Shared Suggestions

These are the suggestions shared so far by faculty and staff. Thanks for your feedback. To submit further feedback, click here to fill out a feedback form.

Name	Email	Suggestion	Response Individual	Suggested Response
anonymous	anonymous	I am writing in response to the letter you sent recently regarding the budget situation at Cornell. I am in the Entomology department and we have now experienced our first 5% cut in the department's budget. I understand that these cuts are necessary and that all units across the campus are experiencing these cuts. However, this first round of cuts in Entomology has had a significant impact on our department. We have lost TA lines, one staff person and the departmental operating budget is going to be cut significantly (~40%). I cannot see how we can do an additional 5% cut next year without a faculty retirement. My recommendation is that the University and the College start to consider ways to encourage the retirement of underperforming older faculty members. Without addressing the budget situation with retirements, we are going to continue to remove resources (TA lines, staff) that directly affect our ability to do our job, either teaching, research or administration. I would rather see us investing our limited resources in a smaller pool of active faculty than in a larger pool of less active, productive faculty. If these resources continue to be cut for active faculty, Cornell will cease to be an attractive place to work for younger and mid-career faculty. In my 12 years at Cornell we have gone from 14 semesters of TA support per year to 8. This is going to make it extremely difficult to offer lab classes, large lecture classes, and to develop a viable graduate program. We are all working very hard to obtain outside funding to support our graduate students. However, supporting a graduate student for 4-5 years sometimes requires a complex juggling of grant support, TA support, and internal and external fellowships. I urge you to explore budget cutting options next year that involve faculty retirements rather than additional cuts in the core operating expenses of our department. A fair and open way to address this issue is to review senior faculty (>65 years old?) and ask if they are contributing significantly to the teaching, research or administration of the department. This could be measured in the same way that you measure any faculty membersperformance: by grant funding obtained, publications, class enrollment and administrative effort. Faculty that areidentified as contributing little in these areas could be encouraged to retire with an attractive retirement package. Sincerely, Bryan Danforth	Barbara Knuth/Jan Nyrop	The leadership of the College, including department chairs, share your concern. The Senior Associate Dean's Office worked with CALS Human Resources and the University's office of Organizational Development Services to offer three workshops for CALS chairs in Fall 2008 to help build capacity of department chairs to address faculty performance issues. We have developed a number of supporting documents (see http://www.cals.cornell.edu/cals/faculty-staff/academic-affairs/academic-policies.cfm for documents especially on Effort Distribution Guidelines, Guidance to Chairs on Faculty Performance, Periodic Review of Faculty, and Phased Retirement. We also prepared a more detailed confidential guidance document for chairs, and are meeting with chairs individually to strategize about underperforming faculty in their units. Counsel's office and CALS and Cornell HR offices are involved, when appropriate to these discussions, as well. In some cases, the goals will be to help the faculty member to be able to increase contributions to the department and the university -- e.g., shifting assignments to better use their strengths, contribute more directly to department priorities by having the chair assign certain duties, etc. In other cases, the goals may be to help the faculty member understand, and move toward, the options for retirement. All of this necessitates a multi-pronged strategy tailored to each case. The points you make are excellent, and reflect many of the views of the college leadership. We also encourage you to talk about this topic with your own department chair to understand the activities happening on this issue in your own department. Thanks for your engagement.
anonymous	anonymous	Review the CALS distribution requirements and place emphasis on CALS courses rather than courses in other colleges ie. Physical and Life Sciences requirement (Life Sciences reqas of now heavily emphasizes biology as students are required to take 6 credits - can it truly be a life sciences requirement? - it somewhat is becoming that for the 5 majors that are social science oriented). Also with the move by A&S to limit enrollment in Physics and Chemcan that requirement be expanded to our AtmosScicourses and perhaps SES courses in CALS? Also there is now a new diversity requirement - emphasize course development in CALS - and future curriculum discussions around CALS requirements consider the role of CALS courses - many of the dist requirements heavily rely on A&S and this is not even a consideration when curriculum committee discusses changes - changes and economic impact on CALS do not often coincide in the conversation.	Don Viands	The University is reviewing the accessory instruction model for revision. Meanwhile, the college has been encouraging CALS departments to create more courses that would fulfill the distribution requirements. A list of CALS courses has just been created for students to fulfill the diversity requirement. Although courses from other colleges also will be included on the list, we want to encourage our students to enroll in CALS courses. Ultimately, the faculty create the curriculum, beginning with the departments or majors, followed by the CALS Curriculum Committee, and finally the CALS Faculty Senate for major policy issues.
