI description and guidelines
• Early Retirement application (PDF version)
  
• Early Retirement Settlement Agreement
• FAQs: ERI FAQ 1 and ERI FAQ 2

Interested employees in the faculty pay plan should contact Donna Pepper for more information (813-974-9357, dpepper@admin.usf.edu).

The ballots are in the mail to chapter members for the chapter elections. You can read the UFF-USF chapter candidate statements (PDF) here. Note: due to a printer’s error, the ballot itself was not printed on blue paper but on white paper. Please complete both sides and return! (Put in the smaller envelope, seal without marking, and then put the unmarked small envelope into the addressed #10 envelope. Seal, print and sign your name on the front, and mail in.)

The state of Florida has just released the audited financial statement of USF for 2008-09, and it has confirmed what the unaudited statements released several months ago indicated: USF is in decent financial shape, and it’s especially decent given the drop in state appropriations.

Audited financial report for USF 2008-09, released February 2010

UFF finished its ratification vote this week, and the overwhelming majority of ballots cast were in favor of ratification. The Board of Trustees meets Thursday, January 21, for its ratification vote.

This morning’s Tampa Tribune quotes me in a story about a website allegation regarding football coach Jim Leavitt, and while it’s generally correct about what I said, it has a few things garbled.

Here is the relevant passage  from the article:

Sherman Dorn, head of the union that represents USF’s faculty, is pleased the school is conducting an investigation into the alleged incident and doing so with a committee based outside the athletic department.

He said transparency and thoroughness are important in this type of investigation.

“If there is as a serious allegation, then there should be a serious investigation,” Dorn said. “It should be done in the same way the university conducts a serious investigation of misconduct by a faculty member. The thing to keep in mind is this is a report by a Web site that has statements [supported] by one or two observers. It’s certainly appropriate for the university to investigate. There may be something to it, or maybe not.’

The correct statements in that passage (or the reasonably close ones) come from the following parts of the phone conversation I had last night with the reporter:

• I said that the allegations came from individual reports, and I had no idea what the truth of them may be.
• I said that when there was a serious allegation concerning any university employee, it was appropriate for the university to conduct an investigation.
• I said that until the investigation was concluded, the university should not say anything about the matter other than that there was an allegation it was investigating.

I don’t remember saying anything explicitly about transparency, and I did not say anything about who was conducting the investigation, because I had no knowledge of who was going to conduct the investigation. Having said that, I do in fact agree that the people conducting it should be outside the athletics department.  That’s true for any investigation of allegations. For most of the investigation procedures I am aware of (whether regarding research misconduct, discrimination, or violation of human participant guidelines), there is first a determination of whether there are sufficient grounds to conduct a full investigation (to avoid spending lots of time on frivolous allegations). If the preliminary investigation suggests there is something to the allegation, there is a more complete examination of the issue. I don’t know whether that two-step process will be followed in this case, because “football coach grabs and hits player” is not a common allegation, so there hasn’t (yet) been a chance to write a procedure for this.

It would not have been correct for the university to fire a coach based solely on an allegation, in the same way that the university should not fire staff or faculty based solely on allegations of misconduct.

Linked below are three documents: a memo from Associate Provost Tapas Das with regard to a potential closure or serious disruption of USF from events such as H1N1 or hurricanes; a list of suggestions from the provost’s office on things to think about tied to potential closures, and a paragraph to insert in all syllabi.

There is a provision in the UFF-USF Collective Bargaining Agreement about emergency closure: all in-unit employees are paid during emergency closures. I assume that the bargaining history is related to storms rather than potential pandemics, but the effect is the same. At least in terms of the attached documents, accommodations for closures are left to the professional judgment of faculty and other instructors of record.

Tapas Das letter

Paragraph for syllabi

Things for faculty to think about regarding closure

One issue coming directly from a recent membership study commissioned by the UFF-USF Chapter is the set of concerns from participants about the structure of formulaic merit pay and administrative salary discretion. This time of economic hardship is probably the best year in which to talk about long-term structures in the contract, as there will probably not be a huge amount of money in play. During the fall, I will be setting up meetings on every campus and in multiple places on the Tampa campus to talk just about merit pay and other salary issues.

