University Senate’s Senate Agenda Committee reported members’ concerns regarding the new employee benefits package proposal at Wednesday’s USen meeting.

Eileen Schell, the Senate Agenda Committee chair, brought forth a request signed by 13 USen members for more informative data with regard to the benefit changes presented in January’s proposal.

The benefits proposal has drawn mixed reviews from faculty and has been a hot topic of campus discussion. The proposal intends to make employee benefits financially sustainable and socially inclusive during the economic decline by cutting costs and using a portion of the saved money to enhance other benefits.

Some of the proposal’s more controversial sections include increasing the co-pay on health care benefits for employee dependents, providing a $1,000 offset to a federal tax on same-sex partners, expanding benefits to include opposite-sex domestic partners and ending tuition benefits for children of State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry employees.

‘The hard data that one would need to fully understand in order to make a considered judgment about the choices presented has not been readily available,’ said Robert McClure, a political science professor who signed the request.

The requests include data for the year-by-year cost of all benefits, the year-by-year percentage of payroll, the total university budget used for benefit costs, a five-year projection for costs under the current and proposed benefit packages, and costs of tuition for employees and dependents for the last five years, among other concerns.

‘What’s there is some of the data we think would be necessary to think about these proposals with care,’ McClure said.

Many employees are concerned about the benefit changes, but they lack the information needed to fully understand the new proposal, he said. The 13 representatives who signed the request serve as a voice to those who feel they need more information, McClure said.

The data will be provided to USen members no later than March 1 in order for committees to make an educated decision at the March 3 budget meeting, he said. The March 3 meeting will be dedicated to the benefits proposal. Six committees will report their thoughts on the proposal at the meeting, including the Fiscal Affairs and Budget Committee, the Women’s Concerns Committee and LGBT Committee.

In addition to addressing concerns regarding the benefits package, USen voted on a number of proposals presented by other committees, including the Committee on Computing Services and the Committee on Curricula.

After the Senate Agenda Committee’s report, Barbara Kwasnik, the Committee on Curricula chair, brought forth a proposal to change, revise and add some courses in various schools. There will be an addition of 37 undergraduate- and graduate-level courses added to the College of Arts and Sciences, two courses added to the School of Information Studies and one course added to the College of Visual and Performing Arts. Four new majors have also been added to Arts and Sciences, and one major has been added to the iSchool.

During the Committee on Computing Services’ presentation, faculty members expressed concern about the inadequate help support for Blackboard. Some professors said that they did not have enough time to adjust to Blackboard’s changes during the summer when the system was updated.

‘We have some challenges in upgrading Blackboard because it’s used for so many things,’ said Christopher Sedore, chief information officer and vice president of information technology.

Information Technology and Services is redoing Blackboard’s support organization, Sedore said.

lgleveil@syr.edu

Published on February 19, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Contact Laurence: lgleveil@syr.edu | @lgleveille