anonymous	anonymous	As the university discusses future undergraduate enrollment plans - rumored to continue to enroll a larger freshman class - already decided for Fall 09 - that transfer enrollment not be impacted or decreased to accommodate an increase in freshman - transfer students in CALS diversity our college (economic, ethnic, acadinterests) and for many of the CALS majors that are in direct line with the mission and strength of the college (ag, env, educ, food sci) enrollment can be as high as 50% transfers because of freshman enrollment limitations on majors and economic realities that students face to attend CU as a freshman and who choose to transfer. Also transfer students take a majority of their courses in CALS as many of their distribution requirements have been completed by the time they transfer. They do not put pressure on intro science and math courses in A&S and thus do not cost CALS to take those courses.	Don Viands	This year’s increase in freshmen enrollment by the University was not intended to affect the transfer student enrollment, but the over enrollment of total freshmen across the University resulted in an unfortunate pause in transfer admissions. The problem revolves around the number of beds available for on-campus housing. We will advocate for eliminating the guarantee of campus housing for transfer students so that it does not affect transfer admissions.
Robert Meade '76	meaderobe@gmail.com	I have spent some time at SUNY at Binghamton, and I see that they have opted for small classes with classes running well into the evening. I don't know what kind of changes have been made at Cornell, but filling Bailey Hall etc. with the best professors teaching large classes is still the best way to provide the best education. No two people will teach the same course alike. If you have films of Professor Banks teaching Botany, go watch them and understand that he was the best to ever walk that campus. Use his example to produce Professors that try as hard as he did. Robert Meade	Don Viands	Although some instructors have a gift for effectively teaching large classes, most students prefer and learn better in smaller classes where they can obtain more personal attention. The new model for introductory biology includes smaller classes. However, we recognize that as we have fewer faculty members in the future, the trend toward larger classes might be necessary.
anonymous	anonymous	I think the university should look into a retirement incentive package for people who are eligible for retirement. I know there are a few people in my dept. who are currently eligible. Jobs could be saved for people who really need them.	Done	Completed
anonymous	anonymous	The faucet in the left sink in the basement men's room near the stairs in Riley Robb hall has been dripping at a moderate rate for months and has been wasting hot water/energy. Please have it fixed.	Ezra Delaney
Richard Kover	rick_e@mac.com	The disruptions in the economy and commerce faced by the people in the country and state may lead to interruptions in food distribution. This will only be exacerbated by such bills as HR 875, 814, 425 and 759, which will hinder local farmers, farmers markets and CSAs. Such disruptions could lead to problems of adequate food availability. This could be partially ameliorated by encouragement of home gardening, which at the moment is more expensive than food at food markets, but might be necessary in the next year of two if the above bills are passed and commerce, credit, bank loans and transportation are periodically interrupted. So my suggestion is that CALS look into the groundwork of what could be done to prepare the citizens of New York for home growing and gardening, especially in large urban areas in cooperation with the less populated areas where more land for food production might be available.	Helene Dillard	CALS and Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) agree that information is needed on gardening in urban and rural areas. To meet this need, information is posted on our websites, and local CCE offices are conducting gardening programs through the Master Gardener program. The following websites provide a wealth of information. For information on the Master Gardener Program, visit: http://www.gardening.cornell.edu/education/mgprogram/ For information on general gardening and home gardening specifically, visit: http://www.gardening.cornell.edu/ http://www.hort.cornell.edu/gardening/homegardening/ For information on urban horticulture, visit: http://www.hort.cornell.edu/uhi/
anonymous	anonymous	Not a savings for CALS (I don't think, anyway), but a savings for Cornell--the printed Faculty, Staff, and Students Directory is no longer needed since that info is either online already or could easily be posted online.	Linda McCandless	The Office of Campus Relations in University Communications is responsible for contracting to print the Faculty, Staff and Student Directory. They, too, received this suggestion as a cost-saving measure and have made the decision NOT to print the Directory again. The cost savings is minimal but the paper savings is huge.
