University Times

Pitt will offer staff and faculty a new, optional benefit beginning in July: group long-term care insurance.

The employee-paid plan will cover costs of institutional and in-home assistance such as nursing care for participating employees, typically in old age.

Pitt's Human Resources office plans to hold an open enrollment for the long-term care plan this spring, the co-chairperson of the University Senate's benefits and welfare committee told Faculty Assembly on Jan. 29.

Herbert Chesler said his committee endorsed details of the plan and was represented on the faculty-staff advisory committee that worked with Human Resources on it.

Rich Colwell, the Staff Association Council's vice president for steering, told Senate Council this week that SAC also endorsed the plan and was represented on the advisory committee.

"We're using the University's size and the resources of Human Resources to go out and get the best bang for our buck," Colwell said of the new group insurance plan.

In other Senate business:

* Provost James Maher said he will look into an apparent holdup in launching a planned review of the University Planning and Budgeting System (UPBS). The committee of administrators, faculty, staff and students that will evaluate the system has not met yet.

Psychology professor James Holland, who is chairing the review committee, complained at Senate Council that he has not even received his letter of appointment to the group. After Senate President James Cassing remarked that the evaluation process "seems to be moving along," Holland snapped: "I think it's standing dead still."

The 10-year-old UPBS is intended to give Pitt employees and students input into their schools' budgets and long-range planning, through unit-level committees. An earlier review, six years ago, found that the system basically was functioning well, although some committees weren't meeting regularly or distributing meeting minutes as required.

* The Senate's elections committee is putting together a ballot of candidates for Senate officer positions as well as slots on Faculty Assembly and Senate committees. Senate President Cassing urged faculty, staff and students to nominate faculty members for those positions. Nominations may be sent to the Senate office at 1234 Cathedral of Learning (e-mail: usenate@pitt.edu). Ballots will be mailed to faculty in April.

* "The Corporatization of the University" will be examined at the Senate's spring plenary session, March 18 at 3 p.m. in the William Pitt Union Assembly Room. The main speaker will be David F. Noble, a professor at Toronto's York University, who has written about corporations' growing influence on American colleges and universities. Noble's most recent book is "Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Education" (Monthly Review Press, 2001).

Senate President Cassing said he has invited the chairperson of Pitt's Board of Trustees, William S. Dietrich, to attend the session but has not received a response yet. Cassing and other members of the Senate's executive committee met recently with Dietrich for "a frank exchange of opinions and comments," the Senate president said.

Dietrich, who was elected trustees chairperson last June, "says all the right things and seems to be interested in the business of the University. He's made a point of saying that he recognizes that universities are very different animals from corporations," Cassing said.

— Bruce Steele