One of Patricia Gordon’s proudest moments happened last year. On May 19, 2007, she wore a cap and gown and processed down the Lawn.
“I graduated at 49, just before my 50th birthday, so a double landmark year!” she says. “My family, daughters, parents, sisters and friends were tremendously supportive and proud. It was a great moment.”
Patricia Gordon earned her bachelor’s degree while working at UVA, one of the University’s benefits that is undergoing changes that come with a new HR system. |
In 2003, Gordon decided to take advantage of the career-related education benefits available to all employees of UVA. Four years and $20,000 later, Gordon received her degree from the School of Continuing and Professional Studies in its Information Technology and Communications (ITC) concentration. She now is a user support manager in UVA’s ITC department.
Up until now, if employees wanted to take UVA classes, they had to go through multiple bureaucratic steps and pay for their tuition in advance. Gordon waited on average two to three weeks for the reimbursement check to come.
“UVA paid for one class per semester and my department, computer science, paid for another,” Gordon says. “The department was really good about it and I never had to wait for long.” For others who didn’t have the same departmental support, the turnaround time on reinbursement could be much longer.
But, perhaps in an attempt to ease anxiety over the new HR system that will open for enrollment in October, the University unveiled a new set of education benefits that went into effect July 1. In an important change, the benefit money will be added to the employee’s paycheck after he or she completes proper HR forms, so that employees have the money up front.
Under the new benefit, full- time and part-time employees with at least one year of benefits-eligible service are entitled to $2,000 per year toward their academic work paid for by the University Fund. In a shift from the old model, employees have the possibility to choose courses from a vast array of educational and professional development opportunities, as long as they are work-related. The definition of “work-related,” though, is still vague—the HR department says it will better spell it out in the future. Classes must be taken for credit and they must be passed with a C- or better.
In the 2006 and 2007 academic years, 509 UVA workers out of roughly 8,000 eligible employees used the program.
“This is part of our restructuring system,” says Anne Broccoli, interim director of benefits with Human Resources. “We want anyone to enhance their knowledge and explore their current and future goals.”
One problem with the old system was the disparity between departments on continuing education. University officials are trying to limit that divide with a centrally funded model where the money is distributed more evenly throughout the departments. “In the past, departments had the option of paying for one-credit class, and that resulted in some people not having the same benefits as others,” Broccoli says. “Now, everybody has equal access to the resources, and has the chance to engage their supervisors in their career path.”
That also means, however, that taking two classes per semester, as Gordon did, will likely be more difficult. With only $2,000 per year, classes costing at least $1,095 each, and no additional departmental support, staff members will be held to only one reimbursed class per semester.
Jan Cornell, president of the Staff Union at UVA, is pleased with the progress, but has reservations about how the system will be implemented. “The money is distributed evenly throughout UVA,” she says by e-mail. “But there are almost no schools with tuition for a 3-credit course under $2,000, except the Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies (BIS), so the employee is ‘guided’ to the BIS program,” which, she says, tends to segregate the employees from full-time students.
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