Save Ufadp

[skip]

true marbry.... and now more than ever they appear to want to define tennessee's universities within narrow specialities so that those in science go to one school and those in english lit a different school - kind of as if the Magnet School idea for high schools should be extended to universities. With the input on this forum from other states, it may be that this tendency is the future of state universities such that different majors attend different schools, instead of each university trying to be all things to all majors. You want Physics, go to Memphis. You want Geology go to Tech, you want International Relations, then UT is the school for you....

rather than having a little of each at every place, it might not be a bad idea to concentrate the whole at one place...at least at first glance. but then evolution shows that the lack of variety and lack of abundant environments results in extinction of the species. to ensure survival, provide redundancy...duh, something cave divers could teach state governments.

-skip

[mwenner]

Skip,

I understand what you're saying about specialization of schools, but man, once you move your kid into a college, assuming they know what they want, it changes the minute the make they're new bed up. My life, and the twists and turns it's taken is a reminder of, how I started out X and ended up a Z. Isn't life all general ed's anyway? I'm out of my league talking about school, aren't I, but I hate to see these budget cuts, in light of the latest raise in our tuition?

[gatordiver]

Continuing with Brian's observation.....

Lab fees are usually a general fund. In other words, all "labs" draw from the lab fee fund. Therefore, the fees you are paying are going to keep various labs throughout the university operating. Here at the University of Cincinnati, every student pays lab fees. As every student has access to one lab or another whether they choose to use or not. (Example of an open lab....computers spread around the university for student use, from the library to computer based classes)

On the same note, if there is a full time director, it's highly unlikely the lab fees cover the full time director's pay, insurance, FICA, unemployment, etc. Or for that matter, the expense of the instructors who may or may not be classified as adjunct?

That is not how it works at UF. What you are talking about are the equivalent to our activities fees that are tacked onto our credit fees. The labs fee John is talking about are a specific class lab fee that is extra. When you pay a lab fee here it goes directly to that departments labs. So all of the scuba fees go to the scuba program, chem fees to chem dept, etc. The students here pay a large lab fee on top of the normal per credit hour fee. The program does not see much if any of the per credit hour fee, just the lab fees. The majority of the instructors are also students, and none of them are paid very much for the hours they put into teaching.

The problem here is a misconception with the university as a whole. Most people do not realize we are a self supporting program. All they know is scuba is an expensive sport. The dean of health and human performance (which scuba is under) is a very research minded person and has no patience for a recreational based program. He is being forced to cut 10% of his budget and he can get a chunk of that by cutting scuba instead of more of his precious research. All he needs to do is rely on the misconception of most people that we are not self-supporting and hope we keep quiet. We are hoping that if we can get the misconception cleared up with the public and get out the word that we are in danger that he will be forced to keep our program.

[cegator]

Any of you instructors out there make as much as Cheryl Thacker? She makes $63,000/yr plus full benefits like health care, dental, retirement, reimbursement for travel expenses, reimbursement for professional fees, reimbursement for liability insurance, etc.

Just wondering.

And can anyone show me that actual budget and figures that shows UFADP is actually self supporting? They say they are but I doubt it with the expenses they have like full time salaries of $63,000 plus full benefits, paying grad assistants $7000 stipend and paying their tuition that adds up to another $4000 a semester, plus paying for 12 part time instructors and their expenses like travel and professional fees and liability insurance for 12 people, plus a full time equipment repair tech, plus 2 full time office staff, plus all the euipment, air fills, and other associated costs. UFADP is a public institution so they should not have any problem showing their budget and their financial records. Including how they competitive bid out their equipment purchases as required by UF rules.

[wingman]

The dean of health and human performance (which scuba is under) is a very research minded person and has no patience for a recreational based program. He is being forced to cut 10% of his budget and he can get a chunk of that by cutting scuba instead of more of his precious research.

