UFF-USF

There is something President Genshaft did not mention in her webcast Friday that I know is on the minds of many tenure-track faculty who have e-mailed me, talked with their chairs, and thought about their futures: tenure criteria. I have talked with several associate deans and with the Provost and Senior Vice Provost, and I am confident that tenure decisions next year will be made in the same way that they have been for the last several years. I have said the same thing to every tenure-track faculty member who has asked: it is in no administrator’s interest to change how tenure decisions are made because of budget cuts. Every administrator I have spoken with agrees with me on this as a matter of principle, and as the president of the faculty union chapter on campus, I will take immediate steps if I see any signs that the tenure gateway is becoming a place to address budget cuts.

For those who are coming up for tenure this fall, the United Faculty of Florida is holding tenure workshops this week in Tampa and will schedule additional workshops in Tampa and on the regional campuses later this spring. To get classroom space in the middle of the week, we had to schedule the workshops beginning at 8 am. Despite the early hour, I hope to see many of you there. These workshops are for members of the United Faculty of Florida–if you are not currently a member, you can sign up at the beginning of the workshop. More information is available at http://faculty.ourusf.org/2008/02/19/tenure-workshops-march-3-4-and-5-tampa/.

I know that everyone at USF is affected by budget anxiety fatigue. If you are coming to one of the tenure workshops next week, we can certainly talk about it, and I encourage you to e-mail me (sherman@ourusf.org) if you have questions.

In last Friday’s webcast, President Genshaft announced two promotions, of Michael Pearce to university technology officer (from associate vice president to vice president), and of Michael Hoad from USF Health communications to a new VP spot for communications. President Genshaft noted that neither received a raise with the change in title.

Over the past few weeks, UFF has made the point to the administration that in a budget crunch, the proportion of payroll that goes to upper-level administration should not rise. Faculty want to know that the core parts of USF (departments and faculty) do not receive a disproportionate cut. At the same time, I do not and will not suggest anything about an individual administrator; a reasonable approach, as suggested through consultation with several dozen union members, was that the proportion of payroll for upper administrators should not increase in a budget crisis. (By upper-level administrators, I think of anyone above a department chair in academic areas and equivalent positions in non-academic VP areas.)

I don’t know how this will all shape up, and two personnel decisions do not make a pattern; at the end of the academic year, I’ll probably look at the data we have in the chapter and maybe make a request for additional payroll data over a few years from USF. But if the central administration is listening to faculty concerns over budget cuts, and President Genshaft’s announcement is an indication of that open ear, we’ll come out much better as a university than if faculty concerns were ignored.

Last week, the administration distributed the budget priorities task force report to all chairs. On Friday, I posted that report here, and after discussion with a chair, I have substituted this brief entry for the moment.

The chair told me that the administration did not give chairs and directors the opportunity to respond to the tentative judgment of individual departments/units before distributing it to all chairs. In every case that I can imagine with an external review, the draft review is circulated to the units and faculty involved, with an opportunity for a response. In this case, the task force subcommittees had only a spare set of data provided by the administration and a narrative supplied on short notice by the chair or director of each reviewed department/unit. Those reviewing other colleges were working out of their fields, with data from a national report that I am not sure was ever intended for this type of summative judgment, and in at least one case the subcommittee made clear that it was uncomfortable with making the type of summative judgments that it was asked to, given that lack of data.

The additional information about the lack of an opportunity to respond makes me concerned about the process that is being followed, and it would be inconsistent with those concerns for me to keep the report available.

Budget cuts professors’ phones, a letter to the editor in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

A smattering of USF authors already published in 2008:

Greenbaum, Susan. 2008. Poverty and the Willful Destruction of Social Capital: Displacement and Dispossession in African American Communities. Rethinking Marxism 20, no. 1:42.

Hood, M. V, and Seth C McKee. Gerrymandering on Georgia’s Mind: The Effects of Redistricting on Vote Choice in the 2006 Midterm Election. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/ssqu/2008/00000089/00000001/art00004 (Accessed February 28, 2008).

Murphy, Robin R., and Sam Stover. 2008. Rescue robots for mudslides: A descriptive study of the 2005 La Conchita mudslide response: Field Reports. J. Field Robot. 25, no. 1-2:3-16.

Nouar, F. et al. 2008. Supermolecular Building Blocks (SBBs) for the Design and Synthesis of Highly Porous Metal-Organic Frameworks. Journal of the American Chemical Society 130, no. 6:1833-1835.

