OCR Text |
Show THE CAMPUS Cannon reflects on many years of aiding students City. Real world employment helped Cannon to clarify his job interests and abilities. He realized that he was not particularly interested in seriously attempting to climb his way up the SENJOR STAFF WRITER corporate ladder. In 1967 Cannon graduated from BYU with a "I never expected to put down my roots in Utah. It has been master's degree in human development and family life. a tremendous experience. We consider it to be home," said While employed by Mobil, Cannon considered the idea of making a career move of some type into student services on a Jack Cannon, director of placement and career planning, who college or university campus. In 1967 he was hired at is retiring from SUU at the end of this month. Born in Washington D.C., Cannon grew up on the East Southern Utah University. As a result, Cannon has enjoyed · rewarding experiences and opportunities from helping coast. Although his parents grew up in Utah Cannon considered himself an easterner. When he and his family came students and associating with colleagues involved in higher out West, Cannon said he found Utah, arid desert and education, he said, and that work has been very satisfying, he sandstone landscapes, to be quite different from the foliage in admits. 1 As director of placement and career planning for the last few the Eastern states. After receiving his bachelor's Jegree at Bates College in years, Cannon said he and his staff would urge students to start planning earlier for employment after graduation. He has Lewiston, Maine, Cannon said that two or three unexpected been able to help hundreds of tudent find out about career factors fell into place and made it possible for him to earn a opportuni ties. master's degree at BYU. Previously, he spent a oumbe.r of years a the director of Cannon ma jored in economics as an undergraduate. After financial aid on campus. graduating he worked for Mobil 0~ Com panr in New York By LEAH WOOD f ack Cannon Summer school salaries still make some unhappy Two-year-old policy switch means lower pay for veteran faculty members; some say students suffer less out-of-class time on overload classes and their pay for tho e courses averages $21.25 per hour. Fall 1994 activity reports by faculty members show that the average time spent on a normal courseload class is 3.1 hours to one credit hour, for all work involved in teaching the course. That figure drop to 2.0 hours to one credit hour for overload classes. "This is possibly because overload classes are most often classes that the faculty member has taught before and therefore needs less preparation for," said Alger. Using the hypothetical $34,000 per annum rate for a faculty member, the hourly wage for a regular courseload class works out to $30.47 per hour- $9.22 per hour more than the average overload course. Of course, not all faculty members spend the same time on classes. There are many variables. For instance, teachers who grade tests via the Scantron method By RICHARD D . BONADUCE SENIOR STAFF WRITER Although an effort to raise faculty members' base salaries to be more equal to comparable institutions occurred two year ago, there are still some differing opinions about the policy change, and some disgruntled faculty in the wake of the two-year-old decision. The disagreem ent come in the matter of summer pay. A Phillip C. <;:arter, dean of summer school, explains it, the old pay policy for summer quarter was that faculty could earn up to 22 percent of their regular chool year base salary for a full-time summer load- 12 credits. This policy was changed to the "overload" mode- a set figure per credit hour: $425 this summer. If a faculty member's salary was, for instance, $34,000, the summer pay under the old policy would equate to $7,480. With the new policy, a faciµty member who taught 12 credits for summer would receive about twothirds of that amount: $5,100. Faculty members in the lower echelons of the pay scale, of course, would necessarily not see a drop in pay of that magnitude. The extra money generated by the savings through this new policy was used in a "rollover" fashion to pay for an increase in base pay for the faculty. In a professional sense, such increases in the nine-month based salary have offered the opportunity for faculty to consider not teaching summer quarter, freeing that time to perform research or other scholarly activities. This had an addi tional positive effect on everyone, ince when futme increases are appropriated by the state legislature-a three percent increase in salary, for examp le-that three percent increase is calculated on a larger base pay. On th e other hand, said Terry D. Alger, provost of the university, it may be understandable that senior faculty members who may have been motivated to teach summer quarter under a percentage basis of pay will be less apt to teach at a set figure per credit hour. Obviously, the new and junior faculty members, who are not being paid as much in the first place, are willing to teach in the um.mer because at lea.st they earn some extra money. But some of the more seasoned faculty say they are "somewhat insulted" by the pay, because it is a lot of work to teach a summer course, and, in averaging out what they get paid per-hour for time put in through preparation, actual class time and out-ofclass work, they are being paid about minimum wage for their considerable efforts. "You'd be better off taking tickets out at the showhouse, which is what a lot of professors have done," said a faculty member. In fact, however, according to surveys faculty themselves have completed, faculty m embers average ms throws new wrench • • mto summer pay ISsue An additionally thorny problem relating to summer school pay surfaced earlier this year in the form of taxation of such pay. Provost Terry D. Alger said that the h1temal Revenue Service taxes the extra summer pay at a higher rate initially, but that faculty do get that money back in a refund at the end of the tax year. Some faculty are glad for that, while others see it as a form of savings account which earns them no interest. Fir this rea on, Greg Stauffer, vice president for financial affairs, investigated how to deal with the payroll and IRS issues. Faculty Senate President Danielle Dubrasky aid that Alger informed her at an earlier meeting that from the options presented by Stauffer "the deans decided to go · th a tax withholding of a flat 28 percent." Stauffer said, "All of the different options had their r.dvantages and disadvantages. There was not any single method that benefitted everyone equally, because withholding is a function of individual situations, deductions and so on." Stauffer said he "basically reque ted information from all the other institutions in the state as a means of examiuing our options, gathered all the information and then presented it to the provost to take back to the deans and the [faculty] senate. None of [the options! is i deal, but we, like everyone else, must work within the IRS guidelines." I would likely spend less time on a class than would a teacher who reads, analy es, corrects and grades essays. The rollover of funds to the increase in faculty base pay has made a great difference, said Alger, who points to a 1995 Utah State Regents study in compensation gaps that shows that SUU faculty were 14.2 percent below the earnings of those at comparable institutions in 1993-94, the year before the rollover. SUU is now only 5.7 percent behind, with that positive change being the large t in the state system over that time. Still, there are those who claim that those pay raises are m erely expected and that higher summer pay scales are equally expected. One tenured professor who is vocal about the practices of the administration in this regard is Professor of Psychology Les Jones, who said, "They'll just spread us as thin as they can spread us, work us as hard as they can work us, and if all else fails, they' ll just hire some young horse to do it. 11 Those yt>uog horses may take the form of adjuncts, some of whom may not b as well educated and experienced as full-time faculty, and who are being used more often to help teach the rising number of students. There are those on the faculty who worry that the quality of education here is suffering because of it. On the other hand, say others, students may benefit from a wider range of teachers and teaching styles and concepts. Al o, many adjun cts are nationally renowned scholars in their field who choose to come to Cedar City for the summer. At any rate, SUU has more than 80 percent of i ts classes, including those in ummer school, taught by full-time faculty members, said Alger, who adds that those figures are in line with national statistics for fouryear schools. Of_ about 20 percent of overload classes, be said, about half are taught by full-ti me faculty on an overload ba is and the other half by part-time and adjunct faculty. In contrast, he said, research institutes will generally have fewer than 70 percent of its courses taught by fulltime faculty with the other courses being taught by adjuncts or teaching assi tant . Moreover, " community colleges in Utah and across the nation routinely use full-time faculty for about 50 percent of its classes," said Alger. Despite some dissatisfaction with the drop in summer pay, many SUU teachers still teach summer school out of a sense of historical duty after putting so much time into getting it going; or for extra money earned from working in their vocation; or as a service to students. Some faculty, on the other hand, have chosen not to teach summer overload sections at the new rate of pay. Regardless, the summer s_chool program at SUU continues to grow each year. |