Provost Jo Ann Gora addressed the Faculty Senate February 29 and shared with the group a number of problems and policy matters the Office of Academic Affairs has been working on recently.

One “problem” that was easily resolved had to do with benefits for adjunct faculty. After hearing the concerns of several department chairs, primarily in the College of Arts and Letters, who felt that pay was an issue for part-time faculty, Gora set up a committee to look into the matter, and ultimately conducted a survey of all adjunct faculty before the holiday break.

The survey data proved to be “counter-intuitive,” she told the senate, noting that the questionnaire had a high rate of return (40 percent). “It was our assumption that what mattered to adjunct faculty was free parking and higher salaries . . . but what (they) told us mattered the most to them was orientation to the department, which most of them felt they hadn’t gotten . . . . It is the department they identify with. They want to feel a part of that department; they want information from the department.”

The adjunct faculty also listed Internet access as a benefit they would most like to have. “We presented a list of benefits and asked them to rank the top three they didn’t have,” Gora said. “They like what they do, they’re very satisfied. They’re (teaching) for professional development, not for the income. What they wanted was orientation to the department and Internet access – in other words, ISP accounts, . . . 76 percent wanted those two things.” She later reported that only 15 people wanted free parking and 10 wanted higher salaries.

Gora said she was happy to report that the university will be able to provide ISP accounts to adjunct faculty who were subsequently recommended for them by their deans. She added that she has provided the survey results to the deans and department chairs, and plans to share the findings with the part-time faculty and tell them how the university intends to address their concerns.

Gora also told the senators that she has asked some of the deans to draft a “statement of best practices” regarding adjunct faculty in an attempt to establish some uniform practices across the colleges.

Another problem her staff is now working on involves providing retirement benefits on summer grants, Gora said. “I can’t see any legal reason why we can’t do it. There are a lot of bureaucratic reasons why it hasn’t been done, but we ought to get beyond that and figure out how to do it.”

Gora added that her office is “putting in place timelines and procedures that will enable faculty members who have grant funds in the summer to receive retirement benefits on those grant funds if they so choose.” She noted that no other institution in Virginia provides this benefit to its research faculty.

A third problem Gora mentioned has to do with the processing of graduate admissions. The university has moved to an electronic documentation system to eliminate the “loss of paper” between offices and departments, but all of the bugs have yet to be worked out, she said.

Because there has been a national decline recently in the number of graduate applications, Old Dominion must refine its processing system so that it responds in a timely fashion to those who have applied and then recruits the best students it can.

Gora also reported that the university’s first scholarship competition for undergraduate applicants, held the weekend of Feb. 26-27, proved to be “a rip-roaring success.”

She noted, “This is another way to increase the yield of the freshman class, to sell the university to these good students, to get them excited about the university. We had an extraordinary turn-out.”