Retiring president Joseph
Grunenwald, made realtionship- building between faculty and small-town community a key initiative.
This week, my boss Joseph Grunenwald,
Clarion’s president, took time during his final week before retiring to share with me what worked for him and what didn’t. “Of course, money’s a motivator,” he told me. “We have a strong undergraduate faculty in part because we pay well.” Dave Topper, Assistant VP for Human
Resources at Bloomsburg University, reminds us that young PhD’s come to our campuses “with significant college debt and many years of lost earnings. Salary is the opener. It takes an adequate salary to be attractive and com- petitive. But it’s all relative. As a four-year, primarily undergraduate institution, we’ll not have much success attracting faculty mem- bers with research aspirations and an armful of grants. When we do, it’s hard to hold them. A national reputation or national ambi- tion make undergraduate faculty easy prey. “Perception of opportunity is huge” for
keeping a faculty member at your institution Grunenwald tells us. Likewise, when faculty perceive there’s a cap or a roadblock to their promotion or tenure, they’ll move on pretty quickly. President Grunenwald says, “Salary is also
important for retaining our best faculty and staff, but not as important as location.” We live and work in Clarion Borough, a town of 6,000. The population doubles when school is in session, but it’s in all seasons it’s a quiet, safe, rural community with a low cost of liv- ing where a paycheck goes a long way. Our salary structure, set by the Board of Gover- nors for our 14-institution system, favors fac-
ulty and staff in the western part of the state, and our rural location means fewer nearby competitors to snatch them once they’ve been with us a few years. Location can work for and against you.
Faculty who are used to city life may not embrace a rural setting. They also may have regional preferences or simple aversion to colder or warmer weather. To those familiar with the student retention literature of Alexander Astin, this may sound familiar: the background characteristics of faculty members bring them to an institution, but institutional fit, the university’s culture and organization determine whether they’ll stay. I mention faculty and staff interchange-
ably, but Clarion, like most rural universities, draws its faculty from a national pool and its staff from the local area. Again, community factors can be both a blessing and a curse. The university is the largest employer in our area, but two slightly smaller employers, a glass plant and a mattress factory closed their doors in the last few years leaving workers with no jobs. Colleges and universities attract the most
qualified staff in the area, not just because of a good salary and benefit package, but also because we are the most stable employer, even during economic downturns. young faculty and staff who move to a
small rural community like ours can become discouraged with the lack of prospects for dating and marriage. Campus communities depend on the non-profits, the churches, the civic organizations, even the governmental
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boards to give newcomers a sense of belong- ing. Social networks also form a bridge to other social networks and individual relation- ships. Campuses must help new faculty and staff plug in and build ties within the com- munity. Grunenwald tells us new faculty and staff will ask themselves, “Am I happy here? Is this the right place to meet someone spe- cial or to raise a family?” Employee perception is key. Dr. Topper
offers some sage advice. “you have to give a realistic view of worklife, after all. But one search committee member with a bad atti- tude or even a persistent nay-sayer in an open forum can drive candidates away rather than attract them.” According to the Society for Human
Resources Management (SHRM), employees leave managers—not organizations. That’s why leadership and vision are so important. Most of us with difficult jobs have a great deal of discretionary energy to contribute— or not—to our jobs. The right leader inspires passion. Passion gets people through the rough times and encourages them to do their best. Grunenwald offers, “The best leaders take the long view, and build a family” Even if they arrive assuming their new
job is a stepping stone, they may later say otherwise, usch as: I came here to build a career. Instead I built a life.
TC
Paul Bylaska is Vice Presi- dent for Administration & Finance at Clarion University of Pennsylvania. Reach him at
pbylaska@clarion.edu.
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