NWACC to Realign Jobs after Investigation

By February 23, 2011

Arkansas Department of Higher Education officials are working with members of the Northwest Arkansas Community College to realign state-appropriated positions to match duties, said communications officer Brandi Hinkle.

The realignment is an outcome of an investigation into unauthorized pay raises college officials gave employees during a statewide pay freeze. The freeze was implemented by Richard Weiss, director of the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration.

ADHE officials have made a few changes in position alignment at NWACC, but were unable to provide specific information before press time, Hinkle said.

Documents provided by NWACC staff through the Freedom of Information Act show how the college officials are using state-appropriated positions.

In one instance, the state-appropriated title of chief student affairs officer was being used by NWACC as the executive dean for strategic initiatives, according to Jan. 13 documents. The NWACC title for this position was changed to vice president of college relations as of  Feb. 14, though the same person held the same salary of $114,000 and the same NWACC title.

The state position of division chairperson/dean had been used for the person who previously held the NWACC title of executive dean for strategic initiatives. The maximum salary for the division chairperson/dean is $93,622, according to the appropriations act for NWACC. The maximum salary for the chief student affairs officer is $100,360.

The job description obtained from NWACC shows this position is responsible for strategic planning, project management, overseeing communication activities and projects with the president’s office, developing and recommending new or updated polices and dealing with diversity issues and board relations.

Reed Greenwood, professor of education at the UA, would assume the chief student affairs officer would work with students, he said.

Records from NWACC indicate the person who directly oversees Learner Services, the department that works with students in areas such as admissions, enrollment, financial aid and academic records, holds the state position of counselor, with a maximum salary of $81,686.

The oversights at NWACC are probably related to lack of oversight at the college level and not at the state level, Greenwood said.

“We [at the UA] have the good fortune of having good people to work on those things,” he said. “If problems arise they can bounce ideas off each other to resolve them.”

The state-appropriated position of regional technology center director is listed as having the NWACC title of vice president of external affairs, though in March the employee had the state title of director of community and continuing education which has a maximum salary of $94,872. The maximum salary for the RTC director is listed at $112,222. An organizational chart from January shows this person overseeing the departments of corporate learning, development and marketing and business development. The organizational chart and the job description for this position does not mention RTC. The employee who held the position has a salary of $114,048, according to the Feb. 14 document.

The associate vice president of corporate learning is shown to have the state-appropriated title of RTC teacher, which has a maximum salary of $78,061. The previous state position as of March was special instructor, which allows for a maximum salary of $71,342 and had the same NWACC title, according to documents.

Comparisons made from NWACC’s Jan. 13 and Feb. 14 position group analysis reports show some position changes including the state-appropriated position of computer specialist moved to a media specialist, and a computer support technician moved to a human resource specialist. These moves did not affect the NWACC titles or pay of each employee with the exception of another state computer support specialist, who moved to the systems coordination analyst position with a raise of $1,778, according to these documents.

It is his understanding that discussions with ADHE are ongoing, said NWACC spokesperson Mark Scott, and he is unaware of any realignments at this time.

  • Ed Cat

    Very convoluted – how can the Administration at NWACC manage with change after change after change? Change can be good but this goes beyond proven management and public sector HR practices.

  • Nick Hillyard

    Very convoluted, indeed! If the Chief Student Affairs Officer (NWACC title VP for College Relations) is doing planning, communications, and projects for the President and Board, and a Counselor is doing Student Affairs, it makes me wonder who is actually “counseling” the students? Would it be a “Custodial Engineering Technician”???

    And if the people supposedly assigned to running RTC (whatever that is?) have nothing to do with the RTC, then who is actually running that? Work-study students?

    I read and reread this article to find some rhyme and reason for why the administration would make such whacky title/position alignments. I must admit I don’t know much about how the state appropriates positions and how they oversee the universities’ assignment of these positions (in fact, I only know what I learned from reading this article), but the only pattern I could find is this: in every case listed where a new state position was assigned to a job title, the maximum allowable salary for the new position was greater than the maximum salary previously allowed by the original state position for that job title. A logical assumption, then, would be that the administrators were manipulating the system to be able to give their favorite employees a lot more money. Yet, the actual salaries listed were even higher still than the “maximum salary” allowed! How can they get away with paying more than the state allows?!? Did that get cleaned up in the original investigation? We can only hope!

    Why are they taking the higher paying positions away from people who serve the students and giving these positions to what appears to be administrative paper-pushers? From the way the state positions/maximum salaries are appropriated, it’s obvious that the state places more value on employees who serve students than the NWACC administration does. While the state is working with NWACC administrators to get the titles realigned properly, maybe they should remind the administration that the primary function of a university is — TO SERVE THE STUDENTS!

    This also makes me wonder if the favored employees in these positions even have the knowledge and skill competencies to do the jobs to which they were hired? How do you even keep track of which actual job descriptions should match which state positions when you are rearranging positions/titles in such a convoluted way?

    No wonder ADHE is working to realign these positions; it appears that the job duties actually carried out by these people have absolutely nothing to do with the state appropriated positions assigned to them by the colleges. But if ADHE is supposed to be overseeing these matters, how did they let it get so out of whack in the first place? And by the way, we should remind the state and the universities that we the taxpayers and we the students who pay tuition are the ones who fund the universities to teach and serve the students! When is someone going to start looking out for our best interest by using our money wisely for the purposes intended? I hope this reporter will try to get some answers to this question; I’d like to hear the excuses that will be made in response.

    One more thought; maybe the Trav could publish those organizational charts mentioned. Trying to guess the jobs that match (or in this case mismatch) the state positions would probably make a great party game to help us pass the time we are trapped in our apartments during the next snow storm!