• Provide opportunities for career development and advancement;
• Provide a comprehensive and competitive compensation and benefits package; and
• Follow “best practice” philosophy and align the university’s job and pay structure with the market.

According to Mary Elizabeth Miles, vice president for human resources, the two-year evaluation is on schedule to finish in July, at which time the committees will report findings to university vice presidents, deans and vice provosts. Specifics on implementation strategies are not yet finalized. Communications about Compensation & Total Rewards Study results and strategy communications are forthcoming.

Learn more on the Compensation and Total Rewards Study .

The Staff Senate unanimously approved a letter of support for UofL’s trans community.

“We share the Commission on the Status of Women’s (COSW’s) beliefs that trans rights are human rights, and no UofL student, staff or faculty should be discriminated against based on their race, gender identity or sexuality. All students, staff and faculty deserve equal protection and civil treatment on campus, so they can live, learn, work and thrive in a safe environment.”

The letter also provides recommendations for how the university community can best support the trans community including the review of current university policies, transparency when policy and other issues which impact the trans community are being considered, using the Cardinal Principles as foundations for support and working with various groups such as UofL Trans Rights Alliance to gain a better understanding of trans issues.

Read the complete letter on the Staff Senate .

Staff Senate elections are coming up. All senators, whether their seat expires or not, must complete an application if they wish to serve on the senate for FY24 (July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024).

Applications are due April 15 and are available on the Staff Senate application .

Gary Becker, director of University Parking & Transportation Services, announced a new parking permit renewal process which will begin on Belknap Campus. Those renewing/requesting parking permits and paying for permits through payroll deduction for 2023-24 will receive a “forever permit,” which will have no expiration date on the permit. The following year, permit holders will receive a notification of fees and a deadline to confirm renewal or request changes to permit levels. (Notes: The renewal process will remain the same this year. There will be no increases in parking permit rates for 2023-24.)

The effort is designed to streamline the parking permit renewal process. If successful, the process will be integrated into the Health Sciences Center Campus parking permit renewal process in 2024-25.

Parking information is available on the University Parking & Transportation Services .

The agenda, committee reports and other information from the March 14, 2023, UofL Staff Senate meeting is available on the Staff Senate meetings . The next senate meeting will be Tuesday, April 11, 2023, on MS Teams. See the Staff Senate for details, and email staffsen@louisville.edu with questions.

UofL is conducting the study in partnership with Segal, a human resources consulting firm with expertise in higher education, to provide fair and equitable faculty (nonclinical) and staff compensation programs as identified in the university’s 2019-22 strategic plan. The university will use the results of this study to:

• Provide opportunities for career development and advancement;
• Provide a comprehensive and competitive compensation and benefits package; and
• Follow “best practice” philosophy and align the university’s job and pay structure with the market.

According to Mary Elizabeth Miles, vice president for human resources, the two-year evaluation is on schedule to finish in July, at which time the committees will report findings to university vice presidents, deans and vice provosts for implementation strategies. Cherie Dawson-Edwards, vice provost for faculty affairs and an associate professor for the Department of Criminal Justice, added that the market assessment for the faculty portion of the study will finish in March and noted that the study only considers faculty base pay – not administrative supplements.

Learn more on the Compensation and Total Rewards Study .

Col. Steven Green, director of public safety and chief of the University of Louisville Police Department (ULPD), provided an update on department initiatives. Green said that more RAVE alerts are being sent due to a recent decision to include incidences of crime on the outskirts of UofL’s campuses. While on-campus crime rates remain stable, ULPD felt it important that visitors to/from campuses be made aware of any safety concerns in the immediate areas.

Learn more about ULPD services on the department’s .

In other action …

• The senate approved a measure to close the Master of Arts degree in teaching of art history due to lack of enrollment. There are no students currently enrolled in the program, so no teach-out plan is necessary.
• Senator Michael Cunningham introduced a matter to consider revision of Red Book rules that apply to how faculty are consulted in the selection of university senior administrators. The Red Book Committee will consider the matter.
• Senate President Eugene Mueller asked senators to send him their thoughts on how to address the emergence of artificial intelligence-generated programs, such as Chat GTP.

Committee reports and other information from the March 1, 2023, UofL Faculty Senate meeting are available on the senate’s . The next meeting of the UofL Faculty Senate will take place Wednesday, April 5, at 3 p.m. in the Elaine Chao Auditorium, Ekstrom Library, Belknap Campus.

A new batch of students is joining the ranks of University of Louisville alumni. At its Dec. 15, 2022, committee meeting, the UofL Board of Trustees approved a measure to confer degrees to approximately 2,300 students at the December 2022 commencement exercises. Several graduate success stories have been published in UofL News. More details about December 2022 commencement are available on the .

Intentional wellness

Mary Elizabeth Miles, vice president for university human resources, provided an update on UofL’s many new and ongoing wellness initiatives. Among the 2022 successes are enhancements to the Get Healthy Now incentive program, Wellness Wednesday sessions, a new Wellness Resource Guide and health advocate services. Miles describes these and the other wellness initiatives as “intentional wellness” initiatives, which account for the physical, mental and emotional wellbeing of UofL’s more than 7,000 employees.

Compensation and Total Rewards Study

Miles also shared an update about the university’s . For the past two years, UofL has been conducting the study in partnership with Segal, an HR consulting firm with expertise in higher education, to provide fair and equitable faculty (nonclinical) and staff compensation programs as identified in the 2019 – 2022 strategic plan. The university will use the results of this study to provide opportunities for career development and advancement, provide a comprehensive and competitive compensation and benefits package, follow “best practice” philosophy and align the university’s job and pay structure with the market.

