RPI’s Curtis Powell, VP of Human Resources has now received an “Economic Stimulus Prize” for the recent actions taken by the HR department. The prize awards $1,000 to “HR professionals who have a measurable and positive impact on their business. ” Go RPI! You think that’s going to be in the admissions material?
On the upside, Powell says there are no more plans for “reductions in force”.
Hopefully RPI won't resort to using the Video Professor.
A wall post on the facebook group Students Against Financial Mismanagement at RPI from a Computer Science Adjunct that their department has been told to “drastically reduce the number of adjuncts.”
While we have yet to confirm the validity of this claim, we’re very surprised to hear this. A cutback on the number of faculty members at RPI will do nothing but decrease both the quality and value of an RPI education. More news to come as we try to shed more light on the issue. Full post below.
To our pleasant surprise, we were recently contacted by Jason Gorss, RPI’s Manager of Media Relations. He has volunteered a link to the text of Dr. Jackson’s speech from earlier today that she made to the tenured and tenure-track faculty. It is a press release, so it is to be taken with a grain of salt, but for the institute to reach out to people (especially a blog which has been around for not even two months) with information is good news. We hope this is the beginning of much more transparency within the institute. This being said, there were very little details released. Judge for yourself, but it seems to be a whole lot of vague media PR.
No one wants RPI to be more successful than the editors of this blog, and its painful to see the institute and it’s community take a hit as a result of the economic downturn. We’ve been posting email after email in an attempt to increase information coming from the institute.
We have posted the text of the speech below. Here’s a link to it on RPI’s site.
I don’t think it would be unreasonable to say that most RPI students lack a general sense of school spirit. This has been something that various administrators have said publicly they want to change. Why could this be? It’s not because we’re all too busy with our academics, or completely distracted by video games. Looking at other universities who are very spirited, there are usually great sports teams (we have that too!) as well as great friends to go to games with (we have that too!) But there is obviously more than just an athletic aspect to school spirit. Looking elsewhere in life, spirit occurs when lots of people love a certain place. Well, looking at RPI, I would gander to say that this is why we don’t have as much spirit and unity as we can. Between layoffs (affecting the staff), and faculty governance issues (affecting the faculty), and new required sophomore housing (affecting students) the only stakeholder seemingly protected at the institute is the administration. They are the ones who are instituting all of these changes in the first place. No wonder there isn’t spirit and unity! Everyone is disgruntled! Enthusiasm and good feelings for a place are contagious. It might help if the staff and faculty loved the place where they work. Well, I guess there is something that unites us all… Watch out administration, you might have some spirited unity coming your way, just not the kind you were thinking of.
Well, I guess The Notorious B.I.G. was wrong. At least recently… As I’m sure you all know, the economy is officially in a recession. The federal government is bailing out American automakers, and even countries like Canada are getting in on the bailout action. Want to know something that is apparently recession proof? (Hint: it isn’t our endowment.) Alcohol. People will tend to buy cheaper alcohol instead of the pricier stuff during hard economic times. (Bros, can you go cheaper than natty light? Water?)
How does this economic situation affect RPI? Well, according to the email that Dr. Jackson sent out to the Rensselaer Community:
… we have determined that it will not be possible to reduce the budget sufficiently without reducing our recurring compensation expenses, which make up half of the Institute’s operating budget. Staffing reductions will be necessary. We would prefer to rely on attrition, but it will not be adequate to meet our financial objectives. Each vice president and portfolio owner has examined their respective operations for reductions in staff, in a way that will enable greater efficiency, improved performance, and elimination of redundancy.
We will manage the required staffing reductions as compassionately as possible…
At least they’re firing people compassionately?! The institute laid off 98 employees this past week. No faculty positions are expected to be cut though, so that’s (relatively) good news for us students. But I can’t imagine being laid off right before the holidays. I would have hoped that RPI would have valued their employees a bit more to find the money in other places.
The biggest thing that I wish for in this situation is more information. I don’t know how many students know about this since most of us have headed home for winter break. The school has said very little publicly about the matter. This leaves us to look in the paper and read other blogs for information? The real way to combat any rumors is open communication. At least then we can all hopefully understand the reasoning behind the decisions.
Hopefully this will be the last that the economy hurts the RPI community. I’d like to not get forwarded another email in the coming months saying that some professors are being let go “compassionately.”
Our hearts go out to the those who have been affected by this situation during the holiday season.
EDIT 12/28: A number of facebook groups have spring up voicing concern with the issue.
Full email below.
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