The October Staff Senate meeting featured Dr. Gregory Washington, president of George Mason University.
For those who missed the meeting, or would like to re-watch the session, the recording is now available here. Below you will find some responses to follow up questions not addressed during the session.
Q: What is Mason Faculty and Staff currently at if we need so much to get to the 60th percentile?
A: An initial estimate is included in the slides presented at the meeting. A comprehensive classification and compensation analysis will need to be completed prior to providing additional guidance.
Q: For staff who have been here longer than 15 years, the salary compression is a far bigger issue. Yes, much has happened in the past 4 years or so. But for those of us who have been here a long time, it feels like the administration only focuses on the recent successes, and far less on how to get long-time, dedicated staff caught up.
A: Thank you for your comment. It’s harder to increase classified staff who have been here for a long time given state rules. The increases given across the board help everyone overall, but we understand that some have struggled due to compression. We will continue to work on it.
Q: We hear the Support Center is being outsourced to save money. Should we expect more departments to follow?
A: George Mason continues to pursue enhanced operational efficiency and productivity improvements that may result in organizational realignments in order to best meet the needs of a growing student body in an environment of constrained resources.
Q: How does President Washington feel about the removal of our information desks? Will we see an increase in budget for the Campus Information and Visitor Services team? They are the front lines when it comes to customer service and first impressions of the university.
A: In the last two years, we have reduced the number of information desks (from seven on three campuses) to only staff the Johnson Center Information Desk, while all of the other locations now have an interactive kiosk.
The Mason Square staff and the Mason Student Services Center currently utilize the Information Desk in Van Metre Hall; the Merten Hall Information Desk is now utilized by Event Support for operations in Merten Hall; and the SUB I Information Desk was completely removed during a renovation to Patriot Lounge a year ago.
Hours to the JC Information Desk have also been reduced to focus on times of traffic and when other services at the university are open. This team also supports answering calls on the University Switchboard, which has begun also responding to text messages.
Q: We have seen challenges in retaining Sr. Leadership personnel at the university, SVP, VP of HR. There is a significant cost to search firms, and hiring through interview processes, and then the onboarding time for the required individuals. What steps are being taken to hire personnel that want to stay at the university long-term?
A: The university makes every effort to avoid unnecessary organizational transitions through comprehensive recruitment and retention programs that strive to hire the best leaders to match the challenges and opportunities we face as an institution and continue moving George Mason forward. However, there are often periods of higher turnover at universities, particularly for talented leaders in a competitive market.
Q: You last referred us to talk to individual units regarding budgets but they referred us back to the university at large. There seems to be a disconnect between clarity on who has control of compensation/budget.
A: The university has set budget savings targets as part of a two-year plan to mitigate a shortfall in our Education & General budget. The plan and targets were established centrally with responsibility for determining a unit-specific plan given to unit leadership as to ensure that each department’s plans best reflected their individual needs. The plan is working and we expect to fully mitigate the E&G shortfall in FY25.
Q: For the west campus extension, would it be more ideal to build more student housing to reduce our commuter population to build more university life and retention? If we have more retention, it would increase the amount of students who stay for all four years, so we’d also likely see in an increase in alumni donations to bring in more money to the university as a whole.
A: The presentation mentions the possibility of a West Campus expansion potentially including the addition of 2,000 student beds. But nothing has been decided about when, if, or how we will expand West Campus. There is much stakeholder engagement to take place.