This image has been created to represent the relationships the council will have on campus.

Inaugural members of women's council appointed

"Circles of connection" is a phrase being used to describe the President's Council on Women's Issues to its inaugural members. Now officially convened, the council advocates for the development of policies that positively affect the environment for all women at the University.

The 27 members, selected from a pool of 160 nominees, "will be able to maximize the connections the council will have, and touch the farthest reaches of the community -- which means they might not be visible to everyone," explains Judy Fountain, director of The Women's Place and a key contributor to development of the University's first council of this kind.

With the high number of nominations, those selecting council members diligently sorted through information about prospective members that indicated they had experience in operating at the policy level.

"It was, in my mind, a very careful selection process. We tried to leave no piece of information unconsidered," said Jacqueline Royster, chair of the council and associate dean for faculty and research in the College of Humanities. "Going forward, much of what we'll be doing initially is setting the framework for operation. We wanted to make sure we have those circles of connection and sectors of experience that will allow us to maximize our ability to frame this work well."

President Brit Kirwan and Executive Vice President and Provost Edward J. Ray announced in October that the University would convene a council designed to promote the advancement of women at Ohio State. The group will be instrumental in identifying issues critical to the environment for women at Ohio State, advising the president and provost on strategies to meet or surpass national best practices regarding the institutional climate for women, and setting the direction and priorities for The Women's Place.

The council will operate under a consultative model. Members will create alliances with other groups and individuals as they need to seek advice and expertise on specific issues. And the 130-plus other people nominated may be among those from whom input will be sought.

"As we participate as an inaugural group, we're not forgetting the fact that 160 people were nominated. We see that there's a lot of strength available for addressing issues well," Royster said. "There were 133 nominators who thought carefully about recommending potential members. I feel I know much better now how many specific people there are who are interested in things I'm interested in. I feel connected in a serious way with people who are willing to join hands to make Ohio State a better place."

While the council will advise on policy matters, The Women's Place will continue to carry out part of the work relating to the fabric of women's lives at Ohio State. "The Women's Place signals that there's a place connecting women -- a concrete, physical place. It's also a mechanism for ongoing action, where day-to-day actions might be facilitated -- but not controlled," Fountain said.

In turn, Fountain can observe patterns emerging from contacts made with The Women's Place, and inform the council and administrative units on what such patterns suggest about University policies, practices and services that might need attention. "Through this kind of process, this is the way a single voice can be validated and become part of a larger set of voices," she said.

Fountain and Royster noted that the process leading to the creation of the council was built upon a more than 30-year history of women and men at Ohio State demonstrating commitment to issues concerning women's experiences at the University. The difference now, Fountain said, is that the energy of all those past movements has created a new movement with a collaborative, and not oppositional, flavor to it. Common goals have been defined, and people, informed by the past, are working together to find a system of incorporating those many years of effort.

Fountain said the council's establishment, combined with the appointment of a Diversity Council and pursuit of strategies outlined in the Academic Plan, points to the coalescence of institutional forces around common goals under a structure that builds synergies but allows groups and units to retain autonomy.

"Hard work has a chance to pay off," Royster said. "Women and men who worked hard and persistently to keep women's issues a part of the central dialogue about quality on this campus have put us in a position to make a different move. This is a proactive, and not reactive, moment. It's responsive, but not reactive.

"The University has taken a proactive step to benefit from what we have come to know -- that women are valuable and vital members of this complex community and to take that as a given."

Council members

Faculty Members

Council Chair Jacqueline J. Royster, English, Humanities

Deb Ballam, Finance

Bruce Bursten, Chemistry

Wayne E. Carlson, Art, Art Education

Bunny Clark, Physics

Cynthia Dillard, Teaching and Learning

Rebecca D. Jackson, Internal Medicine

Valerie B. Lee, Women's Studies

Mo-Yee Lee, Social Work

Linda M. Lobao, Human and Community Resource Development

Staff Members

Rebecca Andre, Fisher College of Business

Carol Bowman, Marion Campus

Olga Esquival-Gonzalez, Human Resources

Kate Haller, Health Services

Carol A. Kane, Dance

Greta J. Russell, Business and Finance

Richelle Simonson, Athletics

External

Ingrid Saunders Jones, Coca-Cola Co. Chair and Senior Vice President for Corporate External Affairs

Jo Ann Davidson, Ohio House of Representatives Speaker, 1995-2000

Julia Arbini-Carbonell, Ohio Department of Job and Family Services Board, Ohio Hispanic Coalition

Philomena (Mimi) Dane, Squire, Sanders & Dempsey Litigation Partner

Gayle E. Saunders, Ameritech Director of External Affairs

Central Administration Liaisons

Planning Cabinet Member -- appointed by President Kirwan

Coordinating Council Member -- appointed by Provost Ray

Students

Three students will be added to the council in autumn quarter

Ex Officio

Judy Fountain, The Women's Place

OSU will look inward for compensation funding

President Brit Kirwan plans to charge Provost Edward J. Ray and Senior Vice President for Business and Finance William J. Shkurti to consult with key University leaders and committees to devise strategies to increase faculty and staff compensation using existing Ohio State resources. The goal of the strategy will be to reach at least the midpoint in benchmark university faculty salaries in the next three or four years.