Sorry but you indicate little understanding of what it means to be a dean level administrator in a Carnegie classified, very high research activity, Research University...that's the highest classification level in the system. It does not matter that you "pay" for yourself. The diving activity is not mission ("his precious research") critical and resources expended on it would be better allocated to areas that are contributing to the university mission, eg. geology; although given the silo organization structure that sort of across program/college reallocation is difficult at best. Your best bet might be to revision your program and change the focus of the adp to a research orientation if you can. Your current strategy is, at best, ankle biting the dean...that's a lose-lose proposition. Bill Huth

[cegator]

Nobody see a major conflict of interest at UFADP where their instructors can have outside businesses that sells dive travel services, dive instruction and scuba gear?

http://www.diveconcierge.com/page/services
Devon Grimmé
http://www.scuba.ufl.edu/staff.php

I'm pretty sure it is against the rules or at least unethical and a conflict of interest.
http://regulations.ufl.edu/chapter1/1011.pdf

[jdsffa]

Sorry but you indicate little understanding of what it means to be a dean level administrator in a Carnegie classified, very high research activity, Research University...that's the highest classification level in the system. It does not matter that you "pay" for yourself. The diving activity is not mission ("his precious research") critical and resources expended on it would be better allocated to areas that are contributing to the university mission, eg. geology; although given the silo organization structure that sort of across program/college reallocation is difficult at best. Your best bet might be to revision your program and change the focus of the adp to a research orientation if you can. Your current strategy is, at best, ankle biting the dean...that's a lose-lose proposition. Bill Huth

We know this is the problem. The reason we are fighting this is because we are a self sufficient program and are on the chopping for this reason. We are trying to get the word out and get support to show that we fund are selves and cutting us will not help the budget problem just eliminate a valuable set of class at the university. A lot of people have talked about how these classes can be taught some where else but not one person will say a scuba class is a bad thing. The problem it that, if these class are gone , yes some of the student will take classes somewhere else but the majority wont because of the credit that is offered.

Those of you who have their doubts about the program being self sufficient ask yourself how a dive shop makes money and what they charge for classes. I know our program charges more than most shops and individual instructors. We also are tax exempt. Plus being run as a shop we get (for the most part) shop cost on all the gear we purchase through the program. We also don't have the overhead of building cost, maintenance or electricity. So with those advantages is it that hard to see us as self sufficient.

[jdsffa]

Any of you instructors out there make as much as Cheryl Thacker? She makes $63,000/yr plus full benefits like health care, dental, retirement, reimbursement for travel expenses, reimbursement for professional fees, reimbursement for liability insurance, etc.

Just wondering.

And can anyone show me that actual budget and figures that shows UFADP is actually self supporting? They say they are but I doubt it with the expenses they have like full time salaries of $63,000 plus full benefits, paying grad assistants $7000 stipend and paying their tuition that adds up to another $4000 a semester, plus paying for 12 part time instructors and their expenses like travel and professional fees and liability insurance for 12 people, plus a full time equipment repair tech, plus 2 full time office staff, plus all the equipment, air fills, and other associated costs. UFADP is a public institution so they should not have any problem showing their budget and their financial records. Including how they competitive bid out their equipment purchases as required by UF rules.

The $63,000 is not Cheryl's salary it is her total cost to the University, including benefits. Also Mrs. Cheryl is what is called a .6/.4 faculty, meaning 60% of her cost are covered by the Academic side of her position through HHP and the other 40% is covered by the DSO portion of her jobs through another college.

As a program, we have lab fees that are charged separate from tuition through the Department of Continuing Education. These fees cover all expenses including the paying of grad assistants, plus paying for 15 part time instructors and their expenses like travel and professional fees, and also includes liability insurance for 15 instructors, plus a part time equipment repair tech (Wayne Schrivner), two graduate assistants (one who is required to teach 3 classes and go on all dives as part of his contract), the other is our office sectary part time(who probably does the work of two full time staff) and all of our equipment.

VIA PUBLIC RECORDS: The program also generates per credit hour tuition. Our open water, advanced and dive master classes are 2 credit hour courses, with our Instructor course being 3. Over the last 8 years this has generated 7,383 credit hours at $929593.53
for the university. The only thing that comes out of this money is the 60% of Cheryl's salary which is $37,800. over the same 8 years that comes out to $302,400 showing that the program is not only self sufficient but generates money for the university.

