Top 5 Project: Faculty Issues, Recommendations, and Decisions
The issues and recommendations presented in this document
are:
Issue 1: Data
Quality
Data quality issues stem from the lack of commonly agreed
on data entry rules. Departments, schools, colleges, and campuses do not enter data in
consistent ways, nor does the payroll system require them to do so. As a
result, data entry practices have evolved differently for different units. From
the data processing perspective, the payroll systems are very flexible, but
lack some of the needed data validation and auditing processes.
Examples: Inconsistent
data plays a significant role in the following issues:
Multiple Rates for Some Faculty Members - Some faculty members have multiple appointments, which
result in different rates being stored in the payroll system (HEPPS). For
example a faculty member, who is also an academic administrator, has at least
two appointments and may be paid from one or more appointments. HEPPS cannot
accommodate more than seven distributions for an appointment. When an
appointment exceeds that limit, another appointment has to be created for the
additional distributions.
Reporting - It is difficult to determine the correct rate.
Faculty FTE
Calculation - There is no commonly agreed on, institutional way to
calculate full-time equivalent (FTE). Multiple appointments and the limitation
of seven distributions per appointment create problems when trying to calculate
FTE. Because FTE information is not available and there is not a standard
formula for deriving the information, it is possible for a faculty FTE
calculation to yield a result greater than 100%.
Faculty members with multiple appointments and
additional distributions appear in reports multiple times and with multiple
rates.
Underlying issue: There
are two underlying issues: Data quality and inadequacies in the existing payroll
system.
Recommendations:
Short-term: Maintain the status quo.
Mid-term:
Long-term: The long-term solution is new UW-wide payroll
and HR systems that have clear data entry rules.
Deans’ and Chancellors’ Advisory Group Decision:
In the January 18, 2008 meeting, the Deans’ and Chancellors’ Advisory Group suggested that we solicit
input regarding the impact
that changing data input rules might have on Faculty Effort Certification (FEC). The meeting to discuss the impact took place
on January 31, 2008. The outcome of the meeting was an agreement to review any proposed changes to the data input rules
with stakeholders from the FEC project.
Issue 2: Lack of Agreement
on Job Classification Codes and their Aggregation
There is no University-wide agreement on reporting
categories and the job classification codes associated with those categories.
Departments, schools, colleges, and campuses make up their own groupings. HEPPS does have
categories with associated job classification codes, but people in the departments
are not necessarily aware of them.
Examples: One category is perm research faculty.
Impact:
Cross-university reports with consistent, agreed on reporting categories and
job classification codes are not available.
Underlying issue:
Lack of agreement on reporting categories and associated job classification
codes.
Recommendation:
Short-term: Adopt the reporting categories and
job classification codes that go with those categories developed by the Faculty Task Team.
Mid-term: NA
Long-term: NA
Deans’ and Chancellors’ Advisory Group
Decision: In the January 18, 2008 meeting, the Deans’ and Chancellors’ Advisory Group
suggested that we determine the relevance of the uncategorized job class codes. In a
February 7, 2008 meeting, the Faculty Task Team determined which job class codes should
be reported. Click here to view the reporting
categories and job classification codes.
Issue 3: Lack of Agreement
on Data Definitions
There are no institutional definitions for terms related
to counting faculty.
Examples: We
need accepted, institutional definitions for terms such as: appointment,
faculty, job class code, census date, organization code, regular equivalent
earnings, appointment begin date, appointment end date, appointment status, and
actual distribution.
Impact: It’s
difficult to produce institutional reports without institutional definitions.
Underlying issue:
Lack of institutional definitions.
Recommendations:
Short-term: Determine
additional stakeholders who need to validate definitions.
Mid-term: NA
Long-term: The
Faculty Task Team has developed definitions. After validation by appropriate
stakeholders, the definitions will be stored in a central location as the institutional
definitions.
Deans’ and Chancellors’ Advisory Group
Decision: In the January 18, 2008 meeting, the Deans’ and Chancellors’ Advisory Group
suggested that we solicit input about this issue from Gerry Philipsen, Secretary of the Faculty Senate.
The meeting took place on March 11, 2008. The outcome of the meeting was to keep the Office of University
Committees involved in the process of creating institutional definitions.
Issue 4: Lack of Centrally Located, Available
Data
Some data is not collected and some data is collected, but not available centrally.
Examples: Comprehensive appointment history,
endowed appointment, information about promotions, and degrees held by faculty
members are examples of information that may not have been collected centrally
in the past, but will be available in the Academic HR database.
