UFF-USF

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Given the uncertainties around university budgets, the following is intended to quash several rumors as firmly as possible:

1. Summer salaries are pro-rated in the collective bargaining agreement. Neither administrators nor faculty can negotiate any variation from this by themselves. That means that a chair cannot offer a faculty a course on condition that the faculty agrees to be paid less than normal. If you hear of such a situation, please contact the chapter immediately.
2. Using or reading the term “financial exigency” does not change the terms of the collective bargaining agreement. Right now, UFF and USF are in negotiations over the entire contract, and if the administration and Trustees wanted to save money by changing the contract, they have the ability to propose changes at the table. Thus far, the administration/Trustees’ representatives have proposed two changes that represent marginal savings, and the UFF team has proposed addressing one of those interests in combination with interests that the chapter has.
3. Layoff priorities are specified in the collective bargaining agreement. On this point, it appears that the administration and UFF are in agreement on the importance of avoiding layoffs: at the last faculty meeting, President Genshaft said that given her experience with retrenchments at other institutions, she would be horrified to lay off tenured and tenure-track faculty, and I believe her.
4. Furloughs cannot be imposed without collective bargaining, and UFF does not see any need or reason to have furloughs at USF.

At this point, it is in everyone’s best interests to work together to reduce the damage done by budget cuts, and one way we can do so is to avoid spreading rumors.

In the last six weeks, longtime St. Petersburg Times reporter Lucy Morgan has reported on what she calls double-dipping, or public employees who returned to work after committing to the state’s DROP program that gave experienced public employees an incentive to retire (retire, be paid for working another five years after the eligibility for the program started, and have pensions for that work-time go into a secure account for that last chunk of time working). Morgan’s language of double-dipping and triple-dipping implies that the problem with the DROP program is that the rules aren’t very strict on returning to employment after retirement.

The real problem with the DROP program is that the state legislature thought it could be clever, operating government on the cheap and discounting the value of experienced public servants. First, the legislature thought it could dangle an incentive in front of experienced public employees, get them to retire, and replace them with much cheaper, younger workers. Then, the legislature discovered that there was a shortage of people willing to teach and do other important jobs because they were taking early retirement through DROP, so they created an exception for areas with documented shortages. Then the legislature expanded those exceptions.

And now Lucy Morgan is pointing out that a program designed to operate government on the cheap is costing the state in the long run.

Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s story of Baylor University’s administration, which reportedly changed its internal expectations for tenure without telling faculty, is one more reason why having a union is a sensible protection for faculty: no secret rules here. UFF will not and cannot guarantee anyone tenure, but we can guarantee that you will know the rules, and we offer tenure workshops to help tenure-earning faculty show what they’ve done.

10. As the thermostat settings rise, administrators come to work in shorts.

9. The new music building gets completed 2 months after Governor Crist approves putting plagiarizing students on chain gangs.

8. Trustees agree to provide parity-based domestic partner health insurance “just as soon as Blue Cross/Blue Shield decides not to cover anything anyway.”

7. New T&P guidelines guarantee tenure to assistant professors in physical sciences “if they can figure out how to win the lottery every time.”

6. In collective bargaining, in lieu of raises, University proposes Green Stamps.

5. Public Health faculty with <1.0 FTE are guaranteed a full salary “if they can figure out how to win the lottery every time.”

4. Joint venture with Seminoles to work the Women’s Final Four allows students to place bets through Blackboard.

3. 1,000,000 Green Stamps and you get your choice of SOC or the old Marshall Center. (Environmental retrofitting is your own problem.)

2. Library gets approval to start charging $1,000 per day late fines.

1. 2,500,000 Green Stamps = Lifsey House.