As the WASC Institutional Proposal indicates, we hope to better align CSULB’s personnel policies and practices with our current mission. In order to do so, we determined that an evaluation of these particular policies and practices was warranted. It is important for us to know whether our processes have a measurably favorable impact on both the organization itself and the human resources that we rely upon for its functionality.
The Administration promotes, as one of its chief priorities, the value of recruiting and retaining a highly qualified workforce. In doing so, both the Office of Academic Personnel and the Office of Staff Human Resources consult with search committee representatives and provide them with a com-prehensive recruitment protocol. Each search protocol, for both staff and faculty, offers the critical information necessary to maintain best practices and, when applicable, to comply with federal and state laws pertaining to equal employment opportunity.
A chief challenge for CSULB is to ensure that the faculty and staff are aware of the campus policies that pertain to their employment and to their well-being generally. Although the campus has policies and employee benefits that have historically attracted new employees, a few of the campus climate reports reveal that a significant percentage of our employee community is unaware of some of these policies and benefits. For example, the Lecturer Survey indicates that more than one-third of our lecturers do not know whether they possess voting rights on subjects related to the curriculum, the policies and procedures of the academic department, and the election of the department chair. Given the fluidity of this employee population, that lack of awareness may not be uncommon in higher education; nonetheless, it suggests the need for academic departments to communicate their policies more frequently and systematically.
Finally, the 2007 Alfred P. Sloan Awards Institutional Survey, completed by 55 Master’s level institutions, is another important data source that solicits feedback concerning institutional policy. (The Sloan Awards Institutional Survey may be found in the Team Room.) Faculty and staff were asked to assess their university’s effectiveness in relation to programs and policies. It reveals that CSULB is substantially more attractive than other institutions assessed on 10 items of inquiry. These policies include the extension of health insurance to unmarried partners, hiring tenure-track faculty from its lecturer pool, university-wide policies regarding pay for new parents, and a written policy regarding how stoppages in the tenure clock should be treated by faculty reviewers and review committees. Comparatively, there are 14 items about which CSULB could be characterized as unappealing, or even problematic, when compared to the other institutions assessed. These include a perceived lack of protection of pay for those on temporary leave for family care or personal leave and a perceived less-than-typical amount of time off allowed (paid or unpaid) for new parents. The survey confirms that the campus will need to do a better job of communicating its policies to its faculty and staff.
