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June 22, 2009
UT staff set priorities
From an announcement by the University of Texas Staff Council today:
The University of Texas Staff Council (UTSC) has elected new officers and identified its top issues for the 2009-10 year.
On June 18, UTSC elected its new executive officers for the 2009-10 year. They are Ben Bond, Chair (McCombs School of Business); Jackie Dana, Vice Chair (Department of Sociology, College of Liberal Arts); and Janice Hejl, Recording Secretary (Office of the Executive Vice President & Provost). Both Mr. Bond and Ms. Hejl were incumbents running for re-election for their respective positions.
Upon his re-election, UTSC Chair Ben Bond said, “I am thrilled and honored that my fellow Representatives entrust me with leading the Council for the next year. We are poised to accomplish several goals in the next 12 months, and I believe we can do so while bettering the campus community for all stakeholders, particularly UT employees.”
Following the election, on June 19, the UTSC held a day-long retreat at an on-campus site in which the Council identified seven issues of greatest concern, based upon feedback from staff campus-wide. The issue selection was based on feedback each council member received from the constituents of their districts. These issues will be priorities for the Council in the upcoming year, and include: Compensation and Benefits; Staff Professional Development; Parking; Improving communication between university Administration and Staff; Reviewing the grievance process and the need for a staff Ombudsperson; Greening the UT Austin Campus and Recycling; and Wellness.
Two issues that repeatedly arose in discussion included: the salary and hiring freezes currently in place at the University; and the desire to improve and expand communication between university Administration, including the UT Austin President, and all university Staff.
Referring to the retreat, Vice Chair Jackie Dana said, “The retreat was an overwhelming success. Not only were we able to discuss at length the concerns of UT Austin staff members, but we were able to come together as a team, with all representatives having a voice in the direction the Council takes in the upcoming year.”
At the retreat the UTSC also elected the chairs of most Council Standing Committees; the Bylaws and Procedures Committee will elect a chair at its next meeting. Current UT Staff Council Executive Committee membership include:
Ben Bond, Chair
Jackie Dana, Vice Chair
Janice Hejl, Recording Secretary
Stephanie Cardenas, Benefits
Blake Willms, Committee on Committees
Tracy Saenger, Communications
Lawrence Cook, Infrastructure and Parking
Cindy Posey, Issues
Joe Gregory, Nominations and Elections
Louise Nelson, Resources
Lara Eakins, Workplace Environment
The next general meeting of UT Staff Council will feature an address by President Bill Powers. The meeting will be held on the UT Austin campus on July 16 from 2 to 3:30 pm in the Avaya Auditorium, ACE 2.302.
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April 15, 2008
UT Faculty Council approves certificate plan
Students at the University of Texas have long been able to earn certificates in business and a few other academic programs along with their degrees. A proposal approved on Monday by the Faculty Council would give such certificates a tad more official recognition, by listing them on students’ transcripts.
But as some faculty members noted, the proposal seems to be somewhat at cross purposes with UT’s effort to get more students to graduate on time. That’s because students would be able to continue their studies for up to a year after graduation to complete work on a certificate.
The extra time was granted because some degree programs are so demanding that it is virtually impossible for students to pick up sufficient credits for a certificate in four years.
The proposal, which still needs approval from UT administrators, probably won’t prompt many students to stay on campus longer, said Desmond Lawler, a professor of civil, architectural and environmental engineering who chairs the Faculty Council’s Educational Policy Committee.
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March 10, 2008
Faculty salaries up 4%, survey finds
Law professors make the most, an average of $129,527 a year. Engineering professors pull in $107,134. Business professors come in third at $102,965.
Those are among the findings of a survey by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. The survey also found that the overall median salary for faculty members rose 4 percent, up from last year’s 3.8 percent increase. The survey examined salaries of more than 211,424 faculty members in public and private colleges and universities nationwide.
The three disciplines with the lowest average salaries are English, professors of which earned $76,793; visual and performing arts, $76,293; and parks, recreation, leisure and fitness, $76,038.
The findings, broken down by discipline (but not by school), are on the association’s Web site.
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February 18, 2008
Academics should trump athletics, UT faculty says
The Faculty Council at the University of Texas on Monday unanimously endorsed a national coalition’s finding that the success of college sports threatens the academic integrity and financial stability of colleges and universities.
Faculty members stopped well short of saying the problem affects UT.
Nevertheless, their support of the principles of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics, including a strong assertion that academics is more important than athletics, could help build pressure for reforms by the National College Athletic Association, which governs intercollegiate sports. The University of Michigan’s faculty senate has also endorsed the coalition’s principles.
The Faculty Council’s action is not expected to have any immediate impact on UT, said David Hillis, chairman-elect of the council and a professor of integrative biology. The men’s and women’s athletics councils at UT also endorsed the coalition’s principles, as did President William Powers Jr.
The Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics is an alliance of 55 Division I-A faculty councils and senates. Michael Granof, an accounting professor who is UT-Austin’s representative on the coalition, said Monday that a small number of schools — including Texas, Ohio State and Michigan — make money from their athletic programs, while the rest operate in the red.
“The current model is just unsustainable,” Granof said. “Something’s going to have to happen.”
The growing commercialism of college sports, coupled with pressure to win, inevitably will result in more abuses in recruiting and other facets of athletics, Granof said.
Opposition to reform comes not from schools like UT but from second-tier schools, he said, adding, “We can afford to be a lot cleaner than some of the others.”
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January 17, 2008
UT's Branham a finalist at Syracuse U.
Lorraine Branham, director of the School of Journalism at the University of Texas, might be moving to a more northerly latitude.
Branham is one of two finalists for dean of Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. Her rival is Sam Grogg, dean of the University of Miami’s School of Communication.
The Post-Standard in Syracuse, citing a letter to faculty members, reported this week that Branham is scheduled to visit the campus Jan. 29 to 30, and Grogg is to visit Jan. 24 to 25.
Branham assumed her current post in August 2002 after 25 years as a newspaper reporter, editorial writer and editor. Her most recent newspaper position was assistant to the publisher of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
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December 17, 2007
College employees favor Democrats in donations
Judging by their campaign contributions thus far in the presidential election season, people who work on college campuses in America lean to the left.
Or perhaps, as Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, told the Chronicle of Higher Education, they are simply tired of Republican President Bush and want a Democrat in the White House.
That assessment emerges from a review of campaign donations by the Chronicle, which follows higher education matters. Using data from the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group, the Chronicle found that more than three-fourths of the $6.2 million in donations went to Democrats, with Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., receiving by far the most, $2.1 million.
Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., came in second with $1.6 billion.
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney ranked third and topped the field of Republicans, pulling in about $564,000 from faculty members, administrators and others.
Republican Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, came in fourth at about $462,000, followed by Democrat John Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, at $351,000.
Among higher education institutions, no Texas college cracked the list of 10 whose employees were the most generous donors, according to the Chronicle. The top three were Harvard University, whose employees gave $281,000; Stanford University, $135,850; and Columbia University, $120,350.
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