The Fora: A Higher Education Community

Quote from: EdnaMode on Today at 04:59:37 PMOne of my friends just sent me this. He's at one of the Commonwealth Campuses and is worried about the future. They have already been told that for teaching faculty, regardless of years of service or rank, their 5 year contracts will be converted to one year. Several of their engineering departments do not have enough faculty to teach the required courses because faculty who have retired or left for other positions have not been replaced. He said his particular campus has not run at a deficit in the several years he's been there, but the administration at University Park is making the majority of the cuts from the Commonwealth Campuses. Not sure where the money is going because their tuition is among the highest in the Big Ten.

Penn State offers Voluntary Separation Incentive Program to eligible Commonwealth Campus employees

https://www.psu.edu/news/administration/story/penn-state-offers-voluntary-separation-incentive-program-eligible-commonwealth/

1 year of salary as buyout? That's it?!? Bollocks. There's a sucker born every minute, I guess.

Quote from: rochish on Today at 05:18:58 PMHello everyone,

I need to file an appeal to our University's Faculty Grievance Committee. However, I have never done this before and so I'm not sure how to go about it and if there are any best practices. If you have any insights or experiences, I would be grateful if you could share them.

In addition, I am looking for examples of appeal documents (fully recognizing that the issues under consideration will be totally different). I was able to find one such document online (https://legalinsurrection.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/2023.01.16-Amy-Wax-Grievance.pdf).

If anyone of you is aware of any other appeals submitted to Grievance Committees available online, I would appreciate knowing.

Thank you.

Your grievance officer(s) should be the ones helping you with this.

And, no, contrary to popular belief, the growth in administrators is not the cause of most
institutions' demise.  Most programs return negative contribution to overhead to begin with. It's only aux services, grants, development and non rare occasions athletics and certain grad programs which brings the entire institution into the black. Yes, there has been an explosive growth in administrators, but that has mostly occurred at institutions that can afford it and where students and parents expect it. Medium and small institutions typically function with administrative understaffing relative to the workload.

Note: if your institution has bled 50% or more of its senior leadership in the last 3 years, enrollment is down 15% or more over the past 5-7 years, it hasn't recently gone thru a reckoning and your endowment is less than 150M, buckle up and dust off that ole CV. They are lying to you.

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Most universities lose money on athletics. The impact of a program really depends on how you calculate the costs, but many programs that are often maligned make money due to low costs. By contrast, one administrator once told me that that big value of nursing was all the of the students who can't actually hack the science in nursing but stay at the institution, since nursing is so expensive to run, it barely breaks even, despite the large number of nursing and pre-nursing majors. The argument that small and medium institutions are usually administratively understaffed really varies. 

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on Today at 05:32:09 PM

Quote from: Puget on Today at 01:40:04 PMTwo good pieces of grant news in one day!
But I have a ton of work and grading to do. Finding it very hard to concentrate.

Congratulations!

Thank you! I'm really excited to get to do this work (which is a brand new direction for my lab) with a very cool team of collaborators. I just really need a couple weeks to catch my breath right now which I don't have. Definitely falls under the category of good problems to have though!

Quote from: Puget on Today at 01:40:04 PMTwo good pieces of grant news in one day!
But I have a ton of work and grading to do. Finding it very hard to concentrate.

Congratulations!

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on Today at 07:06:23 AMJust a bit of T1 today.

Small chunk.

Hello everyone,

I need to file an appeal to our University's Faculty Grievance Committee. However, I have never done this before and so I'm not sure how to go about it and if there are any best practices. If you have any insights or experiences, I would be grateful if you could share them.

In addition, I am looking for examples of appeal documents (fully recognizing that the issues under consideration will be totally different). I was able to find one such document online (https://legalinsurrection.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/2023.01.16-Amy-Wax-Grievance.pdf).

If anyone of you is aware of any other appeals submitted to Grievance Committees available online, I would appreciate knowing.

Thank you.

One of my friends just sent me this. He's at one of the Commonwealth Campuses and is worried about the future. They have already been told that for teaching faculty, regardless of years of service or rank, their 5 year contracts will be converted to one year. Several of their engineering departments do not have enough faculty to teach the required courses because faculty who have retired or left for other positions have not been replaced. He said his particular campus has not run at a deficit in the several years he's been there, but the administration at University Park is making the majority of the cuts from the Commonwealth Campuses. Not sure where the money is going because their tuition is among the highest in the Big Ten.

Penn State offers Voluntary Separation Incentive Program to eligible Commonwealth Campus employees

https://www.psu.edu/news/administration/story/penn-state-offers-voluntary-separation-incentive-program-eligible-commonwealth/

Quote from: kaysixteen on Today at 02:43:54 PMExactly when are the high holydays of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

Those desiring to use religious accommodations must needs realize that their god(s), etc., may well be calling them to make, ahem, actual sacrifices for so doing.   Certainly Jesus is  full of statements to this effect in the NT.

My school has the same policy as Puget's. It is completely agnostic as to faith, so it would treat Pastafarian holidays the same as the more familiar Catholic ones. We just don't ask (nor do we read doctor's notes). The spirituality office sends out a long list of religious holidays in case we want to be prepared. I think most faculty just see that the list is long and trying to schedule around them is futile.

Ok, but eventually, even multiple failures ought to be able to garner the student enough basic course-related info to pass the class, without, ahem, actually having learned much of anything.