Monday, June 23, 2014

A Note to the Community

Dr Jerry Becker of SIUC, emailed out the following late last week:


A NOTE TO THE COMMUNITY -
In Chancellor Rita Cheng's departing message to the SIUC community, as she leaves for her new position as head of Northern Arizona University, she wrote, "We have solidified our financial viability and are on the brink of turning around our enrollment decline." I am wondering what this means? I wonder what our summer enrollment figures are? Further, does what she writes mean that we are in such great financial shape that College of Education and Human Services [COEHS] faculty members are expected to accept half their salaries for teaching this summer?

In contrast, the COEHS Dean received a hefty salary increase from $152,964 to $184,644 per year ($15,387 per month), a 21%% increase. His new Associate Dean in the COEHS received a
$32,000 increase in salary. And the new Director of Teacher Education in the COEHS received a similarly large salary increase.

The members of the COEHS Dean's Council, that is, department chairs, receive at least eleven month's salary, and at least some (maybe all) receive the equivalent of one additional month of salary - that makes twelve months. [I know from a reading of the Minutes of the Dean's Council meetings received from a FOIA request that the members discussed ways to "get back" what seems to be a reduction in pay (12 months to 11 months), so as to enjoy a full 12 months salary, while at the same time discussing implementation of the half-pay summer salaries for faculty members.

I am not aware of any of these administrators taking any kind of 'cut' in salary as they have sanctioned for faculty members.
What can we make of this? What should we make of this?

And what does this mean? It appears that, concerning administration salaries, there apparently is a pile of money to draw on (financial viability? For whom?). But not for faculty members nor for students. For faculty members, well, they should teach for half salary. And for students and their parents, well, they should provide substantially more payment to the university in tuition and enormous fees (much of it for things of little or no interest to them).

Where is the justice in this system, for students and faculty?

I submit that, like one of our highly regarded university faculty members recently wrote, we are headed straight towards the destruction of our university. These actions fly in the face of faculty and students around whom the university is built. And it is not as though students do not see and understand what is going on - they do. And what are the implications for university enrollments - either in retaining for recruiting?

It is difficult to fathom the unconscionable decisions that have been/are being made by these administrators. Unconscionable! How, I wonder, can any of these administrators serve up and sanction the salary policy to faculty members as they do and, at the same time, walk off with enormous increases in salary for them selves? [Are these salary increases coming from the dollars garnered by the half-salary policy of faculty?]  I am not aware of any administrator, not one, giving anything up, in their own salary, while putting in place the new policy of summer teaching at half the salary, or even less, for faculty members.

2 comments:

  1. It is high time that someone spoke out about the spin-doctoring that is going on at SIUC and the denial of what someone has termed the "destruction of our university."

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  2. They were asking faculty to "volunteer" to teach UCOL 101 sections next year and offering $500 contribution to OTS (other than salary -- money that can be used for travel or computers, etc). That is one tenth of the pay for even a lecturer.

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