By JOHN McCALLUM
Editor
Eastern Washington University's board of trustees have approved a $2.107 million supplemental budget request for the coming Legislative session – a request that would increase campus security as well as help retain and recruit high-quality faculty and administrative staff in the 2008-2009 fiscal years.
Eastern is asking for $865,000 for retaining and recruiting faculty. University officials have long maintained that non-competitive faculty salaries make it difficult to fill teaching vacancies, as well as keep instructors from leaving for better pay at other institutions.
According to the state Higher Education Coordinating Board's “Key Facts about Higher Education in Washington – 2007” report, Eastern faculty averaged $57,550 in salary in 2005-2006, ranking them lowest of all state-financed, four-year schools with the exception of Evergreen State College, whose faculty averaged $56,805, and faculty at community and technical colleges, averaging $49,518.
The university is also asking for $496,000 to shore up pay for administrative exempt staff. Exempt employees are employees without union affiliation and can be hired or fired at will.
Eastern vice president for business and finance Mary Voves told the board that changes over the past few years have created situations where some exempt employees are supervising classified staff employees – union members whose pay is fixed through collective bargaining – who make more money than their supervisors. The additional funding will help bring those salaries back into line with the exempt staff supervisors' level of responsibility.
Eastern is also requesting $306,000 as a one-time investment in 2009 on a campus-wide camera system. The system will provide real-time monitoring for university police officers via laptop computers in their cars, something not present at Virginia Tech University when a gunman opened fire in a classroom building at the Blacksburg, Va., campus last April 16, killing 32 and wounding 29 before turning the gun on himself.
Finally, Eastern is requesting $440,000 for personnel to prepare for and respond to emergency situations. About $225,000 would be used to hire two fulltime police officers, with the remaining $185,000 going towards hiring two counselors and operations support for an awareness education program.
The counselors would develop campus alert teams to provide early identification and intervention associated with threatening behavior. Such a situation occurred last summer, EWU media relations and communications specialist Dave Meany said, when authorities successfully intervened when a student who had sent previous threatening messages to a faculty member, and was upset over a thesis, was reported armed and heading to Cheney.
“Police did make contact with the guy, who lives in Spokane Valley, and he was sent to Eastern State Hospital eventually for evaluation,” Meany said.
In other news, the board approved a $1.5 million 2008 operating budget amendment that will allow Eastern to incorporate the master of social work program into the university's general fund. Voves said the program is moving from a self-supported model to a state-supported one, and additional money is needed to maintain full funding of such programs as Chicano Education and American Indian Studies.
“That program is a very healthy program,” Voves said.
Finally, EWU president Dr. Rodolfo Arevalo told the board that most classes have been moved from the recently sold downtown Spokane Higher Education Center to the Riverpoint campus, with over 2,000 students now taking classes in Eastern's facility. The remaining HEC programs, which include EWU Press, should be moved by mid-November.
Arevalo also said the university has received over $13.2 million in grants and contracts this year, $3 million more than at the same time in 2006. Among those is a two-year, $4.9 million renewal of Eastern's Idaho Child Welfare Research and Training Center, a facility helping to train social workers.
“They're a significant provider for this service for the state of Idaho,” Arevalo said.
The increased overall funding is an indication that EWU's faculty is very active in providing services locally and throughout the region, Arevalo added.
John McCallum can be reached at [email protected]
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