Dear Colleagues,

For the September newsletter from the Faculty Senate, I would like to focus primarily on a summary-transcript of Chancellor Jackson’s comments to the Faculty Senate at the September 11th meeting (starting on the lower half of this page). Dr. Pohl could not attend the meeting because of a scheduling conflict, but he will be at the October 9th meeting; you, of course, are welcome to come to that meeting and hear what he has to say. As well, I would like to point out that the minutes of the June, 2002 Faculty Senate meeting (approved at last week’s Faculty Senate meeting) are attached to this e-mail.

Many of you have probably already seen the report, but I would like to draw your attention to---the just-released study by the Texas Faculty Association comparing the growth rate between faculty salaries and the salaries of top university administrators between the 1992-2002 fiscal years. The entire report may be found at http://tfaonline.net/~tfa02/newsarchive/facultysalary.htm , but let me quote the news release accompanying the report:

Between fiscal years 1992 and 2002, the salaries of health-related institution [the category in which UNT is placed] presidents grew by 125 percent in non-Consumer Price Index adjusted dollars, chancellors’ salaries grew by 98 percent and university presidents’ salaries grew by 72 percent. In comparison, university instructors’ salaries grew by 63 percent, full-professors’ salaries grew by 43 percent, assistant professors’ salaries grew by 42 percent, and associate professors’ salaries grew by 40 percent.

[…]

"These exorbitant packages enjoyed by some of our chancellors and presidents not only demoralized faculty, but also mislead the voting public. They create the impression that higher education is rolling in wealth, when real higher education, in the classroom and the lab, is barely getting by," said James Aldridge, TFA President and Professor of Psychology at UT-Pan American. "I would give the chancellors and presidents an A+ when advocating for their own salaries and a D- when advocating for faculty salaries."

And, from the report itself:

If professors’ average salary [at universities in the same category as UNT] grew at the same rate as chancellors’ average salary, the average professor salary in FY 2002 would be $111,396 as opposed to the actual $80,504. And vice versa, if the average chancellors’ salary grew at the same rate as the average professors’ salary, the average chancellor salary in FY 2002 would be $239,944, as opposed to $332,019.

 

Following is a transcript-summary of the comments made by Chancellor Jackson at the September 11th Faculty Senate meeting. I have taken the liberty of dividing his remarks into separate paragraphs, and enumerating the various themes upon which he touched, in the order that he addressed them; excepting for the (and other explanatory comments, indicated with brackets), all of the following is a direct quote:

  1. The Chancellor’s mandate

    2. Neither in private nor in public have any of the regents said that they perceive that we, the UNT community, have those kinds of [major] problems. We have resource problems. We have a lot of opportunities. We have commitments we’ve made in the state, in the broader community that we’re struggling to fulfill […] but very few of the things that have [been] presented to me are disasters that are about to happen where I’ve somehow got to make major changes. […] I wasn’t given those instructions. I don’t have a stealth plan of any kind to make major changes in this campus or in any part of the University of North Texas system, but I was told, ‘Here are the areas where we’ve set our sights higher, and we would like to raise them.’

    As an outsider, […] it’s hard for those not directly involved in UNT to know much about us. Part of that is because we haven’t had an advertising budget. We haven’t had a theme. We haven’t gone out of our way to promote the diversity of UNT’s strengths, and I’m committed to that: not to be just a research university, not to be just an education and music university, but to be broad and comprehensive.

  2. The UNT system

    3. We have to complete our definition of what a system is. […] It is natural that in this campus community there would be some anxiety about what it means to develop a second comprehensive university in Dallas. Will it be in direct competition for faculty and dollars? Will my program, my department, my college or my area of student---will they be forcibly moved down the road and all of our resources taken away? None of these things are in the plan. […] It is no one’s intention that the University of North Texas at Denton be anything other than the flagship of this system. It would be folly to plan anything that would undermine the strength of this campus.

    [No on-line courses can be counted toward system-center enrollment] so the new enrollments that were just announced [September 8th] showed an almost leveling off, and some are going to say that the system center is stalled. It’s not really stalled. We had some on-line enrollments in the past years; we’ve taken these out [this year], and so, in terms of in-person enrollment, we’ve grown for every semester for the five semesters it’s been operating in Dallas, but the growth is slower without [on-line] enrollees.

