Eighteen faculty and staff members, whose combined services total more than 500 years at Plattsburgh State, are stepping down from their positions in an effort to cut costs.
Through the Voluntary Separation Program, which was initiated in November, PSUC faculty were given the option to receive leave with full-time pay for a semester, while professionals were granted a six-month leave with full pay, prior to resigning from their positions, according to an e-mail sent out by PSUC President John Ettling Feb. 24.
With 14 faculty members and four PSUC professional employees participating in the program, PSUC Interim Provost Patricia Higgins said an estimated $450,000 will be saved within the 2010-11 academic year. She said an estimated $550,000 could be saved for the following year, as faculty and staff members will still be getting paid within the first year.
“The vast majority of these people are senior faculty or professional employees,” said Larry Mills, executive director of human resource services. “Their salaries are at the higher end of the salary scale. When they leave, if we need to hire a full-time person, (or) if a full-time professor leaves and we need to hire an assistant professor, their salary will be significantly lower.”
Qualifications for the program, which were noted by Ettling in an e-mail to the faculty and staff Nov. 3, included full-time tenured faculty and all professional employees with permanent appointment and 10 years of service. Those with an Appendix A title, in which the current position-holder cannot receive permanent appointment but has received at least one five-year renewal, can also qualify.
Mills said the only case in which an exception was made was for Director of Health Education Services Jerimy Blowers, who has worked at PSUC for more than 10 years but was working part-time for some of that service.
Although Blowers did not meet the initial requirements for the program, Mills said he was “trying to accommodate virtually everyone who had shown an interest.”
“I believe that this was a difficult decision for the campus and was not done without careful consideration of its impact on the campus environment,” Blowers said. “Ultimately, the college is doing everything possible to preserve the integrity of its mission in the face of unprecedented financial challenges.”
While 19 faculty and staff members applied for the program, Mills said in one case a faculty member could not be accommodated because he had submitted a resignation prior to the implementation of the program.
“We determined that in order to be fair, we’d have to offer it to others who were similarly situated and decided that this didn’t fit the language or spirit of the program,” Mills said.
And while some of the employees opted to take their leave of absence during the spring semester, Mills said many faculty members were not ready to make such a drastic change on such short notice, wanting to teach through the spring semester and take their leave in the fall, officially resigning from their position Dec. 31, 2010.
“Some (staff) folks have a lot of institutional memory … They know how to do things that a new person won’t know, so the department will suffer as a result of that loss, so it’s a mixed blessing,” said David Curry, PSUC’s chapter president of United University Professions.
Higgins said while not all positions will be refilled, some will be replaced with adjunct faculty and assistant professors.
She said while PSUC is recruiting for certain positions, some of which opened up due to the Voluntary Separation Program, others will be temporarily filled on a short-term basis with current faculty, as they can handle the needs of students in respective departments until more permanent replacements are reconsidered in the future.
Higgins said PSUC offers regular rates when recruiting for certain positions, such as a lecturer, which vary slightly from department to department but average around $45,000 for someone starting in the School of Arts and Sciences.
“We wouldn’t be offering any less than we would for any other assistant professor. The big difference is if you’re replacing a senior professor who’s been here a long time and has gotten raises because they’ve been here and because their rank has increased,” Higgins said, “that junior person is going to come in often at about half of what the senior person was making.”
However, Higgins said more important than the savings is the flexibility the program gives PSUC during a time of tight budgeting, as it gives the campus the opportunity to move things around and focus on areas that may need more attention.
And while the process of recruiting and refilling the positions may take away from the initial savings, Mills said PSUC has an account that budgets all advertising, candidate travel and additional recruitment costs.
In addition, Higgins said recruitment costs are already built into the estimated savings for the program, and those positions are being treated like all other positions on campus.
“Every position is reviewed by the president’s cabinet before we begin recruitment and everybody on the president’s cabinet recognizes that some of these positions have to be filled, so there’s nobody saying we have to hold on to all this money no matter what,” Higgins said. “We know we have to spend some of this to keep our educational and support services programs running.”
English professor Bruce Butterfield, who is participating in the Voluntary Separation Program, said he was thinking about retiring at the end of 2010 prior to the implementation of the program.
“Giving up teaching after so many years is a little like giving up a major portion of one’s identity,” said Butterfield, who has been teaching for 40 years. “The retirement incentive the college offered helped me to make up my mind, but it’s still a bittersweet decision.”
Butterfield said while younger faculty and staff members can be hired at a lower pay, not all faculty and staff members who step down will be replaced, so the number and variety of courses offered may be reduced. And while he said a good deal of experience will be lost, fresher, younger faculty will “bring some new vitality to the college.”
Butterfield said he will be staying in Plattsburgh for the time being, while enjoying an opportunity to do some traveling, as well as getting to “some of the books (he’s) been meaning to read for the last 40 years or so.”
He also said he may teach the occasional course if he misses the classroom too much and the department has a need.
Sociology and Criminal Justice Professor Tony Poveda also planned on retiring next year and said the Voluntary Separation Program made it easier for him to transition into his retirement.
“It was a good thing for me, but the down side is it’s probably not a good thing for the institution,” Poveda said. “In a period of one year you’re going to lose a lot of senior faculty who have been in this institution for a long time — that’s a big blow to the college in one fell swoop.”
Poveda, who is currently in his last teaching semester, said he has a number of different things he will pursue following his retirement, including a possible book project, volunteering, revisiting his childhood interest in astronomy and possibly teaching an occasional course, as well.
“Some (employees) have been here many more than 10 years, some have been recognized as SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professors or SUNY Distinguished Service Professors, some have held leading roles in one or another college initiative and each has made a significant contribution in his or her own way,” Higgins said. “We hope that they, like so many other faculty and professionals who have previously left positions at Plattsburgh, will continue to be a part of the larger college community.”
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