Impact: Deans and Chancellors can’t do trend analysis or easily
look up a faculty member’s history.
Underlying issue: There is no HR system. The
payroll system has been used as an HR system, but it can’t meet the needs of an
HR system.
Recommendations:
Short-term: NA
Mid-term:
The mid-term solution rests with Academic HR.
They are making more data available by collecting and storing information in an
Academic HR database. Previously, this information was available only in paper
form. As part of this mid-term solution, data is being moved to the Enterprise
Data Warehouse after it has been validated in the Academic HR database.
Long-term:
The long term solution is to collect, store,
and report this information from the UW Enterprise Data Warehouse. This issue
moves to the Strategic Roadmap.
Issue 5: Current Administrative System Limitations
Mass administrative system changes can have unintended
consequences, especially when the relationships among the payroll, budgeting,
and financial systems are not well understood. Current systems cannot support
business processes that the University must perform as part of its normal
operations.
Examples:
Mass reappointment and leave changes can impact
the data. Mass changes that are made in the payroll system can only be
understood by the programmers - changes upon changes and workarounds.
The payroll, budget, and financial systems have
many relationships and impact each other. They communicate with each other, but
only at certain points in the financial processes.
Faculty reappointment process which makes nine-month
people inactive during the summer.
Budgeting system only budgets salary increases
for faculty paid with State funds, approximately one-third of the faculty. The
payroll system does a mass change for these increases. Salary increases for the
other two-thirds of the faculty, who are paid with non-State funds, must be
done manually. Then, these changes must translate correctly to the financial
system as they are posted a unit’s budget.
Impact: The
faculty reappointment process creates inactive appointments for faculty who
have active appointments. As a result, it is difficult to determine who works
at UW in the summer, count faculty, or run reports in the summer.
Because of unknown implications of mass changes and manual
processes there is an inability to make changes and plenty of room for errors.
Underlying issues:
The underlying issues are deficiencies, incompatibilities and a lack of
integration in existing systems and business processes, as well as the lack of
an HR system.
Recommendations:
Short-term: Communicate the system and business process deficiencies to the Deans’ and Chancellors’
Advisory Group. Find workarounds when possible.
Mid-term: NA
Long-term: This issue moves to the Strategic Roadmap.
Issue 6: Inconsistency in Counting Faculty
Although faculty members may have multiple appointments,
it is quite difficult to identify the primary appointment. Academic HR stores
primary appointment information, but it is in printed format. The payroll
system does not store primary appointment. Schools sometimes are reluctant to
designate a primary appointment. The result is that multiple counting occurs.
Examples:
Cross-unit faculty (e.g. Global Health, Bioengineering) and faculty with both academic
and administrative appointments, faculty with multiple appointments at
different ranks, such as Senior Fellow, Acting Assistant Professor.
Impact: Since
the payroll system cannot determine a primary appointment, an individual
faculty member can be reported multiple times. Relying on home department
cannot be used to solve the multiple reporting problems because there is no
common definition of home department that is consistently applied.
Underlying issue:
Should faculty members be counted once or multiple times? Is there a need to
count both ways?
Recommendations:
Short-term: Communicate to the units that primary appointment information
will soon be available from Academic HR. Suggest that they use this
information for reporting and as a basis for checking and correcting
their primary appointment information.
Use the Global Health model for determining primary and joint
appointments in departments that belong to more than one college or
cross-unit entities. In the Global Health model, a professor has a
primary appointment in either Global Health/Medicine or Global
Health/Public Health and a joint appointment in the other school. For
example, if the primary appointment is Global Health/Public Health,
the professor has a joint appointment in Global Health/Medicine.
Mid-term: Create and document a set of best practices for designating primary
appointment. Communicate the best practices to the units and request
that they adopt them. Initially, the units may create exceptions as
needed; however, as the mid-term solution transitions to the long-term
solution, everyone will need to follow the same set of rules.
Long-term: Develop
a consistent method for counting faculty. Options for consideration:
Require that each faculty member have a primary appointment.
Create a new way to count faculty that also
takes into account the implications for funding, student headcount, and
enrollment.
Count faculty members both ways: headcount and distributed count.
Move this issue to the Strategic Roadmap to align the business and system
needs.
Deans’ and Chancellors’ Advisory Group
Decision: In the January 18, 2008 meeting, the Deans’ and Chancellors’ Advisory Group
suggested that we solicit input from Provost Wise to determine her view on this subject as
it relates to establishing the College of the Environment. The discussion with Provost
Wise has not yet occurred.
