Looks Like We've Been Zinked

I've just learned something that may explain the car.

Jeff Collins, a UNCG alum and former president of the Alumni Board builds reproduction Cobras and it is quite possible that he loaned this one to Gilliam either for just the photo or for the welcome events. I hope that is true and find it to be a relief, although it does point to another ongoing issue: Jan Zink's idea of the image required by the university.

Is the image we want portrayed that our chancellor can drive around in a half a million dollar car? Does that reflect who we are (and does it indicate we need big donor support?!?)

I learned about this through an inside source, but I doubt most of the community will ever know that this beautiful car isn't the way the chancellor gets to and from his outings.

Here are some other ideas that Zink might have had on her notepad while brainstorming a way to turn UNCG into an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians:

1. See if Paris Hilton can replace the spartan as our mascot
2. Have the chancellor drink champagne from a woman's shoe while fox hunting
3. Hire air force one to deliver Gilliam's off campus mail
4. mink office chair?
5. dress Chancellor & Mrs. Gilliam as Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette for ticket only costume ball...arrive in carriage pulled by six white horses

I don't know, if she didn't think of those, they certainly seem right up her alley. How's Gilliam going to change his image if he still has Jan "Diamonds on Her Fingers" Zink kicking around his image and trying desperately to advance herself?

This image is wrong, wrong, wrong - accusations were already flying (unfounded or no) about the chancellor's first class flights, mansion upgrades, and staffing perks. Taking a picture in an expensive car while on the way to series of country club events doth not a chancellor of the people make; it's fuel to the fire.

Are we a fancy school where a highfalutin chancellor jets around on first class flights or in luxurious cars to elite events to rub elbows with wealth?

or

Are we a school for first generation students and veterans that prides itself on educating those who've worked hard (and continue to do so) to get here with a dedicated faculty and loyal, hard working staff creating the next generation of graduates who will do us proud?

I know where the Zink wants to take us...but she'll have to take me kicking and screaming.

A Direction for Employee Satisfaction

If we’re going corporate…

We might be well served to look at those that have symbiotic relationships with their highly satisfied, engaged, and empowered employees.

Look at all the bad press MacDonald’s has gotten and remember that learning that the burgers only have 15% meat or that the nuggets are filled with ground chicken faces (I’ll let you figure out if that’s a typo) wasn’t what made it happen. Instead, a lot of it can be attributed to their poor treatment of their employees. Let’s not model ourselves after a dying (and irresponsible) fast food chain.

But, we’re in a time of budget crisis, how can we possible do this?!?

Having a good work environment isn’t all about ping pong tables in the break room and new iPads. It turns out, and here’s the shocker…money can’t buy you happiness.

The kind of money that helps is money that we have at UNCG. The biggest salaries go the people least likely to stick around, but that doesn’t mean that the lowest salaries are what keep people here. So, step one: everybody earning under $XXk (note the two digits there…don’t come with cap in hand if you earn six figures) gets a raise. I don’t care how you make it appear in accounting, it can be done, so let’s do it. Partly it might come from skimming off the top (for example, do we need a new Vice Chancellor for University Relations if the department has four people? Not sure, but it’s a question worth asking) and part might come from savings I’ll discuss in a moment. Point is, it can, and should be done, as a baseline, a minimum of what employment should be.

It’s much more than that though.

Liz Ryan, contributing author for Forbes explains it well:

“Rather than focusing on new programs to make employees happy, we should be taking away the obstacles that keep people at work disempowered and disconnected from their mission [and that of their place of employment]. Leadership in the knowledge economy has more to do with removing impediments to teamwork, collaboration and new ideas than with installing even more programs and policies than we already have.”

Basically, it will save us money AND increase our devotion (and therefore energy, creativity, contributions, etc.) to do away with the unnecessary structures that degrade the quality of the work environment AND cost us the most money.

I’ll only give one example, for now, but: In University Relations (back when that was what it was), staff such as David Wilson and Chris English were salaried employees. And yet, they had to fill out time sheets. These time sheets were entered into a system developed by department admin Sherri MacCheyne. The system never worked particularly smoothly and had to be fudged and fussed with just to accept information that it turned out was absolutely useless. It didn’t improve the relationship between Sheryl and her co-workers, didn’t ever actually measure the amount of time spent working, and we can see the countless headaches this ridiculous and unnecessary activity has caused.

