Staff voice transportation concerns

UPDATED AT 1:12 p.m. MARCH 24

During Wednesday’s Staff Senate meeting in which UTRGV President Guy Bailey addressed the state’s hiring freeze and budget shortfall, the school’s probationary status and an employee buyout program, staff raised concerns about transportation among campuses.

Bailey briefly addressed the meeting held at PlainsCapital Bank El Gran Salón and streamed to the Harlingen and Edinburg campuses to update university staff members on several issues.

Rick Anderson, executive vice president of Finance and Administration, said the retention and recruitment of students play a major role in the university’s revenue and cost effectiveness, saying it is not only a faculty job, but a staff member’s duty as well.

“We all need to spend as much time on the revenue side as much as we do on the cost side and that means we recruit and retain students,” Anderson said. “UTRGV is a place where we want students from the Valley and outside the Valley to come to.”

Jaime Richeson, Student Rights and Responsibilities senior program coordinator, asked Anderson what was the cost effectiveness of students who have to travel between campuses.

Anderson replied by saying the shuttle buses are available for students and the service has increased in popularity since UTRGV opened.

“Our partnership with Valley Metro does give us access to federal funding through the Federal Transit Administration,” said Roberto Cantu, executive director of Auxiliary Business Services. “In capital purchases, we pay about 20 percent for shuttles, for any new acquisition of shuttles, and, also, we get some matching funds for our operations.”

He said it was a cost effective service for UTRGV students.

Anderson added to Cantu’s statement by explaining why Valley Metro provides those services.

“Any kind of bus service in the Valley, whether it’s Brownsville or Edinburg, the federal government helps subsidize those bus services based on ridership,” he said. “So, what Valley Metro gets from us in relation to that investment is the ridership numbers. They get to count the ridership numbers from a federal standpoint.”

Richeson suggested hiring more faculty on each campus so students do not have to travel.

“Students are being told that they have to, in order to complete some of the semester courses or graduate courses, they have to take a class in Edinburg,” Richeson said. “We can limit the cost of them having to go to Edinburg by providing them the course here by hiring staff and faculty in Brownsville or the Edinburg side so they don’t have to be traveling. It would be more cost effective for students and more efficient for students so they don’t have to be wasting time traveling when they could just come to the class here.”

The discussion prompted several Information Technology employees to raise issues regarding travel. They said shuttle services are not always the best option because of the equipment they must carry at times.

Anderson replied by saying the university has a mileage reimbursement rate for employees traveling across the Rio Grande Valley.

“Other things we’re looking at are some rideshare programs and rideshare options that we may be able to help promote,” he said. “Heavy urban campuses will have Zipcar and other car-loaner programs.”

Sergio Chavez, a technology support specialist, said there are not enough university vehicles available for IT employees in Brownsville.

“I do use my vehicle at times and I do get reimbursed for it, but, you know, that is time, that is miles on my personal vehicle,” Chavez said.

Staff Senate President Michael Aldape said he appreciated the feedback.

Texas Legislature

Bailey said the “most significant” issue in the Texas Legislature right now is a budgetary shortfall from its previous session in 2015.

“When the legislative session started, the comptroller, [Glenn Hegar], forecast a budget shortfall of a couple billion dollars,” he said during the meeting. “Nobody knows really what [the budgetary shortfall] is, really. If you hear $3 [billion] to $4 billion, yes, that’s a lot of money but remember, that’s a fairly small percentage of the total state budget.”

However, Bailey said state funds are not the only form of revenue for the university, the largest being tuition and fees.

“We can, partially, offset whatever reductions we have in state appropriations by growing our enrollment,” he said. “If we have good enrollment this fall, that will do some partial offset there.”

Hiring freeze

Bailey said Gov. Greg Abbott’s hiring freeze will end Sept. 1, but what happens after depends on what happens to the university’s budget.

“The governor’s hiring freeze had to do with the shortfall in the budget in the current biennial; it has nothing to do with how the Legislature is handling the shortfall with the next biennial,” he said.

Regardless of the state’s hiring freeze, UTRGV received special permission to ignore the freeze when it comes to the hiring of School of Medicine, enrollment management and student employees.

Michael James, UTRGV chief Human Resources officer, said the hiring freeze caused the university to pull down some positions from its website, but has now received permission to add more.

“Since we have received feedback from the governor’s office for hiring waivers, we did re-add positions to our website,” James said. “Right now, we have 35 positions posted and about 10 or so in the mix.”

He said another area that received permission was faculty recruitment for summer classes.

Voluntary Separation Incentive Program

Earlier this month, UTRGV offered a Voluntary Separation Incentive Program (VSIP) for some of its employees.

To participate, eligible employees must submit a notice of intent by 5 p.m. April 7 as well as a separation agreement.

If employees signed a notice of intent and later decide they do not want to retire or terminate, the process will stop after the VSIP agreement deadline, according to the UTRGV website. If employees signed the VSIP agreement, they must submit a revocation notice by the deadline after signing the agreement.

There are  19 staff members and 87 faculty who are eligible for the voluntary separation incentive program.

Bailey said the VSIP has nothing to do with the state’s hiring freeze or the legislative session.

“That really came about because we had requests from, primarily, faculty,” Bailey said. “We had a number of faculty who had asked about the possibility. I guess some of them regretted not taking the last VSIP. We knew there was some interest in it. … That’s really where that comes from. It was not something that we had planned.”

For more information about the VSIP, call the Office of Human Resources at 882-8205 in Brownsville and 665-2451 in Edinburg or email at hr@utrgv.edu.

Probationary status

UTRGV Deputy President Janna Arney said university administrators are working closely with officials of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges to resolve some of the accrediting standards the school violated, starting with the “language” on the school’s website.

“We’re going to be making some revisions to some of the wording they’ve asked us to make,” Arney said. “You have to keep in mind that, from SACSCOC’s perspective, that may not match what the Texas Legislature wrote and UT System wrote. It becomes a little challenging to write something that kind of meets all three of those criteria. … What we are doing is just simplifying everything.”

Last December, SACSCOC placed UTRGV under a yearlong probation for failure to demonstrate compliance with several accreditation standards.

SACSCOC is the regional body for the accreditation of degree-granting higher education institutions in the Southern states.

“We don’t think that there will be any problem at all getting off that probation in December,” Bailey said. “The things that we need to get done are getting done. Our relationship with SACSCOC is good right now.”

Bailey and Arney reiterated that UTRGV remains fully accredited and that its academic quality was not affected.

“The things that were cited in our probationary status are things that are the easiest to fix because they have nothing to do with the quality of our education, the quality of our faculty, the quality of our staff, the quality of our students, the quality of our programs,” Arney said. “These are transition issues.”