University Times

The 10-year-old University Planning and Budgeting System (UPBS) is supposed to give Pitt employees and students input into their schools' budgets and long-range planning, through unit-level committees.

But is the system working?

This year, Provost James Maher will convene a group of faculty, staff, students and administrators seeking answers to that question.

It will be the second comprehensive review of the UPBS. The first, during the 1995-96 academic year, found that the system basically was functioning as intended, although some committees weren't meeting regularly or distributing meeting minutes as required.

This year's evaluation should be made easier by the availability of procedures and questionnaires developed during the 1995-96 review, according to Phil Wion, who chairs the University Senate budget policies committee.

This month, Faculty Assembly and Senate Council endorsed a recommendation by Wion's committee for a new review of UPBS.

At Monday's Council meeting, Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg said such an evaluation would be "a healthy thing." Nordenberg noted that he and Wion were among the people who wrote the UPBS document.

At the Sept. 28 meeting of the Senate's budget policies committee, Wion said, "There's been a lot of turnover among faculty and the administration since the last review of the system," and discussion at September's Faculty Assembly meeting indicated that some professors had no clue how UPBS is supposed to work.

"A new review will reinforce the system and heighten awareness," Wion said.

Robert F. Pack, vice provost for Academic Planning and Resources Management, said it's an ongoing challenge to adapt UPBS to what he called "traditional governance systems and entrenched practices in certain schools."

UPBS, he said, "reflects a kind of governance style that's more typical of a unit like FAS [the Faculty of Arts and Sciences] than the medical school, for example."

Wion said a new, comprehensive review of the system will provide an opportunity to fine-tune UPBS so it functions well across the University.

In other Faculty Assembly and Senate Council business:

* Chancellor Nordenberg warned Council members that the outlook for state funding is "something far short of rosy." Last month, Pitt submitted to Harrisburg a $186.1 million appropriation request for fiscal year 2003, which would be 4.3 percent higher than the University's current base appropriation.

"I have to tell you that, at this point, no one in the [state's] new administration is talking much about funding increases in the next fiscal year," Nordenberg said. "Instead, they are struggling to contend with budget deficits looming for the current fiscal year."

* The Senate tenure and academic freedom committee (TAFC) will draft a proposal to amend the University's employee indemnification policy so that Pitt automatically would pay legal bills incurred by faculty and staff accused — but subsequently cleared — of research misconduct.

Currently, a committee of two Pitt senior administrators and the University Senate president judges, on a case-by-case basis, whether Pitt will indemnify such employees.

TAFC chairperson Richard Tobias said he didn't know when his committee will bring a resolution back to Faculty Assembly, which asked TAFC to study the issue.

* The committee appointed by Chancellor Nordenberg last May to study whether Pitt should extend health benefits to employees' same-sex partners is still meeting — but its deliberations remain top secret.

Just to report that the committee is continuing to meet required four phone calls, Tobias told Faculty Assembly. Tobias said he began by asking TAFC member Ann Medsger, who serves on the committee studying same-sex health benefits, for an update. According to Tobias, Medsger referred him to Board of Trustees secretary Robert Dunkelman, who suggested that Tobias call trustee William Lieberman, chairperson of the special committee. Lieberman referred Tobias to the chancellor, who finally gave Tobias the go-ahead to tell Faculty Assembly that the committee is, indeed, still meeting.

* University Senate President James Cassing said he and other Senate leaders will take up with senior administrators the issue of schedule conflicts between University events and Jewish holidays. Pitt's nationally televised football game against the University of Miami was played on the evening of Sept. 27, the beginning of Yom Kippur. "We have to be more vigilant" in avoiding such conflicts, Cassing told Faculty Assembly.

— Bruce Steele