To date, committees of faculty, staff and senior administrators have established guiding principles for compensation and total rewards issues and assessed the university’s current job architecture, looking for opportunities to create synergy among professional titles and responsibilities. Efforts currently focus on a salary market assessment. Final results of the Compensation & Rewards Study will be presented in the second quarter of 2023.

Workday

Also about two years in the making is the university-wide transition from the PeopleSoft human resources (HR) management software to the new system. Workday will go live the week of Jan. 9, 2023, and will improve several university operations including payroll processing, employee management, hiring and benefits among others. More than 120 training sessions for university employees have been completed to date with several more scheduled after implementation.

Stable finances

Dan Durbin, vice president for finance and administration/CFO, reported that the university’s general fund is still performing well although fiscal year-to-date activity is approximately $25 million less compared to this time last year. Durbin said that the deficit can be attributed to such factors as revenue lost due to one less home football game and the ticket payment due date for men’s basketball tickets (ULAA); timing of the IGT match payment (ULRF); and lower than anticipated graduate level enrollments. Durbin said that mitigation plans are underway to counter shortfalls and is confident that trends will continue toward a balanced budget in the spring.

The next regular meeting of the University of Louisville Board of Trustees is Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023. Meeting minutes and other information is available on the .

Chief Financial Officer Dan Durbin told senators the university entered the academic year with a balanced budget with expectations to generate sufficient revenue to cover expenses. These costs included last fall’s 1% salary raise and $1,000 bonus for university employees, and the return of retirement contributions to pre-COVID levels.

“We also had a provision for an additional 1% raise in the spring; we said we would revisit that raise based on how we were doing from a tuition revenue standpoint,” Durbin said. “We have looked through the fall semester and through spring registration. The good news is our tuition revenues are higher than last year; the challenging news is that those tuition revenues are below budget by almost $7.9 million.”

Despite this challenge, administration maintained the additional raise would be within the best interest of the university. The 1% raise was authorized by the Board of Trustees and went into effect in March. Senators were informed that a financial plan was developed to ensure adequate funding for the institution-wide pay increase. Tactics of this financial plan included withholding a 3% contingency back from the units to cover unforeseen costs, as well as an increased emphasis on the importance of funding available to colleges and units through the University of Louisville Foundation.

“While we have tactics to ensure that raise, we still continue to work on enrollment not only for spring, but for the fall and beyond. Applications look really encouraging at the moment, but it’s all hands on deck to make sure we can get back to our original estimates on enrollment so the university can be on good, solid footing next year,” Durbin said.

Kari Aikins, director of Total Rewards for UofL, provided senators with information on the . Segal, an HR consulting firm with expertise in higher education, is currently reviewing data collected from the employee survey. The survey closed March 1, and an aggregate report of this data, which Is being generated by Segal, will provide input on remaining aspects of the HR initiative.

“One of the projects that this data will be used for will be our guiding principles and compensation philosophy, which we want to make sure aligns with our employee feedback and incorporates that input. We will also be using the data as we move through benchmarking, development of the career progression, leveling and some other components of the study that are still to come,” Aikins said.

Committee reports and a of the virtual meeting can be found on the . The next Staff Senate meeting will be held April 12 via Microsoft Teams.

Overseeing the Compensation and Total Rewards Study are co-chairs Kari Aikins, director of total rewards for UofL, and Krista Wallace-Boaz, associate dean of the School of Music. An additional of UofL faculty and staff members was also selected to serve as the voices of the campus community and provide feedback throughout the studies.

This comprehensive study comprises several studies that assess total rewards- employee wages and employee benefits (e.g., health care, tuition remission, paid leave, etc.). During May 2021, the six-phase compensation study began with the help of Segal, an HR consulting firm with expertise in higher education, and will conclude 18-24 months after the launch date. For a further look into the six phases, visit the .

Findings from the studies will provide the necessary framework for employee wages and employee benefits moving forward. If the compensation study shows a market position at a lower salary grade, UofL will not lower the employee’s salary.

During Phase 2 of the study, the university reviewed and/or developed job descriptions, minimum requirements, preferred qualifications, and essential duties for most university positions. This review ensured that position descriptions were up-to-date, accurate and consistent across all schools and departments, and was essential to obtain benchmarks comparable to similar jobs in the market.

“The goal was to submit job descriptions reflective of the role, not reflective of the employee in that role” said Aikins. “When we’re benchmarking for our compensation structure, we’re benchmarking the positions. Once we have our compensation structure in place and jobs are classified and graded based on comparable market data, we can then review and recommend equitable pay.”

More specifically, said Vice President of Human Resources Mary Elizabeth Miles,  “once we have the baseline data, the consulting firm will conduct a gap analysis that will look specifically at any unintended disparities that may cause women and minority employees to be paid less. These gap analyses will help us honor some of the other commitments made in the strategic plan and our anti-racism agenda.”

The study is now in phase three, with Segal and university leadership working to define a compensation philosophy for the university. This philosophy, developed by university employees in conjunction with Segal, will serve as guiding principles throughout the study.

“Our compensation philosophy will be a high-level statement that outlines our values as they relate to how we will compensate our employees, both through wages and benefits,” said Miles. “A compensation philosophy is needed so that we can establish our parameters moving forward.”

During this phase of the project, employees will receive a brief survey to complete on the university’s compensation and total rewards. A link to the survey will be distributed to all full-time (non-clinical) faculty and staff via email on Feb. 7, 2022. Responses will be confidential, and all are encouraged to participate.

For a description of future project phases, a project timeline and subcommittee members, visit the . Additional information can also be found on the .