Month: November 2012

Travel, Expense, Charge Card Changes

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Representatives from Emory’s Business Practice Improvement team presented forthcoming coming adjustments to travel, expense, and charge card policies at the November 20 meeting of the Faculty Council. On February 14, 2013, applications for new VISA corporate cards, as well as changes aimed to make these processes easier and more efficient, will roll out. Bill Dracos, chief business practice improvement officer, said, “We heard several things from faculty and staff: trust us, value our time, don’t chase us for every little receipt, and give us a card accepted everywhere.” Among the key changes: corporate card receipts for less than $75 charges no longer required; automated currency conversion on the cards; a simplified travel meal reimbursement and per diem policy; reimbursed GPS on rental cars; and direct-bill airfare to go to the corporate card instead of smartkeys. “Right now we only have a 20 percent adoption rate of the corporate cards for charges,” Dracos added. “If that moved to nearly 100 percent, it would save about $1.6 to $1.8 million in people’s time at the university.” More information about the coming adjustments is available at howtopay.emory.edu.

 

President leads discussion on faculty governance

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In the November meeting, University President James Wagner encouraged the Faculty Council to consider “reinvigorating and even growing what we do around faculty governance.” He observed that the increasingly utilitarian social value placed on education over many decades and the more recent economic pressures have changed the circumstances of universities broadly. “We should understand and search for the opportunities in these changes, rather than understand them always to be threats,” he said.

Wagner went on to suggest that faculty must take a leading role in formulating, owning, and implementing Emory’s response to these changes, especially as the university approaches the end of its strategic planning cycle in 2015. “it should be guided with faculty engagement,” he said, “all managed, owned, and implemented at the deepest levels of our institution.” To foster strong, creative, and progressive faculty governance, he concluded, questions of structure, policy, participation, and responsibility need to be examined.

 

Around Campus: Workload Policy in Business School

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In keeping with the practice of Council members reporting regularly on key issues from individual schools, Jeffrey Busse spoke to the Council about the Goizueta Business School’s newly adopted “Workload Policy” for tenured associate professors. Implemented beginning fall 2013, the policy formalizes the expectation that within ten years of their promotion to associate, tenured business professors will progress toward full professor. “If an individual does not get there within ten years, then the school would expect that person to contribute to the school in ways beyond research,” Busse explained. “[The assumption is that] if you don’t reach full tenure within ten years in most cases it’s because your research has not met a level associated with full tenure, so you would be expected to contribute with additional teaching and/or service.” The policy is presented in full in the Goizueta online faculty handbook.