Kirwan said flat state support expected over the next biennium leaves Ohio State little choice but to develop a plan to self-fund compensation increases if the University is going to remain competitive with other top national public schools. Ohio State currently ranks eighth overall when its average faculty salaries are compared with nine aspirational peers among the nation's public universities.

"We have a situation that, in my mind, is reaching crisis proportions," Kirwan told about 100 faculty assembled May 17 to speak with him and Ray about a number of faculty issues. The meeting at Postle Hall was sponsored by the Ohio State chapter of the American Association of University Professors.

Though a few questions addressed such issues as budget restructuring, faculty annual review policies and the pending decision about whether the University will change its calendar, state budget issues and salaries dominated the discussion.

"There is nothing we can do at this moment about the erosion of salaries in the past," Kirwan said. "What we can do is something about the future."

The committee will be led by Ray and Shkurti, and will include faculty and staff.

Kirwan said the University's Academic Plan illustrates the administration's commitment to increasing faculty and staff salaries. The tricky part, he and Ray noted, will be making decisions about what programs and units will lose funding in order for resources to be redirected to compensation.

"There are no magic solutions," Ray said. "If we have to fund competitive salary increases from our own resources, we will have to make hard decisions about the things we will stop doing and the activities we will reduce in scale. Recent reports from FCBC (Faculty Compensation and Benefits Committee), the Research Commission and elsewhere have made a strong case that the regular faculty ranks should not be reduced. So, we need to look across all of our programs and support activities for resources that can be redirected to competitive salary increases."

Added Kirwan, "It's very easy to talk boldly and bravely about what we're going to cut -- until we cut something. What I'm advocating is what we need to do to reach our objective. And it's the right objective. But it's going to be a very big challenge to pull off.

"If the state isn't going to provide us with the wherewithal to realize our very reasonable goals with regard to compensation, we'll have to find a way, somehow, to find those resources in our own budget by cutting valuable services and programs."

Ray said that had the current state budget situation been evident last fall, the University "would have had these kinds of conversations earlier in the academic year." However, as recently as October, when the Board of Regents proposed a 16 percent increase in higher education support from the state, officials had no idea how difficult budget planning would become for Fiscal Years 2002 and 2003. The principal resources for compensation are provided by the State Share of Instruction and student tuition and fees.

In fact, Ray and Kirwan said, officials remain unable to predict what kind of compensation package will be proposed to trustees in June because of continuing uncertainties about how the state Legislature ultimately will fund higher education. They said the administration currently is crafting a package designed to at least keep employees with satisfactory performance from falling behind in total compensation. At the absolute minimum, they said, faculty and staff will receive enough of a salary increase to offset annual increases in health care premiums and parking fees -- which amount to almost $400 for most employees.

Though much of the news from the Statehouse has been disappointing with regard to higher education funding, Kirwan and Ray said that there is some good news: Gov. Bob Taft supported distinguishing Ohio State from the rest of Ohio's public universities in proposing to lift OSU's tuition cap, and, Kirwan said, there appears to be an "awakening of appreciation" for higher education among business leaders and the state's major newspapers. The final outcome of the tuition cap exemption request -- specifically, whether other schools will receive the exemption in FY 2002 or 2003, or whether caps will exist at all -- remains unclear.

Some faculty suggested that seeking the tuition cap exemption sends the state a message that it can continue underfunding higher education in exchange for the higher tuition. However, Kirwan said that, considering Ohio State's anomalous ranking of eighth among the 13 state-supported four-year universities in tuition, the University cannot and should not forgo an opportunity to seek this basic fiscal resource to enhance its academic profile.

"Ohio has a low-support, high-tuition policy. If the state had kept the tuition cap on for next year, I'm convinced we would not have received one dollar more in the State Share of Instruction," he said. "I think that, within the overall context of the state's policy, we have every right to pursue a tuition strategy where we, as the state's major research university, are at or near the top in tuition among Ohio's public universities."

Even with the plan to increase in-state undergraduate tuition by roughly 9 percent annually over the next five or six years if the cap is removed, Ohio State's tuition is expected to rank about fourth in the state at the end of that period, assuming other schools also impose tuition increases averaging 6 percent. All revenues associated with increases above 6 percent will be dedicated to enhancements in undergraduate education.

In response to one faculty member's assertion that faculty morale is declining and that faculty feel they are not involved in institutional decision making, Kirwan and Ray indicated that they both routinely meet with governance leaders and noted that the secretary of the University Senate serves on the Coordinating Council.

"Whether or not I'm perceived this way, I very much identify with being a faculty member," said Kirwan, the son of a professor and a math professor for years before joining the University of Maryland's administration. "It is no accident that when the Academic Plan proposed a change to semesters and a review of the General Education Curriculum, I turned to the Senate, asking it to study these proposals and give us its best advice on the issue. É I can't think of a major policy development at the University that hasn't come out of the Senate. At an institution of higher education, the polices and direction should be set by the faculty."