Strategic Initiatives Process:
Your ideas and suggestions
Ideas and suggestions submitted by the University of Iowa community will be posted here periodically.
Jump to: Budgeting - Undergraduate Education - Graduate Education - Research and Creative Excellence - Internationalization and Diversity - Outreach and Public Engagement
Strategic Budgeting
Service offices less or not at all. A lot of universities do this and charge extra for floor work, lights etc.
Suggestion: stop making professional format posters with color pictures of administration relaying meetings in the hospital. They are outside our Melrose dining and throughout hospital even though we get emails repeatedly with same information. This is a very extravagant use of funds considering we are being asked for return of salary.
I am concerned with layoffs and I have an idea. I’m wondering if it’s viable. If folks were given the choice to get laid off or reduce their work day hours (thus pay) but give the same amount of work product, I think some would choose the shorter day. When I moved from full-time employment to part-time I noticed my work product shot up. There was a lot to do in a short time period so I became more organized and less distracted so I could get it all done. I’m convinced I get more work done in 20 hours a week then some of my co-workers who work 40 hours.
I also wish very much that you could negotiate with the union to separate the Hospital/healthcare from the rest of the school so when people are bumped they remain in their basic area. For example, I work at the University . . . and I’m assuming I will be bumped sometime within the next year. I do not want to work in a hospital setting, I want to work at a University (that is why I applied for a job in the U). But most likely if I am bumped I will be placed in a job at UIHC. I think they should be separate when it comes to bumping/transferring because they are two very different environments. I consider this a budget item because if I am given a job at the hospital I will only stay until I find another job. The hospital position will have to be re-trained twice in a short period of time thus costing the unit money.
Undergraduate Education and Success
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Graduate Education: Selective Excellence
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Research and Creative Excellence
From an IT perspective (not limited to research):
- Promote collaboration within research – specifically from a finance and technology standpoint.
- Understand the importance of security awareness and risk management.
- Implement network isolation strategies to better protect our faculty, staff, and students.
- Do more with less by leveraging “smart” technologies that reduce labor costs and create time efficiencies for faculty and staff.
- Streamline distance/continuing education through “common sense” technology.
- Leverage virtualization technology to reduce hardware costs, energy consumption, and cooling costs.
- Leverage software metering strategies and concurrent licensing to reduce software costs.
- When possible, standardize hardware and software to minimize support/labor costs.
- Encourage automated processes and self-service technology to better serve constituents, as well as reduce human error.
- Implement enhanced security measures of mobile devices.
- Encourage and promote electronic document management strategies to reduce printing costs.
- Surround the University with good/skilled people that are passionate about making a positive impact.
Internationalization and Diversity
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Outreach and Engagement
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General
I have attached a proposal that encompasses the spirit of our university and will move the creative arts forward with scholarly pursuits. [Attached: proposal for Iowa Print Group, "to expand the professional standing of artists who make original prints, drawings, books, and hand-made paper through the increase of public appreciation, awareness and access to these art forms"]
Thank you for these ongoing updates; those of us without ready access to significant university decision roles do appreciate the feelings of “being a part” that the periodic news brings!
I have the recurring realization that the visual arts —the “fine” arts— do not as yet have the equivalent in town access to history, precedent, and the cumulative visual culture that liberal arts does, in general, with the strong support we have given the library. Our School of Art’s “first language” is the visual of course, not verbal, and our equivalent (therefore) to the library is the art museum. Please consider supporting ways and means to bring back, for our students especially, the modernist, folk, and contemporary aspects of the art collection to campus or town.
Our fine arts program continues to enjoy a top 10 ranking in the yearly US News and World Reports polls; this is based, we are told, on our grad and faculty successes (our cumulative presence in the fields) but, surely, a good in-town museum collection can’t help but assist this national peer perception.
After looking at the committee make up I see that there are no merit employees on them. Do we not count? Are our ideas not important? We make up a large portion of the working class here at the University of Iowa and we all are dealing with the shrinking of our income as prices go up and our wages do not. We do not get bonus money from our departments or have access to travel funds to attend conferences that may be beneficial to our jobs. We will all be affected by what comes out of these committees but it looks to me like we will not have any input except for e-mailing our ideas which they can choose to look at or discard. In the 25 years that I have been here when there have been budget issues the merit employees are the first to get cut. It takes 4 to 6 merit employees to make up the salary of 1 professional but they are willing to let those 4 to 6 go and double the work for those that remain. Merit employees over the years have learned to deal with wages increasing less than the cost of living increase. We have had to adjust our budgets to accommodate these changes. We have had to think outside the box to provide for our families and our ideas would be from a different perspective than that of professional staff. I saw that the committee members had not all been chosen so when you make your choices I would ask that you think about including some merit employees. We do really care about the future of the University of Iowa.