Zaworotko, Michael J. 2008. Materials science: Designer pores made easy. Nature 451, no. 7177:410-411.

A few years ago, Parking Services stopped using Social Security Numbers in managing its accounts. Last month, a faculty member was asked for her SSN to get a new ID card. She e-mailed the chapter, which asked the administration to look into it. The response today from Sandy Lovins, Associate Vice President of Human Resources:

We did find out that the Card Center was taking social security numbers in order to generate an ID card (it was a field required in the system that they are using). However, we’ve been able to configure a change in their system and feed required information in from the GEMS system so that social security numbers are no longer needed. The Employee ID number is now officially being used. No longer will the Card Center staff be asking for social security number.

The UFF membership form now gives the option of providing the employee ID instead of the SSN, but includes the SSN option because many faculty know their SSN but not their employee ID. One of the concerns about asking for Social Security Numbers in public situations (whether in parking services or at a card center) is that they are public: You’re in a line, and someone asks you for the SSN. Anyone else in line could overhear your name and SSN, and then they have what they need to generate a false identity. If you are asked for your SSN at USF in a public context, gently refuse to, explain why not, and insist on using your employee ID instead.

Update (2/21/08): Administrators have contacted the chapter in the past day to indicate that all of the individuals affected were in the College of Medicine, and that the timeline indicated in USF’s response was an estimate of HR as to when they could be reasonably sure the switch in processes would be complete. We’ve suggested creating intermediate benchmarks before the end of the fiscal year and will update this entry or write a new one when more information is available.

This morning, the St. Petersburg Times made available the state’s operational audit of USF for the last fiscal year, which essentially is a checkup on the university’s basic financial operations. There are a number of items you’d expect (the university needs to do a better job of checking up on the commissions that vendors owe it, check up on residency of students, P-Card controls), some items that affect employees in reimbursable costs (university-subsidized cell phone usage, or travel reimbursement per diems), and then a surprising finding:

Our test of termination pay for 5 employees who terminated during the 2006-07 fiscal year disclosed that 1 employee of USF Health had not been paid for unused leave. Subsequent to audit inquiry, the employee was paid for 92 annual leave hours totaling $1,818, 134 days after their termination date. A further review of USF Health records disclosed that as of June 8, 2007, an additional 12 employees who terminated between July 14, 2006, and March 19, 2007, had not been paid accumulated annual leave totaling $38,794. Of the 12 employees, 2 still had not been paid amounts due as of November 13, 2007.

In other words, the university did not pay attention to the leave time owed faculty who retired, resigned, or otherwise left their jobs. This was one of 13 findings in the operational audit, and USF’s Chief Financial Officer Carl Carlucci promised to fix all of them. Here is the order of the issues that he said USF would address, and the implementation dates:

• Travel Per Diem (finding 10), June 2007
• Imprest Bank Accounts (finding 1), January 2008
• Access To Business Applications (finding 11), January 2008
• Student Fees (finding 5), March 31, 2008
• Competitive Procurement (finding 8), March 31, 2008
• Information Technology – Application Environment (finding 13), March 31, 2008
• Decentralized Collections (finding 6), April 30, 2008
• Cell phones (finding 10), April 30, 2008
• Tangible Personal Property (finding 2), June 30, 2008
• Auxiliary Vendor Contracts (finding 3), June 30, 2008
• Auxiliary Credit Union Contract (finding 4), June 30, 2008
• Purchasing Cards (finding 9), June 30, 2008
• Leave Pay on Termination (finding 7), July 31, 2008

In other words, retiring employees owed a payout for leave time are at the end of the line, the very lowest priority, and the implementation date for fixing this is after the end of the current fiscal year.

In a meeting of the American Federation of Teachers executive committee today, AFT President Ed McElroy and Secretary-Treasurer Nat LaCour announced their decisions to step down at the end of their current terms (i.e., this summer). An e-mail sent out by McElroy indicated that Executive VP Tony Cortese intends to stand for re-election (not run for president).

In fall, the USF College of Education’s student advising services had an awful choice to make: to lay off a receptionist or an advisor. The college laid off the receptionist, and now students face a large poster explaining how to make an appointment, instead of a friendly face to help them immediately:

Credit: United Faculty of Florida, 2008. Please contact Sherman Dorn for permission to reprint. (There will be no fee charged, but we need to keep track of reprintings.)

On Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed its version of the Higher Education Act reauthorization. Changes include raising the authorized cap for Pell grants. The bill did not include a federal version of David Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights.

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