Sean,
      Regarding questions for President Boyd, here are a couple (one of which relates to item 5 on the agenda):
 
Data on expenditures in the budgets of UT units approved by the Board of Trustees at their June meetings indicates that the UT System Administration budget has increased by 31.6% over the past 5 years which is more than any campus while the overall UT System expenditures increased by 18.7%. What new benefits/initiative have been provided by the System Administration that justify this differential increase in expenditures?

The UT System is now requiring very extensive Outside Interest Disclosure forms that include hosts of personal information (e.g. whether an employee traveled to Israel or many other countries), disclosure of all stocks owned worth more than $5000). This requested information is not consistent with Board Policy (FI0125) which doesn’t ask for this. Can you explain first what UT is doing with this detailed personal information, and second how a faculty member is supposed to know that owning stock in a particular company is somehow viewed as a conflict when Board policy is very clear that it only occurs if “The covered individual procures or influences the procurement of goods or services from that venture for the University; or The covered individual uses his or her University position to obtain favored treatment for or to provide an unfair advantage to that venture. “

There are regular complaints about the constraints on financial compensation for new hires being allowed by HR. Additionally, we are losing very competent, long-term technical staff because we are unable to provide comparable compensation to outside entities such as ORNL. Give the current (and expected continuing) limited availability of employees at every experience level, what might we do to encourage flexibility of HR processes so that we can continue to operate effectively? Given the tremendous variance in compensation across campuses for those in similar positions, the claim that HR constraints are for “equity” ring false.
 
 
Stay well,
            Lou