Those who have made suggestions so far fall in every category:
58 support staff
51 undergrads
44 faculty
26 administrators
25 grad students
10 other (mostly identifying as APOs)
There have been many outstanding and thoughtful ideas. I am inspired by the many heartfelt comments found in the suggestions and the passion that so many of you have expressed for your university.
At this point there are some clusters or themes that are emerging. In no particular order, the areas that have garnered the most suggestions are:
- technology to reduce paper (e.g. electronic time sheets, committee materials, syllabi)
- flex-time options for staff
- pay freezes and pay cuts, mostly for senior administrators, but some suggestions for scaled cuts based on salary, and pay caps for full professors since mandatory retirement is gone
- teaching-track or teaching-focused options for professors
- online teaching elements, including online courses and online lectures with professors focused on small group or discovery learning
- shared and/or centralized staffs, e.g. similar departments sharing a finance/HR person
- optimization of existing technology (broader use of PeopleSoft modules, better training on PeopleSoft, better integration of PeopleSoft with BearTracks, fewer telephone landlines, more/better staff training for Office suite, streamlined financial processes
- technology solution for program tracking for students to see what they’ve completed and what they still need
- FEC process: does it need to be annual? Is it required for a single increment (versus 0, .5, 1.5 or 2.0)? Or is there a better way?
- RSO process streamlining, especially setting up research accounts
- switch from defined benefit to defined contribution plan
- provide opt-out options on health benefits, especially when spouses both work here
The website will be open to suggestions through the end of this month, so please do share your ideas if you have them. We will share suggestions with the community in a way that protects the identity of those who submitted them since they did so with the expectation of privacy. Some steps will be taken immediately and other options will be longer-range; we expect to have a report and some go-forward plans by this fall.
So to those of you who have submitted ideas, thank you. On behalf of the umbrella committee and the working committees, I appreciate your creativity, candour, and passion. Keep those good ideas coming.
Sincerely,
Carl Amrhein
Provost and Vice-President (Academic)
Dear Carl,
ReplyDeleteWill all the suggestions provided be made public, or will we just see a selection of "approved" suggestions? I appreciate that the list posted here is a summary, but, for example, I don't see my suggestion of making a single increment the standard reward for a good/solid/satisfactory year's work included.
Without naming names, can we at least know the provenance of these various proposals? Were they made by faculty, staff, administrators, students, etc.?
Several of the suggestions, such as pay freezes, cuts, or caps for Professors, and online teaching elements, sound like UHall agendas rather than something the rank and file might suggest. I am particularly concerned that discussing salary issues in this way might be viewed as union-busting, by floating draconian compensation proposals to soften up Association members ahead of negotiations. Because these proposals are unattributed but appear on the administration's blog and over your signature, we must assume that administration takes some responsibility for them, if not ownership. I suggest that any proposals relating to compensation and benefits be removed from this discussion unless they are clearly attributable and are open for debate. Properly, such discussions should take place only at the negotiating table.
Hello Jeremy,
ReplyDeleteThe only U-hall agenda in this initiative is to tap into the collective wisdom and creativity of this community to find ways to avoid additional successive years of April 1 budget actions while preserving the highest possible quality education for our students. There is no great conspiracy to take action under the guise of community suggestions. I, and others in senior administration, have no pet or pre-approved actions in mind.
Further, it would be wrong to assume that administration takes responsibility or ownership for the suggestions coming in through the website. I have merely shared a summary provided by our team of the most popular suggestions submitted thus far. No proposals have been endorsed at this point. That will be the job of the working groups and overarching umbrella committee (TUC).
When the website closes at the end of this month, summaries will be done that capture all the types of suggestions and one or more submissions will be quoted that capture the range while protecting the identity of the people who sent them in with an expectation of privacy. For example, many people have suggested doing away with paper timesheets, so there is no need to publish a dozen or more comments saying the same thing in different ways. We will say how many similar suggestions there are and from which category of submitter.
I agree that several suggestions would need to be dealt with as part of negotiations if the working group and umbrella committee decide to move them forward. In reply to a question posted in response to the State of the U post about whether the community will get to vote on the suggestions, we said this: "It gets complicated, though, when suggestions are ones that fall within the terrain of negotiated staff agreements and whether public vetting or ranking would constitute or imply voting outside the agreements."
Jeremy, as you may recall from your days as President of AASUA, it is not the tradition at U of A for Administration to have a campus-wide discussion around topics related to compensation separate from discussions with the employee groups. NASA and AASUA are the sole and exclusive representatives of their respective groups in these discussions. The two presidents sit on the umbrella committee. As a result, all of the comments that deal with compensation (including merit as appropriate), once discussed by the umbrella committee, likely will go directly to discussions with the relevant employee group. The public discussion would occur following any bilateral discussions.
Thanks,
Carl
Thank-you for your reply, Carl.
ReplyDeleteYou say that UHall's intent is "to tap into the collective wisdom and creativity of this community to find ways to avoid additional successive years of April 1 budget actions while preserving the highest possible quality education for our students." But I do not see that any of the proposals on this list will relieve budget pressures, since none of these proposals raise new revenue. Therefore, the best these proposals can do it to save money to meet continuing budget cuts.
That may be necessary, but let's call a spade a spade.