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YSU faculty ask Tressel for more help
YOUNGSTOWN
Faculty and staff at Youngstown State University’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences asked President Jim Tressel for more help at a town-hall meeting Wednesday.
“It would be in the university’s best interest if they’re able to help faculty at large so that we can help our students,” said Cryshanna Jackson-Leftwich, director of the department of politics and international studies and women and gender studies.
About 50 people gathered in DeBartolo Hall with comments, questions and concerns ready for Tressel’s response.
Tressel began the session by discussing investment priorities. Some of the priorities included current workforce compensation, personnel replacement, information-technology infrastructure and facility improvements.
Overall goals for the university include better student retention and graduation rates, as well as a sound, balanced budget.
“What we are working with is the same state subsidy we’ve had, and we are funded no longer based on our enrollment, but also [students’] completion [rates],” Tressel said. “Really, we’re living with less with more work.”
He said the university faces challenges of stricter requirements for student completion and retention, and a stagnant state subsidy, making raises or additional hires difficult.
Jackson-Leftwich expressed a need for support staff.
“We don’t have support to help [students] transfer majors or drop off papers. It’s an added burden onto faculty on top of course load we have to teach,” she said. “It also makes us unable to be there for the students.”
Jackson-Leftwich said as a professor of 10 years at YSU she feels “student success is directly related to faculty satisfaction,” so, she doesn’t understand why the “administration makes decisions without faculty.”
Tressel responded that to improve the situation, he is trying to get students’ answers to the questions: What is it we need to do to attract you here? To have a better experience? To stay here?
“Everyone plays a role in [student] retention whether you teach in the classroom or greet in the parking lot,” he said.
Also to be considered, he said, is out of 60,000 students who attended YSU in the last 10 years, only 20,000 have graduated.
“Forty thousand [students] haven’t – that’s not acceptable,” Tressel said. “The biggest number is the 40,000 students came and contributed to our budget didn’t make it out of here.”
A.J. Sumell, associate professor of economics, said, “I want to dispel a rumor that we received raises.”
He said in the 2011 contract, faculty members received a 2 percent increase in the nine-month base salary, and in the 2014 contract, they got 2.5 percent.
“That doesn’t account that we got a 20 percent reduction in summer compensation, we contribute about 2 percent more toward health care, and we also were mandated to contribute 4 percent more to [student tuition recovery fund] overall,” Sumell said.
“We are actually taking home, on a 12-month basis, 4 percent less this year than 2011 and over six years. On top of that, the cost of living is about 11 percent higher this year than it was in 2011.”
Tressel said workforce compensation is a topic that is constantly discussed.
He’s using the town hall meetings to combine the priorities of the university before beginning work to resolve the problems.