University Daily Kansan / Wednesday, September 5, 1990
Campus/Area
3
Fee, more RAs added
By Tracey Chalpin
Kansan staff writer
Increased staffing in residence halls and a new fee for some resident assistants are not linked, a KU housing official said yesterday.
Twenty RAs were added to residence hall staffs this semester as a first step that eventually will put an RA in each wing of every residence hall, said Ken Stoner, director of student housing.
Implementation of a $200 nonreundable down payment for some resident assistants also has begun. The new plan, Eventually, all RAS will pay the fee.
One reason for the fee was to penalize hired assistants who decided at the last minute they did not want their positions. Stoner said.
He said RA applicants hired during spring semesters would pay the fee and, if they decided to decline their positions they would lose the money.
Added fees would reduce the gap between RAs and their residents, Stoner said. He emphasized that they were students first and staff second.
Stoner said he hoped the job, which
now requires fewer residents for now RA, would be more appealing to applicants, and that the RA pool would be larger.
Sean Duggan, resident assistant at Oliver Hall, said he expected additional staffing to be beneficial.
"I really like having someone else on the floor," he said. "I don't have to worry about people as much."
Duggan, a new RA, said that he was upset at first about the new fee but, now it didn't bother him as much
Rachelie Bishop, returning RA at Hashinger Hall, also said she thought increased staffing and the fee were connected.
Duggan, Wichita junior, said he assumed the increased in residence hall staffs directly resulted in the new fees for resident assistants living at the school with added RAS, although Stone and there was no link between the two.
Bishop, Goodland senior, said she understood the fee because larger staffs made the RA position less demanding.
She said returning RAs were
alerted ahead of time about the fee.
Erica Neildinger, St. Louis senior, said it was too early to tell whether RA increases were successful.
Neildinger said that because she was comfortable in the Hashinger environment, she nailed the $200 fee
Neidlinger said she and other RAs were given an option last spring of moving to other halls that needed access to whole floors in order to avoid the fee.
She said that part of the reason she was attracted to the RA position was the benefit of having free room and space to play. She has having to have a new initial lump sum.
Frank Harwood, residence hall director at Oliver Hall, said that as far as he knew, the only RAs at Oliver that had to pay the fee were residents that lived on the men's floor, which have one RA on each wing.
Stoner said he was unaware that RAs who were assigned to one wing were subject to the $200 down payment while other RAs that were assigned to an entire floor were not subject to the fee.
Former dean will recruit
By Courtney Eblen
Kansan staff writer
William Reals, dean of the Wichita branch of the KU School of Medicine for the past decade, will step down from his past next year.
But instead of leaving the school, he will remain on part-time status as vice chancellor and will help recruit a new generation of physicians to rural hospitals and clinics around Kansas.
Reals, 70, has passed the retirement age set by the Board of Regents by five years.
"The end must come," said Reals who has been dean since July 1980. "But it's been a great ten years."
He will continue his work recruitment residents of KU's School of Medicine to work at rural clinics across the country. As part of a month-length education program, is
designed to recruit physicians to work in rural areas.
Reals, a South Dakota native and a graduate of Creighton University's School of Medicine, is acquainted with the problems faced by small-town doctors. Long hours and an unpredictable work load often chase residents from setting up practices in such places, he said.
Reals said he hoped the Bridging Plan would encourage students to set up practices in small Kansas communities.
Reals will be replaced in January 1991 by Joseph Meek, an endocrinologist who has been professor and chairperson of the Wichita branch's medicine since 1983. Meek also is president of the Kansas Medical Society.
"Dr. Meek is certainly a very wise choice," Reals said. "He's widely
known in the state and an outstand ing physician and researcher."
Previously, Meek was an instructor at the Kansas City campus of the School of Medicine. A Kansas native, he graduated from the KU School of Medicine and completed his residence at the University of Kansas Medical Center in 1960.
In 1964, he began teaching at the Kansas City campus. Meek also served as vice chancellor for the University of Kansas and dean at the Kansas City campus.
All KU medical students attend their first two years of medical school in Kansas City and then have the option of completing their last two years in Kansas City or Wichita. Students may also complete their residencies through affiliation programs offered at Wichita hospitals.
$1.5 million gift announced
More than $1.5 million has been contributed to the Kansas University Endowment Association by the Fred C. Koch Foundation of Wichita, Chancellor Gene A. Budig announced yesterday.
Kansan staff report
The money will be used to establish the Koch Distinguished Professorship in Law and Economics
The gift honors David Hamilton Robinson, grandfather of Mary
Robinson Koch. Robinson was one of the three original faculty members at the University. He taught from 1866 until his death in 1895.
"We are pleased that the foundation chose to honor Professor Robinson in this manner," Budig said in a statement.
Mary Koch is a director of the foundation and the widow of Fred Koch.
A search committee to fill the
Jerry said the professorship would increase interaction between the law and business schools. When the position of associate professor will have offices at both schools.
professorship has not been formed vet.
"There's no question it will increase our ties in the future," Jerry said, adding that the schools already have a staff of professors and working together.
Regent chairperson Bob Creighton, left, and Stanley Z. Koplik, Regents executive director.
Regents officials visit KU
By Karen Park
Kansan staff writer
The Margin of Excellence was the center of discussion yesterday when Board of Regents officials met with KU students, faculty and staff.
