The Effect of State Budgets on Labor Relations between Contracts

We live in testing times, whether you’re in management, trying to find a way to stretch dollars as state legislatures cut funding, or in a union, trying to maintain the salary, benefits, and working conditions that make university teaching appealing to people. My purpose here is to delineate a couple of the changes in how we interact based on observation, so they may be more warm and fuzzy and less substantive than some of the other following presentations, but I hope they give you some feel for the effects on the ground of what the current budget conditions have wrought

Post-Recession CBAs: A Study of Wage Increases in the Agreements of Four State-wide Faculty Unions

The article looks at the post-Recession (2011) agreements of four state-wide faculties: California State system, SUNY, Minnesota and Pennsylvania. Focusing on wages, the study starts with the context of state appropriations after the Recession and after ARRA. It finds that the agreements took longer, yet without job action, and each had a year with no salary increase, and some agreements include both no salary increase AND no seniority-based increase

Negotiating For Curriculum & Class Size, 2011-13: One Faculty Union’s Perspective

The article walks the reader through the process of proposing, revising, and finally accepting by both sides of a new clause in the APSCUF-PASSHE collective bargaining agreement covering curriculum and class size. The clause took multiple forms over the course of over two years of negotiations and reveals the evolving priorities of the two sides over time

Negotiating For Curriculum & Class Size, 2011-13: One Faculty Union’s Perspective

The article walks the reader through the process of proposing, revising, and finally accepting by both sides of a new clause in the APSCUF-PASSHE collective bargaining agreement covering curriculum and class size. The clause took multiple forms over the course of over two years of negotiations and reveals the evolving priorities of the two sides over time

Managing complex engineering projects:What can we learn from the evolving digital footprint?

The challenges of managing large complex engineering projects, such as those involving the design of infrastructure, aerospace and industrial systems; are widely acknowledged. While there exists a mature set of project management tools and methods, many of today's projects overrun in terms of both time and cost. Existing literature attributes these overruns to factors such as: unforeseen dependencies, a lack of understanding, late changes, poor communication, limited resource availability (inc. personnel), incomplete data and aspects of culture and planning. Fundamental to overcoming these factors belies the challenge of how management information relating to them can be provided, and done so in a cost eff; ective manner. Motivated by this challenge, recent research has demonstrated how management information can be automatically generated from the evolving digital footprint of an engineering project, which encompasses a broad range of data types and sources. In contrast to existing work that reports the generation, verification and application of methods for generating management information, this paper reviews all the reported methods to appraise the scope of management information that can be automatically generated from the digital footprint. In so doing, the paper presents a reference model for the generation of managerial information from the digital footprint, an appraisal of 27 methods, and a critical reflection of the scope and generalisability of data-driven project management methods. Key findings from the appraisal include the role of email in providing insights into potential issues, the role of computer models in automatically eliciting process and product dependencies, and the role of project documentation in assessing project norms. The critical reflection also raises issues such as privacy, highlights the enabling technologies, and presents opportunities for new Business Intelligence tools that are based on real-time monitoring and analysis of digital footprints.</p

The Impact of Florida’s Bright Futures Scholarship Program on High School Performance and College Enrollment

Florida\u27s Bright Futures program is one of the nation\u27s largest merit-based scholarship initiatives. This study used high school transcript and college enrollment data to examine the program\u27s impact on high school course-taking patterns, school grades, college entrance exam scores, and rates of college attendance over time. The study indicates that the program has contributed to educational improvements by encouraging high school students to take academically challenging courses and attend college in the state, with low-income and minority students showing the largest improvements

LED Lighting for Student Union Auditorium

Rod Harper, Maintenance Coordinator, Russell Union Facilities & Event Services ($9,000.00) Replaced fluorescent light bulbs with LED light bulbs in the Student Union Theatre