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Archive for the ‘Compensation’ Category

Year-end letter from Chancellor Martin

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

The following message was broadcast to the campus community by Chancellor “Biddy” Martin on Wednesday, May 5, 2010. It is reproduced (with minor reformatting) in its entirety here for reference and comment by S&W readers. The letter consists of several sections, each of which may be accessed directly via the links below.

A Year-End Letter: Opportunities, Challenges, Impressions
By Chancellor Biddy Martin

- Eds.
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Posted in College costs, Compensation, Restructuring proposal, Shared governance, The UW-Madison Campus, The University Budget | 1 Comment »

Video: First Campus Forum on Financing Public Higher Education

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

On Tuesday, February 23, 2010, the first Campus Forum on Financing Public Higher Education took place in the Memorial Union, hosted by PROFS, CAPE, and UFAS. As summarized in greater detail in a previous article in S&W, the purpose of this first forum was to identify and explain the current fiscal challenges facing the University of Wisconsin. Future planned forums in the series will dissect proposed solutions. Members of the local press as well as interested faculty, staff, and students were in attendance.

For the benefit of those who could not attend, we are now belatedly posting (courtesy of CAPE) a link to the complete video record (157 MB) of the presentations by the three distinguished speakers: Noel Radomski, director of the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education (WISCAPE); Andrew Reschovsky, professor at the La Follette School of Public Affairs; and Kevin Reilly, President of the University of Wisconsin System.

All three presentations made clear that the budget problems facing the state of Wisconsin, and therefore the University, will be with us for some time to come and will require difficult choices.

Planning for the second forum in the series, which will likely take place in early Fall 2010, is now underway.

Posted in College costs, Compensation, State-University Relations, The UW-Madison Campus, The University Budget, The University System | 1 Comment »

Faculty Senate to vote on a resolution on “Smart Furloughs”.

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

At their February 1 meeting, the Faculty Senate will vote on a resolution brought by the Department of Physics. The resolution voices strong support for the “Smart Furlough Bill” (AB 551) introduced by Rep. Kelda Helen Roys. For those not already familiar with it, the Badger Herald reported on the bill in early November, and PROFS has expressed strong support (we were unable to find any coverage of the bill by the Wisconsin State Journal or the Capital Times).

We encourage S&W readers to become familiar with the “Smart Furlough Bill” and to post comments here. In addition, those on the faculty should communicate their views on the resolution to their Faculty Senator(s).

The full text of the resolution is reproduced here: (more…)

Posted in Compensation, State-University Relations, The University System | No Comments »

Smart furloughs?

Monday, December 21st, 2009

PROFS is lobbying for what’s known as the Smart Furlough proposal, which would exempt state and university employees who are paid with federal and state funds from the state-imposed furloughs.

Please click here for the complete article from the PROFS website.

Please comment either here or on the PROFS page, or both.

Posted in Compensation, The University Budget | 1 Comment »

Happy Furlough Day?

Friday, November 27th, 2009

For those of us on the faculty, the concept of “furlough days” is as disconnected from reality as the concept of “sick days.”

Every month we have to fill out and submit a form that lists the specific hours on specific days that we took “sick leave.” The bureaucratic fiction behind this ritual is that faculty work 9-5 days and 40-hour weeks and that any day missed because of a cold is a day of productivity lost forever.

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Posted in Compensation, Retention, State-University Relations | 1 Comment »

Outrageous Chancellor Pay Package

Saturday, December 15th, 2007

The Cap Times has an article today titled “Pay will limit chancellor search.” It seems that $322,000 plus a recently renovated mansion to live in, a state car, and “generous benefits” is simply not enough to attract quality candidates. The problem, they tell us, is that this compensation is low compared to that received by the leaders of our peer institutions. The article says that the regents “will consider increasing pay by asking taxpayers or the [UW] foundation to contribute more.” I say absolutely not. I object to implementation of the CEO pay plan model in academia in general and at the UW in particular, and think this is the right time to take a stand.
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Posted in Compensation, The UW-Madison Campus, The University System | 5 Comments »

The Toxic Two Percent

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007

After months of delay, the budget numbers are now in. State lawmakers have approved a pay package that boosts UW System faculty and academic staff pay by 2 percent for AY 2007-2008, 2 percent again for AY 2008-2009, and another 1 percent in April 2009. For reference, faculty salaries systemwide are about 8.5 percent behind peer colleges and universities, and academic staff salaries are about 20 percent behind, according to System President Kevin Reilly. Clearly this package will do little to close those gaps. And undoubtedly, there will continue to be handwringing over a brain drain as some of the best and brightest on this campus get recruited away by universities willing to pay substantially more.

Saving the University (so far) from a far more severe haemorrhage of talent is a surprisingly simple fact: Many of us still love the University of Wisconsin and the city of Madison enough to ignore the lure of higher pay.

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Posted in Compensation, Retention, The UW-Madison Campus, The University System | No Comments »

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