Remove the bizarre requirement for time sheets and here is what we would have had:

No UNCG3 scandal, a whole host of dedicated employees still working here, none of the legal fees associated with the prosecution of this idiocy, more time for Sherri to devote to work, more time for Chris, David, et al to devote to work, countless hours of work that never would have showed up on the time sheets anyway happily performed by dedicated employees, whatever the hours were that Imogene Cathey, Benita Peace, and Jamie Herring dedicated to this, whatever productivity was lost as people attended forums and tried desperately to understand secondary employment…

I probably don’t need to go on. All of this from one unnecessary structure. How many more are there that could so easily disappear generally improving everybody’s lives AND the financial situation of the university?

I don’t know, but I’d sure like to find out.

Jan Zink Advances Backwards

I guess managing an extra five people turned out to be too much for dear Jan “Basket Queen” Zink. But her reign was not without accomplishments, of course. It’s just that I can’t think of any of them. I’m sure something will come to me.

[Note: accomplishments to be listed here just as soon as they become clear]

She managed, in her brief tenure, to drive away Lanita Goins further reducing the skeleton crew of university relations refugees. Rumor has it that even the birds stopped singing and several typefaces left the university in protest.

She’ll probably be sad to give up Betsi Robinson’s old office as I hear she had converted it into a humidor for her extensive collection of Cuban cigars. I could be wrong though.

Meanwhile, we’ve received James Thornton to egregiously chancellorate us through the next six months. He may be a lovely person, I have no idea, but I guess by comparison, how bad could he possibly be? And, after all, with his expertise in fundraising, he may just make Zink even more redundant than she already was.

And, at the very least, Thornton wins some sort of prize for the speed with which he updated his LinkedIn profile to reflect his new position. Elsewhere, LinkedIn is littered with the former connections of our least beloved who, despite continuing to be unemployed (and unemployable) have failed to remove their “Vice Chancellor of X” designations. Of course, I’m not sure “layabout” or “disgruntled claimant” really has the cache they were hoping for.

I hope Zink recognizes that this is the signal heralding closure of her time at UNCG. She’s not long in her old position either as the word ‘advancement’ couldn’t be used to describe anything she has conjured into being since arriving on our doorstep and since she has been here for slightly over two administrator years, that’s nearly a lifetime of employment in human years.

To put all of this into context, I turn to Joe “Golden Tongue” Gallehugh who, in an effort to capture the subtleties of the complex organism that is the university, said: “No comment.”

I propose a basket of ice as a parting gift and directions to Seth Cohen’s office should she find anything about her exit confusing.

Don’t Be Fooled

There are those who will say that this blog is weakening UNCG – that it could destroy it.

I am not so egotistical as to believe that the words I write have the power to destroy without foundation. If UNCG is so weak as to be able to crumble as a result of a blog, well, it’s hard for me to believe it was standing up to begin with.

What is weakening is the ability of the administration to do as it pleases with no fear of repercussions.

What is weakening is the shadow that has been cast by this administration and the possibility that it will continue to block out the sun for years to come.

I will be glad to see those things weakened and destroyed. Don’t listen to the execs when they tell you that these words have harmed UNCG. These words bring to light the harm that they have done to UNCG…and they would like you to believe that they are the heart and soul of the institution.

They are not.

If Jan Zink can’t bad mouth our donors and squander their money, UNCG will be stronger.

If Bryan Terry can’t verbally abuse his staff, screaming and yelling like a tyrant, UNCG will be stronger.

If Edna Chun and Bonita Peace can’t ignore the heartfelt pleas of faculty and staff for just treatment and basic dignity, UNCG will be stronger.

If a chancellor can’t accept the position assuming that we are their personal piggy bank with an unruly mob meant to be suppressed, UNCG will be stronger.

If anyone working here now or in the future knows that they must make a commitment to the larger university and Greensboro community when they accept a position, knows that they are taking a place in a vibrant and dynamic culture, understands the bounds of human decency, and accepts the mantle of responsibility to something larger than their own agenda, UNCG will be stronger.

Don’t ask me to stop working for those goals, because I won’t. And don’t be fooled when those with much to lose whimper as the risk increases. They weren’t thinking of others before and they aren’t doing so now.

I have heard from so many of you supporting the changes in the atmosphere that we are seeing begin to come about; let’s keep shaking things up and let the sun shine in stronger than ever.

Frostbitten Fingers

In my continuing quest to save the university money, I thought I would collect the ice needed for the sculptures that Jan Zink seems to believe are the key to our donor's checkbooks. I'm only too afraid that in the face of her failure, her next plan will be to demonstrate UNCG's suitability as a recipient for donations by lighting things on fire. Apparently, she is operating under the assumption that our alums haven't experienced some of nature's most basic wonders...maybe she should try accurately predicting an eclipse?

