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The UNC-system Board of Governors concluded its October meeting Friday with a stern admonishment to be better prepared to make tangible progress on a controversial administrative issue at its November meeting.

The board’s personnel and tenure committee intended to recommend changes to the UNC system’s “retreat rights” policy this month but deferred any action until the next meeting, citing a need for more information.

The policy governs the length of leave time and amount of compensation that administrators “retreating” to faculty positions receive when they resign.

The selections of several new chancellors in the coming months make it imperative that a draft policy for chancellors and presidents is approved at the next meeting, said Gladys Robinson, personnel and tenure committee chairwoman.

The earliest the full board can vote on the policy is January because there is no December meeting.

UNC-system Vice President for Academic Affairs Alan Mabe and Board Chairwoman Hannah Gage will craft the draft policy in the next couple weeks and e-mail it to the full board to look over before the next meeting.

Robinson told the board to read carefully the draft and UNC-system President Erskine Bowles’ recommended changes, which were released last month, and respond immediately.

Bowles has recommended scaling back retreat rights by limiting leave time to six months and greatly reducing the amount of the salary offered.

“I think that is a bit too generous and more than market,” he said of the current policy.

The current policy for chancellors and presidents grants one year of leave time at the full administrative salary and a drop to 60 percent of that salary when the administrator becomes a faculty member.

The question is how long leave time should be and how much the former administrator should be compensated during leave time and after he rejoins the faculty, Bowles said.

Although the system’s General Administration and Board of Governors are placing great importance on the issue of retreat rights, it is more symbolic than anything else, Gage said.

“We want all of our policies to be relevant and filtered through where we are in time,” she said, implying that policies should fit with the economic constraints the system faces.

By the numbers, retreat rights are not a tremendous issue. Since Bowles arrived in 2006, the system has only spent $8 million on costs associated with retreat rights, Bowles said.

“The university is a big operation and the total cost of leave is less than two-hundredths of a percent,” he said.


Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.

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