Administration will be discussing and forwarding more info later. Scott E. will be sending out a memo explaining this matter to all faculty in the future. Hiring is very important, dept need to assess its state very carefully, which means that probationary should not be given until the state of the dept. For this year so far, two are reassignments, two are fairly long phases, and two are actual retirements. In some cases, the departments involved don't want to do a whole bunch of probationary searches all at the same time.
Probationary positions carry long-term visions that are vital to the health and growth of the dept.
So must be very careful with approval of probationary replacements. Designation doesn't get any replacements because of incentives given to the designee. CIS is keeping it going, only use it for e-mail, domain servers, and a few other minor things. CIS is moving some of these to other better servers. Replacements are typically NT's.