In any case, I had nearly finished collecting what I believed would be a reasonable amount of snow, when somebody sent me pictures of the kind of things that Zink would be expecting from her frozen frivolities. I may have to move to Boston. I don't think it's coming down hard enough here to be able to deliver her fix.

I wonder how much it is costing to provide valet parking at these shindigs? After all, the people who work here have to PAY to park here. I wonder how much money the university could raise if it didn't have any employees. Probably none. So maybe a better investment would be to reduce the cost for parking for employees. I don't think these glitz and glam tactics are fooling anybody.

I guess I also can't help but wonder if we couldn't have found any sort of reusable but elegant ornamentation that could be used...we do have art and design departments on campus.

After all, we can't get raises, fix our buildings, or even keep our jobs since the budgets are being cut and cut and cut, right?

And, all of our financial woes are just coming down to us from Raleigh, right??

So, there's no chance that once the money that comes to the university is being spent in a way that is causing its faculty, staff, and students to suffer, right??

And since everything is ordered from Raleigh, there is no way that we could decide, for example, not to use it on ice sculptures but rather to pay for anything else, right??

Because that would mean there was a failure on the part of our leadership, not some hardship that we just have to deal with...and that would mean that we should demand that our leadership stop failing.

RIGHT?!?

Oh, I see.

We don't have a financial crisis. 
We have a leadership crisis. 

It's going to take a lot more than ice to heal that injury.

   

Jan Zink Doesn't Like UNCG Alums

Jan Zink just hasn't been happy since leaving her cozy enclave in Tulsa, Oklahoma to come to Greensboro. It's enough to make a person want to throw themselves on their bear skin rug, ball up their little manicured hands, and pay somebody else to throw a fit for them.

Jan Zink was brought here to head up University Advancement. This means that her primary job is to develop and maintain relationships (of the positive kind!) that UNCG has with donors and to cultivate new ones. This is an especially important role given the push by the state to dry up funding to the university system as a whole. One of the problems is though, that Jan doesn't seem to understand the personal interactions that are such a vital part of creating new relationships and deepening existing bonds.

University Advancement at UNCG has been a very successful department and has been filled with people whose love for the university and deep involvement with the community has showed in the hours they have worked and in the connections they have sustained. Unfortunately, since Jan's arrival more than 50% of the department has disappeared either through layoffs, earlier-than-planned retirements, or departures in the interest of self-preservation.

When she arrived there were 51 people working to help build the university's future...now there are only 21.

The most recent losses:

• Lynne Bresko, Executive Director of Development who had worked for UNCG for 16 years will be leaving in April
• Judy Piper, served as Interim Vice Chancellor, and who had dedicated the past 8 years to the advancement of UNCG has resigned
• Rebecca LaPlante, a University Program Specialist had served UNCG in that capacity for 12 years has also resigned - the 12 years listed belies her actual commitment to UNCG which has been ongoing since her days as an undergrad

We have here 36 years of experience in the community (and as I said, this is still a gross underestimation because the immersion began long before these employment figures suggest) driven out by the toxic environment that Zink has created. And that's only three of the 30 people who are gone. I don't know how we would even begin to recover from this kind of wholesale devastation - not to mention the psychological toll this takes on those left behind.

Zink never learned the culture here, in fact it never even interested her. She thinks of us as country bumpkins and blames her difficulties in raising money on the quality of our donors:

"UNCG people don't give."

This has never been a problem before. I think UNCG people give and they give deeply. They just don't give to Zink. And this is because she has the personal touch of a black widow spider. Sure, you understand that they are part of nature and a have a right to live, but it's not a part of nature you want to get to know up close and personal and then set up a recurring donation with.

In her first year, she spent $150,000 on ice sculptures.

Her current budget allows for $100,000 in gift baskets.

Any time she has had to cut the budget, she takes it in personnel.

Let that sink in. 

We're not made from oil money, Greensboro is a different kind of place. Our connections are built with a personal touch not through frigid demonstrations of ostentatious wealth. Our donors give because they love UNCG not because they want a gift basket. The connections we have with those who support us are just that, connections - a bond created among people and place that makes UNCG something worth supporting. This runs from the biggest donor to the smallest contributor: all are welcome and all are part of the fabric of the university. 

Jan doesn't understand this and it is clear in the way she treats her people, in the way she treats those relationships, and in the amount of funding she has continually failed to raise. But she wants to lay the blame for all of those problems on the people who have given so much already: the staff and the donors.

UNCG people do give, Jan. 

Now, politely step aside so we can begin the work of healing the wounds you have inflicted.