This will be a member-driven process: colleagues who are not dues-paying UFF members can vote on contract ratification, but the members set chapter policy. I want to be clear about my personal interests and intended role, before the discussions focused on merit pay begin: like my colleagues, I have my own opinions and ideas about merit pay, but the collective interests of the chapter membership will determine what the chapter’s approach on merit pay will be over the next few years. In 2007 I campaigned on the pledge to follow the faculty and professional employees of USF as we changed, and from a few places (not just the membership study), I am getting the message that merit pay and discretionary pay has to change. To be consistent with what I promised, my job is to start and protect a conversation about merit pay.

From what I know already, the issues involved in merit pay are a classic wicked problem, or a complex issue that isn’t going to be amenable to a direct “here’s the cause, and here’s the solution” process. I’ve had a number of conversations about merit pay over the years with both administrators and faculty, and the tendency of many comments is to fall into a pattern: “Here’s the problem with merit pay at USF, and instead of doing it this way we should do it just like it was done at my last institution.” The reference to “my last institution” is a heuristic short-cut: well-intended but an elision nonetheless, and I will view one of my jobs in these conversations to get behind such short-cuts.

As I wrote above, I have some preconceptions about the issues and potential solutions, but I know that they are preconceptions, and it is more important that the membership determine policy than that I agree with that policy. To guarantee that the decision is membership-driven, I will argue against any unilateral setting of long-term merit-pay bargaining guidance without a membership vote.

Below are the types of comments expressed by some of the 110 individual respondents to the UFF survey this week on H1N1 and attendance policies. Please keep in mind that the participants in this survey are probably not a representative sample, and answers should be viewed as a sample of the options that faculty are considering.

Attendance requirements—what are faculty planning to do? Some of the choices faculty are making:

• No changes
• Case-by-case adjustments
• Raising the limit on unexplained/unexcused absences.
• Providing alternative assignments that enable students to make up attendance
• Waiving in-class assignment requirements
• Extending deadlines for assignments
• Turning in-class work into online (Blackboard) assignment
• Eliminating attendance requirements, with in-class exercises as extra credit

What documentation are faculty planning to require? Some of the choices faculty are making:

• Doctor’s note required
• Doctor’s note not required
• No doctor’s note but prior notice required (no “oops I overslept” post-hoc inventions of flu)
• Distinctions between regular classes and exams: flexibility for classes, doctor’s note required for exam absence

Other thoughts related to H1N1 and classes:

• Some faculty will insist that students who are sick should stay home, quoting from Dr. Egilda Terenzi’s statement in syllabus
• Some faculty are intending to place more material online
• Some faculty intend to record classes to place mp3s on line for absent students
• Some faculty intend to spend more time explaining attendance policies clearly at beginning of term and specifically how they might apply for H1N1
• Some faculty intend to use the H1N1 pandemic to remind students that they have the obligation to contact classmates to catch up on material
• Some faculty intend to explain the practical effect on grades of missing substantial amounts of the semester
• Some faculty will explain that they will be more supportive of petitions for dropping/withdrawing from class for medical reasons

Additional comments:

• There were some concerns about availability of medical care at Student Health Services
• Some faculty expressed concerns about staff and faculty health
• Some faculty expressed concerns about the work and security involved in creating make-up exams and suggested that USF create a testing center to provide security for make-up exams

As of this morning, 110 USF faculty have responded to the online survey UFF began on Monday to gauge whether faculty are making changes to class attendance policies in response to the H1N1 pandemic. Of those responding, 40% are not yet sure what they will do, and the others are approximately evenly split between faculty making changes and those not making changes.

Another entry sometime this weekend will summarize comments from individual respondents. One early note: Some of the “no” respondents explained that they thought their existing attendance policies would be sufficiently flexible to address student absences from H1N1.

Tuesday’s state Revenue Estimating Conference ended up predicting a small (1%) reduction in state general revenues from the March estimate that was the basis for the state’s budget this year (see executive summary for more). That will not require a special session to cut the current year’s budget, at least for now.

The forecast for 2010-11 is also less than the 2010-11 forecast in the March estimate, but the predicted general revenues for 2010-11 is still more than 6% higher than in the current fiscal year. The continuation of stimulus funding for education means that we’ll probably see something close to a flat budget for next year, plus hopefully a minor increase depending on politics. The closer we get to the next legislative session without additional free-fall in the state’s economy, the better the state’s general budget outlook is. There will still be a fight for revenues in the legislature, but the odds are looking better that we’re not going to have additional horrid cuts.