I don't want it to be a dean's office program. In the past year, Melendy and her assistant, administrative analyst Cherie Felsch, organized three collegewide forums on incentive awards and then met individually with seven of the departments. In those meetings, staff members told Melendy and Felsch that the process last year had been too rushed and that it was difficult to nominate people outside of the college because of the inconsistent deadlines between units. Responding to significant concerns recently voiced in the Division of Biological Sciences, Dean Mark McNamee and Assistant Dean Dave Shelby will be visiting each of the division's five sections to talk about the division program with its 100 staff. From the meetings, Shelby hopes to revise the program so that it better answers these concerns.
Some staff have basic philosophical differences with the program, say managers.
A number of reward recipients have said they feel embarrassed by the publicity. Shelby believes that the program would work better if the incentive rewards were kept confidential, just as merit increases are, and treated as part of the overall compensation package. He is concerned that by publicizing the awards given to the few who are the truly extraordinary workers, the incentive idea may backfire. We can't send the unintended message that they're not doing well enough. Some personnel managers reported that they expect to query their staffs after this second round of incentive awards to see how the modifications worked.