Be an Advocate for Women’s Equity in Higher Education: Part 3

Part 3 with names changed...

My colleagues and I worked many years as LTEs before we were able to apply and compete for our own permanent positions. If not for our manager, Karen, who crusaded to get equal rights for her LTEs, I am confident that we would all still be “limited term.”

In 1976, Karen took a job doing data entry for the Admissions office. “I spent eight hours a day typing in information off the application into a computer terminal,” she says. Less than four years later, she was promoted to the Registrar’s office. While working full-time, Karen earned a Bachelor’s degree in Management Information Systems and a Master’s of Business Administration. Today she is the Associate Director of the IT department.

Karen's department has successfully converted all of their long-term limited term employees to permanent state employees. Converting LTEs to full time equivalencies (FTEs), or permanent positions, is not impossible, but it does require challenging the status quo. Karen converted available FTEs, from retirements and position vacancies, into permanent positions that long term LTEs could interview and compete for. Karen found support from her department director. “He knows you have to treat people well, build up a staff that cares, to get good performance,” Karen says. Karen also gathered support from other department managers. “I just said we would make do with less people, or cut services. I had to convince the other managers that our group would take on more if we could have the FTE.”

Karen says the problem occurs when there is money available to fund a position, but no FTE, which is set by the state. For example, Student Senate wanted my position and funded it, and so it remained a limited term position.

Our Human Resources representative says this model would be different for other position classifications. For example, for a University Services Associate position to be converted to a permanent position, it would first have to be posted for any permanent employee in the UW System to transfer into. If no one transfers into the position, the interview process begins. The interview candidates are selected based on their Civil Service exam scores. So it’s possible that the LTE wouldn’t be selected to interview and compete for the permanent position. Once hired as an LTE, it is very hard to become a permanent worker.

Our University Equity, Diversity, and Inclusiveness (EDI) fellow says that to date, EDI has been focused on UW System student-centered equity initiatives (e.g., the Equity Scorecard), but he hopes there is a lot we can do with LTE equity at the campus level. “This is a flawed system that we have routinely supported,” he says. “The system has created, in some cases, second class citizens within their own departments.”

He adds that we have only just begun to have the necessary conversations about LTE equity issues, but that staff equity relates to student success, which we are all responsible for. “With the way we do business now, diversity, equity, and inclusiveness should be engaged in the service of student success at every level…everyone is responsible for student success.”