  3. Legislative issues

  1. We oppose the deregulation of tuition] because we don’t want to have to raise tuition [to make up for the lost dollars from the state deriving from tuition deregulation].

  2. We asked for a little more than two million dollars in special items [for the system] and that our system be funded on an equitable basis [in the last legislative session the UNT system received just over $200,000 while everybody else received at least $2,000,000].

    4.     Personal/Professional life and comparison to former Chancellor Hurley

    My wife and I have a daughter still at home, in high school, in Dallas. We’re keeping our house in Dallas for the remainder of this year. My wife is there, and she works full-time, and so, for the time being at least, you’re getting a loner instead of a "twofer," without any particular specialty in military history. I’ll try to find every possible way in which my political background can be beneficial to the university. I’ll lecture. I’ll bring in friends and guests and prominent people. I’ll do everything I can to help the university. […] I’m working now off the computer screen […] you’ll be able to e-mail me directly and not have to send a message to Jana or Elizabeth to have them convey to me.

 

    5.     Involvement in day-to-day operations

    I will inevitably be less involved at the campus level because that’s the way everyone seems to want it to be, except perhaps me. Given my druthers, I would rather visit with a class or come stop in with the faculty. […] I do want to be the symbolic leader of this community and the actual leader where necessary and appropriate.

 

     6.    Executive assistant

    It really wasn’t that logical that the chancellor have a faculty executive assistant for one of the campuses, and so I’m going to fill that position. We now, in effect, will have two executive assistant positions. Dr. Pohl will have a faculty executive assistant, and I’ll have an executive assistant. That position has been posted, and I’m talking to a wide variety of people who can help me with all these projects, mostly external, but some internal.

 

     7.    Spending

    I have yet to be able to get a complete picture on our spending practices here and throughout the system. By the measures the state looks at, we are rated very well. The state always asks you what percentage of your budget are you spending on administrative costs versus instructional costs, and our percentage is one of, if not the, lowest among major universities. […] However, since we are the poorest of the systems, we need to be most frugal. If we’re, in fact, going to keep putting our resources into the classroom and instructional related and research related activities, we need to be looking for ways to do that. There is the possibility that the state will ask everyone in state government to make across-the-board cuts. […] What I also will be looking at is whether there are things that we need to be reviewing in terms of internal cost controls, not in order to just save money, not in order to build buildings, but to sustain these things that are critical to us on an annual basis. If we have areas of operating savings in administration, I’m going to try to find them so that we can put them into scholarships and other things that enrich our programs. That’s my only goal.

 

    8.     Budget review

We’ll have some budget review activities. One of those budget review activities may, in fact, involve looking at departmental efficiency and how state formulas work. The state has a very complicated formula [that is] supposed to reflect the differential cost of delivering instruction and service in every different specialty area. And so, with different weights, it’s supposed to mean that based on your credit hours taught, you actually then get a check from the state that reflects your mixture of science, music and education and everything else we do at just the right cost levels so that everyone has the same opportunity to be self-supporting. Now, that may or may not be true. If it’s not true, then it’s going to be harder to develop yardsticks of fairness to encourage everybody to be as self-sustaining as possible and live within the formula. We have assigned development officers. I’ve been told but have had no [opportunity] independently yet to verify whether every college and department is taking full advantage in using the development officers. But if you’re not and your department is non self-sustaining, the question ought to be: Why? Why isn’t this a more serious concern? Use your advisory committee. Use your development officer. Work very hard to get external resources […] But, again, the formula is suppose to be, as it’s been explained to me, as I’ve read it, designed so that every department in Arts and Sciences is supposed to have an opportunity to be self-supporting on the formula just as much as in Engineering or Business or in any other area. If that’s not the case, then we need to make sure we’re careful in reflecting it. But I will be asking Dr. Pohl and Dr. Blank in Ft. Worth to review our assignment of resources because if we’re about to go through those kinds of hard times, I want to be able to show that we’re using them well.

 

Sincerely,

Jeffrey Oxford

Chair, Faculty Senate

Send comments or questions to Sue Young, syoung@unt.edu, at the Faculty Senate Office, Telephone (940) 565-2053.