Like many of you, I am very busy dealing with mid-terms in all of my courses, revising articles that journals all seem to want last week, and students and service projects that need my attention, but I am troubled.  I trust we all received the communication from President Petersen's office last week.  One item had to do with the Employee Satisfaction Survey.  It said --

Employee Satisfaction Survey: Results from the survey conducted in the spring have been compiled, and UT chancellors and vice presidents have received results for their campuses and will share those with you shortly. System-wide, overall satisfaction remained steady as 74 percent of participating employees reported feeling satisfied with the university as a place to work. The survey also noted critical areas for improvement, such as training for supervisors, better internal communications and building trust. We will work on these areas with a goal of improving scores in next year's survey, and have posted complete system-wide results at http://www.tennessee.edu/system/news/satisfaction.shtml

Am I the only one who is bothered that two-thirds of our faculty staff feel that we cannot speak without fear of reprisals?  I know many are complaining about the fact that 80% of our faculty and staff feel underpaid, but a HUGE majority of our faculty and staff fear retribution for speaking out on this or any topic.  I think this is appalling in an academic environment.  The campus is supposed to be the marketplace of ideas, and yet the overwhelming perception is that one will be punished for voicing a view that may be contrary to the view of those in authority.  And the president's response?  We want to improve our scores next year.  

Shouldn't the goal be to improve the overall environment so that faculty and staff do not feel that way.  Heck, they can improve the scores next year by tweaking the question, but it just seems to me that the scores aren't the problem.  The perception is the problem.

Sorry to clog your inboxes with my gripe this morning.  Perhaps I just need to cutback on my caffeine.  

Joanie




Dr. Joanie Sompayrac
UC Foundation
Associate Professor of Accounting
Assistant Director, University Honors 
UT-Chattanooga

"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." -- Winston Churchill

This correspondence should be considered a public record and subject to public inspection pursuant to the Tennessee Public Records Act.

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