Volume XCI Number 49
University of Southern California
Wednesday March 24, 1982
University seeks new registrar
By Johannes Tesselaar
Staff Writer
As part of the overall reorganization of Student Administrative Services, the university is seeking applicants for the position of registrar.
Cornelius Pings, senior vice president of Academic Affairs, and )on Strauss, senior vice president of Administration, are accepting applications until April 2 for a permanent replacement for the current acting registrar.
The new registrar will report jointly to the offices of Strauss and Pings.
Janet Chaudhuri, a staff member for Pings, stressed the importance of the new position, saying, “It is extremely vital for student services. The (registrar) must do such things as keep the records accurate for students.
"There has been a need to improve Student Administrative Services for a long time. This new office is just another step in the reorganization process," Chaudhuri added.
She said the process of filling the position is currently in the gathering stage, adding that Pings and his staff may begin to look at some of the applications in the next few days.
Chaudhuri estimated that 10 to 12 persons have applied for the position thus far, adding that applications arrive in the mail nearly every day.
Chaudhuri said the university is conducting a nationwide search to find the best candidate, advertising in such newspapers as The Chronicle for Higher Education.
Pings sent a memo on March 10 to university vice presidents, deans, directors and department chairmen announcing the position and requesting nominations.
Chaudhuri said individuals currently working in the registrar’s office will be considered for the new position.
Pings' memo said the job includes administrative responsibility for student enrollment, processing student records, student academic services and the University Testing Bureau.
In the memo, the job qualifications asked for someone who has successfully managed an operation as large and complex as the university’s office.
The memo also asked for someone with proven ability to interact effectively with faculty, staff and students.
The university would prefer someone with a doctorate from an accredited institution.
•‘We are also looking for someone with a working knowledge in data processing,” Chaudhuri said.
Chaudhuri said that after April 2. Pings .would contact qualified persons and conduct interviews.
"There is no real analysis right now," Chaudhuri said, “but there is a great deal erf interest.”
RETIREMENT POLICY PUBLICIZED
Officials react to media reports
By Eric Vincent
Staff Writer
The current publicity over the change in policy concerning faculty retirement has drawn criticism from various members of the administration.
“I think it is inappropriate and unnecessary,” said Kenneth Servis, chairman of the Faculty Senate.
Servis’ comments were directed toward a front-page story in the March 23 Herald Examiner which detailed the change in the retirement policy and its effect on the faculty.
With the policy change, the mandatory retirement age for faculty members has been moved from 65 to 70 years of age, effective July 1.
Faculty members who become 65 after this date will maintain their tenured positions until they reach 70.
If a professor between the age of 65 and 70 is retained on tenure after the June 30 change, he must be employed until the age of 70.
Professors who will be 65 on June 30 will be retained on a non-tenured basis after that date.
The controversy, detailed in a Daily Trojan article on Feb 19 concerns those faculty members who have only recently turned 65. Several such faculty members claim that the policy change is unfair and that it should be instituted on a retroactive basis. This would mean that those faculty members who turned 65 in the spring of 1981 would be given an additional four years of employment before facing retirement.
A revision in the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967. enacted by Congress in 1978, changed the mandatory age for retirement from 65 to 70. Forcing an individual to retire prior to the age of 70 on the basis of age alone then became illegal. A clause in the revision, however, exempted university and college tenured professors from the policy until June 30 of this year.
Those professors who are forced to retire may retain their positions by renewing their contracts on a year-to-year basis.
Approximately one-half of all professors who reach retirement age decide to remain with the
university on either a full-time or part-time basis, said Cornelius Pings, senior vice president of Academic Affairs.
Nearly all of those professors who make such a decision will be rehired, Pings said. The only difference will be that they will no longer maintain a tenured position.
“We see retirement as an end to a faculty member's tenure relationship with the university, but not necessarily his or her employment relationship,” Pings said.
One outspoken faculty member who is facing retirement at the end of June is Earl Carnes, 66, an educational counseling professor.
Carnes objects to the idea of reapplying for employment each year, finding the process demeaning for a 33-year faculty member. He sees it as a means by which the administration may save money, because more experienced professors are payed higher wages than younger faculty members.
“I'm not going to do it (reapply),” Carnes said in the Daily Trojan interview.
Servis, however, said he has not been approached or made aware of any other professors who are upset by the policy change.
The Herald Examiner article claimed that 4.6 members of the faculty will be forced to retire at the end of June. Servis pointed out, however, that approximately 30 of these professors are past 65, and have been subject to the annual renegotiation process since reaching that age. “This is nothing new for these people,” he pointed out.
Presently, the Faculty Senate is not considering the mandatory retirement policy and has no plans to do so in the near future, Servis said.
Although hiring freezes and budget cutbacks have been imposed recently, this will not affect the rehiring of these particular professors, according to a source close to Pings’ office.
Many members of the news media appeared on campus Tuesday, including a camera crew from the Cable News Network. They included several interviews with students, faculty members and Pings in their story.
Author tells of wartime ordeal
‘Miracle’ inspires belief in God
By Mark Grabow
Staff Writer
On a cold, rainy, miserable Right, Vera Schlamm and her family waited on a soccer field for their rescue from Germany.
In order to make it out alive, the family, which was fleeing the Holocaust by trying to reach Holland, had to run across the field located on the Dutch/German border to a goal on the Dutch side where they were supposed to be picked up.
Schlamm, now a pediatrician and the author of Pursued, a book telling of her survival in the Nazi concentration camps, said she and her family had been 99 percent assured that someone would be on the other side of the field. “I started to worry about the other one percent.” she told her audience at a Town and Gown luncheon Monday.
Two hours passed, she remembered. but no one appeared. The family decided to backtrack and were stopped by a German border
guard, who promptly marched them off to Gestapo headquarters.
“If you know anything about the German Holocaust, you know that people did not normally escape from the Gestapo,” Schlamm said, adding that
‘The miracle is we made.it through the concentration camp as an immediate family.'
men were especially endangered at this time.
“My dad was shaking like a leaf,” she continued. “I was walking with him hand-in-hand, with my mother and sister at my heels. I said to him. ‘God will take care of us.’ ”
Schlamm's faith paid off when the family eventually escaped the concentration camp in which they were imprisoned. She attributes the success of their escape to a series of miracles.
“The miracle is we made
it through the concentration camp as an immediate family,” she said. “But, how come we got out when six million other Jews were wiped out?"
As a result of their escape, Schlamm said she started to think a lot about life and death, and attempted to please God.
In 1947, she came to the United States and enrolled as a special student at Wayne State in Detroit, where she earned her medical degree. “I’d like all of you college students to know that I am a high school dropout,” she added.
After establishing her residency at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles, Schlamm said she decided to get a Bible and find out what God expected of her. Originally an Orthodox Jew, she has become a Christian.
Schlamm said her inspiration to believe in Jesus came from the biblical book of Isaiah. “I invited Jesus to come into my life as Messiah, savior and lord.”
VERA SCHLAMM