anonymous	anonymous	No Ice Cream Social	Sue Haslett/Dean	Suspension of the annual Summer Scoop event was discussed early in the budget reduction talks. It was decided that the event would continue this year with a reduced budget. Points of justification are: the money spent on the Summer Scoop stays within CALS; it is deemed an important activity that expresses appreciation to staff from the administration; it is an excellent social networking vehicle for CALS staff and administration; and, it is viewed as a morale booster.
anonymous	anonymous	Furlough days. Employees can take time/days off without pay (with permission of supervisor).	Tony Caudill	With supervisor approval, employees may take unpaid time off to meet their personal or family needs, however Human Resources discourages departments from asking employees to “volunteer” for unpaid leave. Such requests can create inequity among employees, and must be avoided. Instead, supervisors are expected to proactively match employee work schedules and effort with the budget and needs of the unit, and should seek advice from Human Resources when pursuing modifications to employee work schedule or standard hours.
anonymous	anonymous	Is Turning Point training really necessary at a time when we are trying to pinch every penny and people are losing their lively hoods? Maybe conferences and training expenses should be cut unless absolutely necessary to benefit the University.	Tony Caudill	Turning Point and other Cornell provided internal leadership training are viewed as critical long term investments that have near term benefits that the College and University Support. Leadership believes that these programs result in employees being better able to connect their day to day activities with the mission of the University, and provide a rich opportunity for employees to think about how the work they do every day can be done more effectively to contribute directly to more effective and efficient operations. We intend to stay committed to strategic training opportunities such as these for our employees even during these difficult times, as there are direct benefits in the near term and long term of such programs.
anonymous	anonymous	If it would help save jobs, and cut back on expenses, why not have everyone that works a 39 hour week,work one less hour per week, make the work week 38 hours. This certainly won't hurt productivity and it could save the University a lot of money. Understandably, the union workers may not be able to do this because of contracts, but I'm sure the savings would be considerable.	Tony Caudill	Departments have options available to them including reducing the job standard hours of non-exempt employees, or reducing the FTE of exempt employees as part of a strategy to reduce payroll costs, or in adjusting office hours in alignment with teaching, research and administrative business needs. Human Resources has encouraged departments to pursue such strategies, to align work with the necessary budgetary reductions, with an emphasis on maintaining effort levels that allow for retention of benefits wherever that is possible. However modifying the University standard hoursor mandating a 4 day work week, does not in and of itself address the change in our work practices nor is it required to achieve more efficient and lower cost operations. By simply changing the standard hours, we are effectively changing the expectations of employees regarding the amount of time we normally expect them to be working. Instead we need to focus on changing the way and the type of work that is actually getting done, so that lower labor costs can be achieved by eliminating work or improving the efficiency by which work is accomplished. These decisions are best made within the units doing the work. To facilitate local decision making, University policy certainly supports units in reducing the scheduled work hours of employees within the unit to achieve overall cost reductions. The University also provides a range of guidance for units in order to provide flexible workplace arrangements where such arrangements allow for more productive work outcomes. A few of these include: Flex/Alternative Work Schedule - http://www.ohr.cornell.edu/worklife/flex/flexAlternative.html Flexplace/ Telecommute - http://www.ohr.cornell.edu/worklife/flex/flexPlace.html Compressed Work Week - http://www.ohr.cornell.edu/worklife/flex/flexCompressed.html Job Sharing - http://www.ohr.cornell.edu/worklife/flex/flexJobShare.html
Victoria Parker	vrp5	For the months of June and July, all offices should go to mandatory 4 day work week. This would constitute a large saving in pay, utilities, etc. Many of us cannot afford to be out of work for even a full week, but possibly cutting out a day a week would work if it means that everyone can keep their jobs.	Tony Caudill	(Same as above)