[cegator]

The $63,000 is not Cheryl's salary it is her total cost to the University, including benefits. Also Mrs. Cheryl is what is called a .6/.4 faculty, meaning 60% of her cost are covered by the Academic side of her position through HHP and the other 40% is covered by the DSO portion of her jobs through another college.

As a program, we have lab fees that are charged separate from tuition through the Department of Continuing Education. These fees cover all expenses including the paying of grad assistants, plus paying for 15 part time instructors and their expenses like travel and professional fees, and also includes liability insurance for 15 instructors, plus a part time equipment repair tech (Wayne Schrivner), two graduate assistants (one who is required to teach 3 classes and go on all dives as part of his contract), the other is our office sectary part time(who probably does the work of two full time staff) and all of our equipment.

VIA PUBLIC RECORDS: The program also generates per credit hour tuition. Our open water, advanced and dive master classes are 2 credit hour courses, with our Instructor course being 3. Over the last 8 years this has generated 7,383 credit hours at $929593.53
for the university. The only thing that comes out of this money is the 60% of Cheryl's salary which is $37,800. over the same 8 years that comes out to $302,400 showing that the program is not only self sufficient but generates money for the university.

You got to love university economics. If I had a dime for every program that said they were self sufficient at UF. They always say that they are self sufficient and don't need taxpayer money to operate but as soon as you threaten to take away that taxpayer money, they all get up in arms and they go out and protest on the corner of University and 13th.

First of all, I expect this type of misinformation coming from UFADP, they have never been truthful with the public. Cheryl doesn't do anything else so why should her salary be split 60/40. And isn't saying that 40% of her salary is taken care of by DSO admitting that her salary is being supported by taxpayers therefore this program is not self supporting. Cheryl's salary isn't $37,800 it is $48,178.46 per http://www.ir.ufl.edu/factbook/v-14_salaries.pdf So this adds up to $385,427.86 a difference of 83,027.68 from your figure but even this isn't the true cost because that is just straight salary, not include other cost which in the alligator adds up to be around the $63,000 a year number so over 8 years it is $504,000.

Second, your $929593.53 figure is wrong because you are charging $125.91 per credit hour but the program doesn't get the entire $125.91. If you look here http://fa.ufl.edu/ufs/cashiers/fee-tier-20088.asp you will see that only $88.99 goes to tuition and the rest are building fund fees, athletics fees to pay for student gyms, health fees, activity fees to pay for SG and student club, etc. So you 929,593.53 figure drops to $657,087 a loss of $272,506.53 from your state income.

So over the eight years you have $657,087 of income minus just Cheryl's cost of $504,000 you are left with $153,087 over 8 years / $19,135.88 per year to cover operational expenses like buying equipment, repairing equipment, air fills, insurance, lecture materials, etc. I guess you don't pay for class rooms, electricity, etc since the taxpayers including local dive shops and instructors pays for you to have that.

I couldn't find how much you pay your part time instructors but I know the grad students make $3500 per semester plus full tuition reimbursement with adds up to around $4000 per semester so I figure you are paying your part time instructors more than that. The DOCE fees are $375 for the Keys trip and $325 for the local option for the check out dives. Hey store owners and private instructors out there! You can charge only $375 per student and have 15 instructors, 2 grad assistants, pay for a boat for 2 days in the Keys for check out dives, have a repair person and a part time office person plus have all your professional fees paid for and all your insurance paid for on all your staff.

You are very naive to think that the university can operate fiscally efficiently enough to be self supporting. How much do your part time instructors make? How much do you spend on those NAUI student folders that are not free you know? How much do you spend on insurance for instructors and liability insurance for the program? It can't be cheap since they shut down UFADP previously because a few people died in there program. How much did you pay for that equipment? How much do you get charged for the boat for the check out dives? How much do you pay for the hotel rooms and gas for the instructors to go down to the Keys for the check out dives? If all this is public information please list your sources and links I like to see them.

[FW]

Everybody play nice

This seems to be an emotional topic, and if it turns into a flame war, it will be locked.