UNLV to fill open faculty, staff positions - UNLV The Rebel Yell

Browse > The Rebel Yell / Featured, News / UNLV to fill open faculty, staff positions

January 19, 2012 by Julie Ann Formoso 

Administration wants to re-staff university talent after years of budget cutbacks

UNLV is looking to hire more than 100 faculty, staff and administrative positions.

Approximately 700 faculty and staff were lost as the university endured a $73-million cut in state support over the last four fiscal years. But now, the school is undergoing what some are calling a “hiring season.”

Advertisements for job openings at the university have been placed on several outlets, including the Chronicle of Higher Education and UNLV’s Human Resources websites. According to UNLV Human Resources, 104 administrative and academic faculty and classified staff positions are now open.

However, the salaries for most of these positions have not been posted.

Interim Executive Vice President and Provost Michael Bowers said that this was the case because salaries depended on the kind of candidates applying for the positions.

Faculty Senate Chair Greg Brown said that UNLV is not a collective bargaining campus, so salaries are discussed with candidates based on their skills.

“We don’t list salaries because we don’t know what the salary is going to be until we’ve identified the candidate,” Bowers said. “Someone who is just starting out we won’t pay as much as someone who’s been in the field and has a proven track record.”

Senior Vice President for Finance and Business Gerry Bomotti said the positions that are listed with salary ranges are usually union jobs. He explained that if a faculty or staff position is a union job in another state, UNLV is obligated to list a salary figure for that position based on the union salary scale.

The university is searching for a permanent vice president and provost, but Bowers will continue to function as provost and continue his role in approving new hires until a provost candidate has been appointed.

Bomotti expressed confidence in UNLV’s executive administration’s decision to begin hiring again. He is hopeful that the cuts to UNLV’s state-funded budget have come and gone.

“We’re not going to see the kinds of cuts we’ve seen the past few years,” Bomotti said. “Why not see how many great faculty we can bring in to the current faculty we have?”

Brown agreed and pointed out that this is the first January in which the university has not been asked to reduce its operating budget.

“We are at a stable state,” Brown said. “If we were not, it wouldn’t be responsible to be rehiring.”

He said the move toward hiring is “entirely for the benefit for the students.”

Bowers said that because UNLV’s executive administration is now certain of the university’s budget due to the agreement reached by Gov. Brian Sandoval and the state legislature in May 2011, it is an ideal time to start opening jobs again. He explained that last year, the administration was uncertain about the university’s future and therefore felt it would be unwise to start hiring.

Brown emphasized that the university will not be re-opening positions where faculty were laid off during the worst of the budget crisis.

“This is not an institution where you have faculty who have been laid off involuntarily and [is] then hiring new faculty,” he said. “That would be a legal and moral problem.”

Bowers explained that in the past two fiscal years, UNLV has lost faculty who were on visiting lines or not in tenured or tenure-track positions. He said the faculty who were let go involuntarily were typically those in programs that were eliminated because of the budget cuts.

Brown said that there is a “critical need” to open job positions because of the “alarming rate of growth” in the student-faculty ratio.

UNLV’s latest data indicate that compared to the last biennium, the student-faculty ratio has increased from 21.3-to-1 to 22.5-to-1.

Between January and June 2011, 30 administrative and academic faculty members chose to seek employment elsewhere. He added that the 48 tenured faculty who took the buyout last spring represented 250 class sections formerly scheduled to be taught.

Additionally, 255 faculty members at UNLV have resigned or retired in the past two fiscal years, according to NSHE personnel records. By comparison, University of Nevada, Reno has lost 143 faculty members due to resignations during the same time period, according to the data.

“We are hiring because there is critical need for students to get into class sections to get their degree,” Brown said.

Undergraduate Student Body President Sarah Saenz said that she hoped the hires made by the executive administration will help students feel as though class sizes are smaller and that their instructors are knowledgeable in their fields.

Bowers said that UNLV “has seen the worst.” He expressed hope that a new influx of faculty can help revitalize the university.

“It’s really an opportunity for faculty to come and rebuild UNLV,” he said. “[New faculty are] going to be able to come in almost at the ground level and rebuild the university. It’s almost a unique opportunity.”

Julie Ann Formoso reports on faculty and staff issues for The Rebel Yell. Contact her at julieann.formoso.ry@gmail.com.

• 

Section: Featured, News
Tags: