News in Brief
ISSUES
Faculty salaries: Better, but not for all
Favorable compensation packages for faculty in the past biennium has allowed UW–Madison to improve its relative position among peer institutions at the assistant and associate professor levels.
Assistant and associate professors now receive salaries above peer averages. Assistant professor compensation is 6 percent above peer averages while associate professor pay is 7.3 percent above average.
However, compensation for full professors is still below the peer group average by 3.6 percent, according to the Faculty Senate’s Commission on Faculty Compensation and Economic Benefits, whose report the senate considered at its May 7 meeting.
Since 1973, the UW–Madison salary average has been lower than its peer average every year but one. Overall, the university average is about 5 percent below its peer group average.
The commission’s report notes a pattern in which salaries slowly fall behind those at peer institutions, catch up and then fall behind again. The commission recommended that the university break out of this pattern by ensuring that compensation at least matches the median of peer institutions.
The commission cautioned against salary compression in which salaries of full professors do not keep up with competitive salaries necessary to hire assistant professors. The commission urged that extra compensation somehow be located.
Age bias found in UW Press case
A federal jury has ruled that the University of Wisconsin Press fired four employees because of their age.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued the UW Press, contending that the firings violated the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act.
In May of 1999, Mary Braun, then 46, Joan Strasbaugh, then 47, Rosalie Robertson, then 50, and Charles Evenson, then 54, lost their jobs in a restructuring meant to transform the unit into a stronger, more streamlined publisher of scholarly and popular books.
The press’s then-acting director, David Bethea, said the four lost their jobs because of financial difficulties and restructuring. The press also scaled back its subject areas and cut back the number of new titles planned for publication in fiscal year 1999-2000.
The allegation of age discrimination was raised after internal administrative hearings affirmed the layoffs were made in relation to program changes and fiscal pressures.
However, a jury found that the organization retained younger, less-experienced employees and hired new employees after the firings.
Graduating students pledge social responsibility
Graduating students will be able to pledge their commitment to social and environmental responsibility today, May 16, through the Graduation Pledge Initiative.
Implemented at colleges across the country, the voluntary pledge reads: “I pledge to explore and take into account the social and environmental consequences of any job I consider and will try to improve those aspects of any organization for which I work.”
This opportunity to sign the pledge caps a semester of events to encourage students to consider their personal priorities and values in the context of their career goals.
“The Graduation Pledge Initiative seeks to support a kind of idealism that stands up to the “real world’ by equipping students to act on their convictions, not just in their personal lives, but in their professional lives as well,” says Katherine Loving, civic engagement coordinator at University Health Services and coordinator of the Graduation Pledge Initiative.
Signers of the Graduation Pledge may wear green ribbons at graduation May 18-20 to signify their commitment to the ideals of the Graduation Pledge.
The Campus Community Partnerships Team of University Health Services brought the Graduation Pledge Initiative to campus as part of its work promoting civic engagement.
LEARNING
New continuing education program to be launched
The university will heighten its commitment to continuing education for alumni and friends as the Wisconsin Alumni Association and the Division of Continuing Studies launch a joint Alumni Learning Program.
The two organizations signed a memo of understanding April 27 to formally begin the partnership.
The curriculum for the Alumni Learning Program will include courses such as Alumni University, a weeklong program that allows alumni to experience college life without exams and papers.
Alumni College at The Clearing and Grandparents University will debut this summer. The Clearing program takes place at a cabin in Door County and this year’s program allows “students” to experience Wisconsin’s Scandinavian heritage and culture in a casual learning environment.
Grandparents University, co-sponsored by the UW-Extension, is a two-day course that allows children and their grandparents to learn from each other as they create oral histories and earn a “degree” in science, history, communication arts or ecology. Both programs incorporate instruction by UW–Madison deans and professors.
The partners plan to hire a coordinator by July 1. The program will be self-supporting after three years.
ON CAMPUS
Bluegrass festival coming up
If you like bluegrass, you’ll want to be at the Memorial Union Terrace Friday, June 1, for the one-day Madison Bluegrass Festival. From 5 p.m.-midnight, fiddlers and pickers from three bands will be pluckin’ and strummin’ for free. The lineup includes: Cornmeal, 5 p.m.; Cork n’ Bottle String Band, 7:30 p.m.; Yonder Mountain String Band, 9:30 p.m.
Information: Jay Creagh, 264-0149, jkcreagh@students.wisc.edu.
Schaller speaks May 18
George Schaller, the acclaimed wildlife biologist whose studies and writings about mountain gorillas, pandas, tigers, lions and leopards has placed him in the pantheon of 20th century naturalists, will give a free public lecture on campus.
Schaller, who earned a master’s degree from UW–Madison and will receive an honorary doctorate from the university during next weekend’s commencement ceremonies, will give a talk entitled “Wildlife of Tibet” Friday, May 18, at 10:30 a.m. in 168 Noland.
The lecture will focus on Schaller’s work on the Tibetan Plateau, a place he has visited every year since 1984 to conduct surveys and studies. He also will reflect on conservation and the increasing pressure on wildlife reserves from local people and outside development interests.
NOTABLE
Entrepreneurs win again
A team of entrepreneurship students took second place in the global championship in the Moot Corp competition, the Super Bowl of business plan competitions at the University of Texas at Austin May 5.
Graduate students in the Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship — Brian Pope, Jeff Prochnow and Steve Royko — won $3,000 for a business plan created for a Madison-based high-tech company, Imago Scientific Instruments. This same team won a $15,000 grand prize in a San Diego business plan competition in April.
In Moot Corp, MBA students create business plans and present their ideas to judges from the entrepreneurial community. “We are very proud of this team,” says professor Bob Pricer, who co-directs the entrepreneurship program at UW–Madison. “Our students have shown they can compete successfully with the world’s top university entrepreneurship programs.”
UW–Madison’s entrepreneurship has been growing rapidly and is recognized as a top entrepreneurship program by Business Week, Success Magazine and The Financial Times.
Parallel Press releases “Eat & Remember”
Poet Carl Lindner engages readers with wordplay and witty fun in “Eat & Remember,” the 13th chapbook of the Parallel Press.
Lindner, professor of English at UW-Parkside, teaches American literature, creative writing (poetry) and composition. Lindner has also contributed nearly 200 poems to literary journals.
Each Parallel Press chapbook is $10; annual subscriptions for six are $50. Titles may be ordered by writing: The Parallel Press, 372 Memorial Library, 728 State St., Madison, WI 53706. For information: (608) 262-2600, kfrazier@library.wisc.edu.
Illustrator to be in residence
In the years before television — was there ever such a time? — Peter Sís devoured every single detail in each picture he saw.
Today, Sís is an internationally acclaimed author and illustrator. He will be in residence this summer under the auspices of the Arts Institute, Cooperative Children’s Book Center and Elvehjem Museum of Art. Sís will begin his residency with a free public lecture, “Map of My World,” Wednesday, June 27, at 4:30 p.m., L160 Elvehjem. Sís also will teach a four-week course on illustration through the Department of Art.
Sís found his art early. “I drew all the time, on every available surface: light switches, chairs,” he says.
CCBC director Ginny Moore Kruse says Sís’ sheer versatility — he’s a filmmaker, animator and muralist as well as author and illustrator — will offer a direct demonstration of the excitement of interdisciplinary work.
The Elvehjem Museum of Art will present a special summer-long exhibition of Sís’ drawings, “Small Worlds: Illustrations by Peter Sís,” June 27-Sept. 2. Book discussions are Wednesday, June 27, 1 p.m. and Wednesday, July 11, 3 p.m. To register, call 263-3720 by Friday, June 22.