Robert Creighton, Regents charperson, and Stanley Koplik, Regents executive director, visited the University of Kansas as part of their tour of the seven Regents institutions.
"The purpose of these meetings is for the chairman and the executive director to find out what's on the minds of faculty, staff, students in administration." Creighton said in a news conference yesterday.
The other Regents schools are Emporia State University, Fort Hays State University, Kansas State University, Pittsburgh State University and Oklahoma State University and Kansas College of Technology in Salina.
Creighton said the most important matter facing the Regents was financing higher faculty salaries.
"It's very important that Regents schools have the money to recruit and retain good faculty," Creighton said. "Kansas is in competition with other schools whose budgets are being increased."
Financing for the third year of the Margin is the main item on the Regents agenda.
The Margin was the Board of Regents three-year plan to bring the total financing of its seven institutions to 95 percent of their peer schools and to bring faculty salaries to 100 percent of their teachers. The Legislature financed the last two years but not the third
Creighton said he was optimistic that the third year of the Margin would be financed this year because there was more money in the state treasury and state legislation made the Margin a priority.
Mike Schreiner, student body president, was not as optimistic as Creighton about the Margin.
"It's going to be really tough to get funding because the state's financial situation is no better than it was last year." Scherner said.
Schreiner, Aimee Hall, student body vice president, Pat Warren. Student Senate executive committee chairperson, and Greg Hughes. of the KK chapter of Associate University, Kansas, also met with Creighton.
"Our top three priorities are funding the Margin of Excellence, increasing minority scholarships and granting graduate teaching
assistants 100-percent fee waivers," Schreiner said.
GTAs now receive a 75-percent fee waiver, he said. The 100-percent plan would cost the University $24,310 for fiscal 1992.
The student body representatives also discussed new tuition increases with Creighton, Schreiner said.
"We don't mind an increase in tuition, but if we pay more, we want to get more for our dollars." he said.
Schreiner also said that the Regents, students, faculty and staff from the universities would have to support financing the Margin in order for the Legislature to approve it.
"It can be funded if the state Legislature makes higher education a top priority," Schreiner said.
Frances Ingemann, KU chairperson of the University Senate Executive Committee, said the committee pleased Creighton had visited KU.
Ingemann said the faculty executive committee and Creighton discussed budget concerns, the post tenure review system and the which would cut the number of examination days from eight to six.
Lecture offers anecdotal and pictorial glimpses into University history
By Yvonne Guzman
Kansan staff writer
The University chartered in 1861 in Lawrence, Kan., seemed to have everything it needed, said Martin Stokstad, University Distinguished Professor of Art.
Too bad its 55 students were not qualified for higher education, she said.
So began the first lecture in the Kansas University Heritage Lecture Series. Titled Findebeth Wisdom Findebeth Life; Stokstad's The Saga of a pictorial and anecdotal tour of KU history, a history that began with a class that should have been in high school.
Francis Heller, retired KU professor of law, said the lecture series would deal with
Stokstad said she would skip the history of KU's administration and curriculum
changes. Instead she showed pictures of sailors in front of Strong Hall getting ready to march off to World War II, students helping with the parade, and Black students protesting on campus.
Stokstad described some of the historic figures in KU history, including Carrie Watson, librarian at Spooner Hall, KU's first library.
When it was proposed that the new library be named after Watson, the Chancellor, Board of Regents, and faculty said "No!" but the alumni had their way. Stokstad said
"Year after year, determined faculty members tried to dislodge her Year after year."
"Even today, Miss Watson, from her tomb,
prevails," she said.
Another classic figure in KU's past is Helen Spencer, who chose to invest money in KU
'Even today, Miss Watson, from her tomb, prevails.'
University Distinguished Professor of Art
Marilyn Stokstad
rather than in her family's trust funds. Saying "I am not interested in the unborn," Spencer went on to build Spencer Art Museum and Spencer Research Library.
From the beginning, KU administrators had trouble convincing the state to give money for higher education, Stokstad said. Even in 1843, KU had a set of peer institutions similar in size and demographics to which salary and financing could be compared.
In 1884, KU faculty salary averaged $1,650 a year, and teachers spent an average of 20 hours a week in the classroom. Stokstad said.
Faculty salaries at the University of Michigan averaged $2,200, and teachers spent an average of 10 hours a week in the classroom. "We've always played catch-up,"
"We've always been playing catch-a Stokstad said.
She traced the role of female faculty members in KU history but was sad to report that the percentage of women faculty members' salaries, in comparison with men's, have risen only three-tenths of one percent since 1975.
"It's pretty depressing." Stokstad said. One of the more positive historic moments in the city about was the building of Fraser Hall in 1896, culmination of a building project that originally was meant to erect three buildings. Stokstad said.
Fraser housed every department at the University, she said. It was the largest university building west of the Mississippi River, a symbol of the heights KU meant to reach.
"It was a landmark in the history of American education, and look at what we got instead," Stokstad said, showing a picture of new Fraser Hall.
Stokstad said KU, despite some of its architectural blunders, had much to be proud of including its research, many of its former students and museums and its College Honors Program.
She was optimistic about KU's goal for me,
future, which is to continue building "a better
university than the state thinks it can afford."
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