Inside Iowa State
May 21, 1999
P&S staff urged to speak up
by Anne Dolan
Professional and scientific employees should "stop sighing and walking away" when they believe classification or compensation guidelines put them at a disadvantage, said Carla Espinoza, assistant vice president for human resource services, during the May P&S Council meeting. She encouraged council members to talk to her about situations as they arise.
"It's going to take a little activism. Right now, P&S have no voice," she said. "Ask questions, make grievances. Don't throw it on the table and expect someone will take care of it."
But Espinoza also told the council that there's a lot of misunderstanding on campus of how the P&S classification/compensation system works. Some of the perceptions that the system is "unfair" are due to misunderstanding. She said she plans to organize education sessions in the next year to help employees better understand the system.
Espinoza acknowledged that there are some weaknesses in the P&S classification system -- such as requiring a degree for all P&S positions or ISU's preference for setting salary ranges based on market value versus the Board of Regents' mandate to consider only comparable worth (which ignores market variables such as gender). Some of the salary issues won't stabilize until the classification system is revised, she said.
Employee teams have studied and written reports on the P&S classification system -- and another specifically on P&S research positions -- and those reports currently are being reviewed by ISU administrators.
During the open forum portion of the meeting, four teams that received student recruitment and retention grants this year presented summaries of their programs. They included:
- Career Trek, an early recruitment strategy for ninth and
10th grade students in northwest Iowa that promotes ISU
Extension as a source for college information, particularly
through its "Workforce Preparation" initiative.
- Each One Reach One, a mentoring program between minority
students in the colleges of Education and Family and
Consumer Sciences and minority junior high and high school
students in Des Moines and Sioux City.
- An outreach project, coordinated by the College of
Engineering and the Admissions Office, that delivered, to 10
high schools via the Iowa Communications Network,
experiments that apply math and science principles to real-
world situations. The project also included a series of ICN-
delivered sessions about Iowa State for prospective students
and their parents.
- Wallace Cup, a community-building competition among the
houses of Wallace Residence Hall aimed at improving student
satisfaction with their residence hall.
In other business:
- Council president Rob Bowers reported council
representatives have shared their plans with interim provost
Richard Seagrave for a survey of P&S employees to gauge what
issues are important and on what the council should be
spending its time in the next few years. Bowers said
Seagrave was supportive of the project and will look into
options for funding the survey.
- The council elected officers for the 1999-2000 year.
They are president Danette Kenne, economics department (Ag);
vice president Kerry Dixon, facilities management;
secretary-treasurer Kevin Brown, news service; and at-large
executive committee members Jody Sanders, contracts and
grants administration; and Josie Six, Ag Experiment Station
administration.
The next council meeting begins at 2 p.m. Thursday, June 3, in 244 Memorial Union.
Iowa State homepage
Inside Iowa State, inside@iastate.edu, University
Relations
Revised 05/20/99
Copyright © 1999, Iowa State University, all rights
reserved
URL:
http://www.inside.iastate.edu/1999/0521/pscouncil.html