Disclosure: $100,000 salaries for 2009

The university is releasing a list this morning of the 845 employees who were each paid more than $100,000 during 2009.

It's something public-sector employers in Ontario have had to do every March since the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act was passed in 1996. Other universities, school boards, hospitals, colleges, municipalities, and the government itself are making similar information for last year public this week.

The majority of UW's professors appear on the list, as the average salary of full-time faculty members in 2009-10 is $122,109, according to the office of institutional analysis and planning.

The $100,000 list also includes a number of staff members as well as senior administrators. It includes people employed by St. Jerome's University, Renison University College, Conrad Grebel University College and St. Paul's University College as well as by UW itself.

The figures are the amount of salary actually paid during the twelve months of 2009, which can lead to anomalies when somebody begins or ends a job in the course of the year. A striking example this year: in the past, president David Johnston has been listed with the highest salary at UW, according to the disclosure list, but this year he falls to second place. Provost Amit Chakma is shown with the highest salary, a figure that includes compensation for the administrative leave and sabbatical time he was entitled to when he left Waterloo on June 30 last year. The new provost, Feridun Hamdullahpur, who came to Waterloo September 1, does not appear on the $100,000 list for 2009.

The highest salaries shown, after those of Chakma and Johnston, are for vice-president (external relations) Meg Beckel, dean of engineering Adel Sedra, and associate provost (IST) and former provost Alan George.

In addition to the salary, a figure is given for taxable benefits received by each individual, for such extras as employer-paid life insurance and tuition benefits for dependants.

Past years' lists are also available online.

Back to top

HR department advertises for two executives

Change is coming to the human resources department — literally, there’s going to be a new senior manager whose title embodies it. A posting for a “director of organizational change and leadership” appears in this week’s Positions Available listing, along with one for a “director of pension, benefits and compensation”.

The second position is mostly a replacement for long-time HR executive David Dietrich, who retired last year. Compensation wasn’t part of Dietrich’s portfolio, but it’s being added because pay and benefits are closely linked and can best be managed together, according to the senior official who’s responsible for all of HR.

She is Janet Passmore, who came to Waterloo last summer as associate provost (human resources), and said then that it would take her a while before she moved to reorganize or hire new senior staff. Now she’s doing it, with the jobs that are advertised today being two of the four senior people who will report directly to her.

The other two are already in place: Neil Murray, the university’s long-time director of staff and labour relations, and Katrina Di Gravio, director of organizational and human development, the unit that includes staff training.

The major innovation in the new hirings is the creation of the “change and leadership” post, which is being advertised as a one-year appointment, “contingent on the availability of funding for renewal”.

“This role is designed to build a framework,” says Passmore — or, as the official job description puts it, “This is an early stage initiative, and discovery, assessment and ability to advance this initiative within UW will be critical.”

The associate provost notes that such a role is “new to the university”, but the challenges that the new director will face are familiar enough — in a nutshell, helping departments deal with the staffing and organizational implications of changes in what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. As technology changes the job requirements, as Waterloo builds outposts in new places, as new expectations make the work more complicated, as a generation of leaders ages and retires, the director of organizational change and leadership will be involved with everything from job reassignment to succession planning, Passmore predicts.

“This role is designed to build a framework for coping with change,” she said, though the director will also be “actually working with a unit that is undergoing significant change” to help the managers and staff plan for the future.

In HR terms, the new director will “create and implement an overarching architecture which defines a continuum of development for UW staff/faculty leaders, defining comprehensive development activities, significant transitions and key experiences over the long term”, the job description says.

Back to top

Farewell to a colleague, and more

I want to take a moment today to acknowledge the retirement of  my colleague Janet Rohrbach (left), who marks her last day of work today after 38 (and a half) years at Waterloo. When I arrived to be editor of the Gazette, she had already been working for the university’s official newspaper for a couple of years. Two decades later, when this Daily Bulletin toddled into existence as an outgrowth of the Gazette, she was naturally involved, with contacts in every part of the campus, and a valuable ability to keep the dates and details of coming events organized. With changes here in what’s now the office of communications and public affairs, and the end of the Gazette in 2004, her responsibilities have changed, but she’ll always rank as one of the people without whom we couldn’t have gotten to where we are now. Friends and co-workers wished her a happy retirement at a reception on Monday — attended by, among others, Jack Adams, who hired us both in his role as UW’s director of information services, 1961 to 1985.

Engineering projects that push the boundaries of innovation will be on display today in the Davis Centre, as systems design engineering students hold the final event of year-end symposium season. Their exhibit showcases projects in entertainment, finance, communication, water treatment, intelligent software and information systems. "This diverse range of topics highlights the multi-disciplinary approach unique to Systems Design Engineering," says SDE professor Daniel Stashuk. "Local high school students have been invited and are encouraged to experience first hand what exciting opportunities are possible by studying engineering at Waterloo." The wide-ranging projects include a regenerative shock absorber, a mobile rate plan optimization model, a robotic snow plough and lawn mower, a barbecue temperature control system, an atrial septal defect patch anchoring device, and a cognitive ergonomics analysis for a Mars Rover. The show runs from 10:00 to 5:00 today, and visitors from the university and community are welcome.

Waterloo’s “international” recruitment doesn’t always involve distant and exotic locales. Dana Evans Laity writes from the marketing and undergraduate recruitment office that she’s heading off on a tour to Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Columbus, organized by the Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC. “The focus will be two Canadian University Fairs in each city. This visit will build on longstanding recruitment efforts by Conrad Grebel University College in Ohio and Pennsylvania. On April 1, I will be attending the 2nd annual Canadian Education Fair hosted by South Burlington High School in South Burlington, Vermont. This is our third (central) recruitment visit to the northeastern US this year. In the fall, we participated in a similar Canadian Embassy tour to Boston, Stamford (NY), and Philadelphia, as well as participating in the National Association of College Admissions Counseling pre-conference tour to Baltimore. The economic downturn has had a positive effect on American students to consider Canada as a study destination, as the tuition at out-of-state and private institutions in the US are quickly becoming unattainable. Students are encouraged by the reasonable cost of our international tuition fees. American students are also able to use their national student loans at Canadian institutions. The Canadian Embassy in Washington Is leading the charge to capitalize on this trend. The spring is an ideal time to interact with American juniors (grade 11 students) who typically finalize  their university decisions before the start of their senior year.”

With spring convocation just over the horizon (June 16-19), the faculties are starting to announce the names of their valedictorians — the graduating students who will give brief speeches on behalf of their classmates. First to make such an announcement is arts, which has chosen Leigh Lepage (speech communication) as valedictorian for its morning ceremony, and Alexander Kozaris (philosophy) for the afternoon ceremony.

Children from the psychology department's Early Childhood Education Centre will hit the stage this afternoon, performing "The Forgotten Princess of the Kingdom" and "The Gingerbread Man" for family members in the Humanities Theatre. • Marg Johnston, a staff member in the engineering research office who's active in local school councils, announced this week that she will run for the Waterloo Region District School Board in the fall municipal election. • John Rodrigo, a custodian in the plant operations department since 1979, who served for a time as president of Canadian Union of Public Employees local 793, will officially retire as of May 1.

CAR

Back to top