During the last cycle Wendler hired some lawyers out of Chicago and they came in and hatched a PR plan to throw dirt at the professors. Everything blew up in the papers and there was almost a strike. This time Poshard is involved and clearly the administration has decided to not be so stupid and villainize the professors in the press. They went to the papers and spelled out their first, best and last offer the other day which was pretty stupid, but generally their PR spin this time is pretty good.
There are a couple of problems this time and didn't exist last time. SIUC has been on a campaign to cut costs and raise more revenue at the same time. The extra money goes into Uncle Walt's piggy bank for new buildings. Salaries are down vs. inflation. There are large problems with salary compression (you know the new people make about as much as full professors with 10 years of experience). In general, the faculty might have the idea that if you really want SIU to be better, it is though people and not buildings.
The second problem is the shared governance, AKA the JRB. As everyone who is paying attention knows the administration no longer pretends to follow the JRB recommendations. When the administration's representative votes against the administration they still don't follow the JRB recommendations. This leads to screwing over people, getting them fired (sorry, turned down for tenure), and falling moral among anyone who knows the screwee. I can't imagine the Union is going to allows the administration to continue doing this, so look for the Union to strike over this issue alone.
Just because they aren't drawing blood in the paper doesn't mean that there will not be a strike. Since Wendler has proven to be a poor manager and completely unethical since the last union contract it seems more likely this time.
4 comments:
Why do you say Wendler has proven to be "completely unethical?
Doesn't unethical mean lying to -- or hurting -- others, to benefit oneself?
Has WVW done that?
I agree that the JRB issues are foreboading. They need to be dealt with. The lack of clear standards set by central administration regarding tenure is a major problem that they need to fix quickly. The emphasis by Wendler on "merit pay" misses the point of the most urgent change that we need to undergo. We need to emphasize getting "the right people on the bus" to use the words of Jim Collins. People who become tenured professors at SIU must meet the highest standard - they must be great at research, great at teaching, and great at service. If they don't meet any one of those three standards, I think the administration should deny tenure. The problem is that Wendler has either (a.) made decisions that would violate his own stated principles or (b.) he hasn't clearly communicated what his expectations are in the first place. I would bet on both degrees of a and b being true, but I'm not close enough to the situation to be able to determine what kind of change needs to be resolved.
Secondly, the money piggy bank, aka Saluki Way. I'm afraid that some people are not looking at this project on principle. It's easy to throw the baby out with the bath water and say that it sucks because Walter Wendler is the one initiating this project, but I'm not going to take that route. Instead, I am going to look at the actual RAMP requests. We are putting most of the renovations into academics, 78 % of it from what facts and figures I have been able to gleam out of financial data publicly available from Southern. Renovations to build another classroom building and art and design building, which are now on the RAMP, are desperatly needed to fix shoddy classroom space and aging blue barracks. Now, the football stadium. It would be nice to mandate that all donations for that come from the private sector, but that's not going to happen.
The main thing that would aid SIU is the push to increase faculty salaries and faculty numbers through tuition, and increasing student access to technology. All that we need to do in order to achieve that is to raise tuition, but we must also increase financial aid to do that and still be achieving one of the stated mandates of Southern, which is social stratification. I don't think we're doing a good enough job of teaching financial literacy and critical thinking and reasonaing skils. If we can improve those two things, the sky is the limit for this University.
Hi Dave -
Well, if you are an architect and only care about building buildings, but your job is to run the whole organization it is pretty easy to be unethical. Publishing plans that you know will never, never come true so you can get the next job is unethical. Screwing people over on promotion is unethical. But mostly being a really bad manager of people is unethical in my book. How about yours? Granted, if Walt was the SIUC planner, he would be doing great!
A little challenge for you, name 3 good management initiatives that SIUC has rolled out in the last 5 years.
Hi Fraydog -
I thought you were a student? Wow, good comment. Thanks.
When you start allowing raises, layoffs and promotion to be handled by 1 or 2 people in a very large organization you are in trouble. SIUC has a system where professors are voted on for promotion and tenure by their peers (other tenured or full professors), then their chairman, then their dean, then the provost, then the president and finally the BOT. In bad organizations the decisions made by management are thought to be bad by the workers and in good ones... a great thing to do for your own company is to fire the poor performers (I know about this from experience). If your department, chair and dean say yes promote, the administration shots it down without following the rules, the JRB supports the promotion 3 to 0 and the administration turns them down again, where is the justice? What does the administration know that everyone else doesn't? There are very clear standards to getting tenure at SIUC, the problem is that the administration has decided not to follow them all the time. Don't be confused, large bureaucracies like SIUC always have the rules nailed down. When one party doesn't follow them and basically says, "you are fired, and you can sue us if you want to, but then you will never work in this field again," you have a problem don't you?
On your second point... you don't understand how this works? You put together a $500M plan to rebuild campus. You raise $50M and no more. Guess what gets built first? Right the football stadium and Arena remodel. The other stuff never quite gets done. You see it now? Question for you, if you need better classrooms and academic stuff at SIUC and the enrollment is down and the state isn't paying for it, which is cheaper? Fixing the buildings you have now or building new and letting the current buildings rot? I'm an engineer and might choose something different than an architect? Where fixing the current buildings might not make you "johnson" grow, it would be cheaper and more likely to work IMHO.
SIUC has raised tuition and fees, but are we seeing the money go into the areas that you want (teachers, students, and technology for learning) or are we seeing the money go into sports facilities? If you are wondering about this, go review the original plan that Glen Poshard put together when he still worked at SIUC, it is only about sports. The learning related stuff is just a smoke screen to quiet down the suckers.
This is the power of being the head of an organization like SIUC, you get to push your agenda. Wendler is cutting spending for teaching and hording money for football. Ask around, it isn't hard to see what is going on. Is that what you want? If no one complains, that is what you are going to get.
Peter, Re: management initiatives, I'm investigating. Of course, the key word is "good" right?
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