Happy Texas Wildflower Day…and a few other thoughts
Dear Colleagues,
There are many extraordinary things going on at Texas Woman’s—new hires and other leadership searches nearing conclusion, awards and recognitions, events like homecoming and the Jamison Lecture, philanthropic engagement, and much, much more! You all hear that news through my Boldly Go newsletter, the Texas Woman’s magazine, and Inside TWU. So, I am holding all that positivity as a backdrop to this missive in which I want to share more about the challenges we face as a university. The complexity of these issues also means this will be an unusually long message, so let me get started.
SB 17 on diversity, equity, and inclusion
Our current situation is that this new law has directed our regents—who have asked me to serve as their designee—to submit a compliance letter by May 3. Following this, I will have to testify on our compliance during a legislative hearing on May 14 and 15. In addition, the State Auditor’s Office has asked us to complete a questionnaire as they develop an audit plan, which will include our system within the next four years. Our Office of Compliance has begun preparations. Already the state auditor has announced it will audit Texas A&M University in 2025 on that institution’s compliance with SB 17. Reports are also due to the THECB by August 31, and Senator Royce West has requested a set of data from us. In short, that is the tactical state of SB 17 at Texas Woman’s and previous messages have directed you to our SB 17 FAQ page for clarification and guidance. As you can imagine, complying with all these pieces requires significant administrative coordination and institutional resources.
As with every issue, I have people write to me on all sides. Regardless of differences, what I have always experienced is that we can find common ground, and I look forward to a renewed focus on those areas as a community. Respecting academic freedom and promoting open dialogue from diverse viewpoints allows us to examine our ever-evolving understanding of contemporary issues. It fosters intellectual growth and prepares us to engage in an increasingly pluralistic world. Research and public dissemination of research—hello QEP—will always be a key responsibility of higher education. As a university, we agree that research and creative activity help us understand and address disparities in public health, education, and housing, to name a few. We must continue to analyze and publicize disaggregated data on student success and prepare all graduates to thrive in diverse workplaces. In short, there is much we can do to make this world a better place for all through higher education, so let us get to it.
Executive Order No. GA-44 relating to addressing acts of antisemitism in institutions of higher education
This EO gave us 90 days from March 27 to comply. Our general counsel has consulted with other public university GCs in the state to develop a strategy for updating language in our existing policies to comply with this order and maintain consistency across our policy portfolio. We will bring two policy tweaks forward to our quarterly board meeting in May for discussion and approval. There is little room for feedback as the order is rather prescriptive, however, our general counsel will apprise the TWU Faculty Senate and others in shared governance about the policy changes as she prepares a compliance letter due by the end of June.
House Bill 1361 and Senate Bill 412 on pregnant and parenting students
Per these new laws (HB 1361 SB 412), each higher education institution must designate at least one employee to act as a liaison officer for current or incoming students who are the parent or guardian of a child younger than 18 years of age. The liaison officer is responsible for providing the students with information regarding support services and other resources available at the institution. We must also adopt and post a policy on pregnancy and parenting non-discrimination, which includes required academic accommodations. The policy will require each institution to submit a data report to the THECB for students enrolled who are a parent or guardian of a child younger than 18 years of age. Per HB1361, the data that will be collected includes student demographic data of age, race, ethnicity, sex, academic data of full-time/part-time enrollment status, number of graduates, transfer students, and student withdrawals. This data will be collected at the aggregate level.
Some required policy elements are challenging as they represent a departure from the structural nature of several of our cohort programs, so we await clarification from the THECB before providing additional guidance and training for faculty on implications of the new policy.
Compensation
As you will recall from my message last October, we front-loaded our typical goal of an annual raise with a larger merit raise on your base salary for this year. Again, that choice continues to mean we will not have a merit raise this coming fiscal year. One exception is for those who started between 7/1/2023 and 6/30/2024 and have a satisfactory performance review. We have a 3% pool to award those individuals a raise starting January 2025.
The provost has been working with Institutional Research along with Human Resources to address known issues with salary inversion and compression for faculty. We set aside a pool of $800K for this purpose. The provost sent a proposal to the deans and, earlier this week, has collected their feedback. That project is nearing completion. He—and soon she, our new permanent provost—also has a committee working on compensation more generally, but for right now, that is still a work in progress.
On the staff side, Huron Consulting Group has been working with the campus community on a number of facets of our compensation practices. Their work to develop a job classification architecture and compensation manual will have numerous benefits, including a long-requested career lattice for staff. The output of this in-depth analysis will help guide us with meaningful data and Human Resources is working to communicate further about this project.
I know we are on a compensation journey like many in higher education, as seen in the recent article “Your Pay is Terrible? You’re not alone.” Our journey does involve ideas alluded to in the article about shifting toward making HR a strategic leadership partner and thinking about compensation more in terms of what we are trying to accomplish aspirationally rather than purely based on what we can afford. That means investing more in certain strategic areas with the intention of building a more robust and multifaceted revenue portfolio—less dependent on fluctuations in state support, less impacted by enrollment dips in a segment of academic fields, and with greater research expenditures and other ventures that would lessen the impact of enrollment changes in general.
We have built incredible applicant pools in many of our searches, and some candidates that search committees have elevated have the experience and talents to help us address collective pain points, e.g., in some of our process effectiveness. These candidates also command competitive compensation packages. While sometimes uncomfortable investments, they are focused and strategic—and will make work less frustrating. I see our strategic plan as helpful in framing our direction, and as we search for our next HR leader, we can probe ideas of integrating their leadership into our strategic imperatives.
Budget
We are gearing up for the next legislative session, but our FY25 budget is already set as this is the second year of the biennial budget the state established last session. Our projected enrollment is not anticipated to offer any new influx of sustained revenue, so we will not send out a call for new budget requests this year. As a reminder, we will continue to fund tenure and promotion, fixed cost increases, and merit-pay increases for those mentioned above.
Academic investments
In spite of the budget situation I just described, we have invested new support for select items brought from the provost for accreditation and have funded roughly six new faculty FTEs for academic program expansion proposed over the next two years, including an expansion of environmental science, a new bachelor’s in Spanish focused on medical interpretation, new expansion in the masters of healthcare administration and bachelors in business administration, and new support for the growing enrollment of the recently added PhD in education, leadership, and organization. Already this year, we have added into the budget about seven new faculty FTEs for physical therapy’s expansion to Denton, new music programs in mariachi and musical theatre, and, using gift support, for launching the first cohort of pilots in the Doswell School of Aeronautical Sciences this fall.
Searches
As you know, we just concluded the provost search and the inaugural Dallas Campus President started on February 1. We are still deep in the Houston Campus President search. That search committee has reviewed all complete applications so far and is anticipating a few more before moving forward with invitations for on-campus interviews. I am close to announcing the finalist in the chief information officer search, a new cabinet-level position. The committee searching for the next dean in nursing has identified candidates for on-campus interviews. The HR search committee is still building a pool of qualified candidates. We have selected a search firm for the deans in professional education and health sciences. They will do the preliminary work over the summer to be first out of the gate in launching their search ads in the fall. This is an exciting time of leadership growth and bringing fresh perspectives to the university’s leadership to “see further by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Conclusion
Many of you are engaged in one or more of the issues I have covered, but I hope this missive will help everyone feel more or less on the same page as we go into the summer and continue the journey through today’s higher education landscape featuring tall mountains and deep ravines. Every day is an adventure, but I cannot imagine a better place or group to adventure with than Texas Woman’s and you.
With a pioneering spirit,
Carine M. Feyten, Ph.D.
Chancellor and President
Page last updated 8:52 AM, April 29, 2024