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Ohio University Offers Financial Incentives To Urge Retirement

Posted on: Wednesday, February 5, 2020

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Update (6:20 3/3/20)

Ohio University is making some adjustments nearly a month after introducing its initial Voluntary Separation or Retirement Program (VSRP) for certain tenured personnel. An email made available to WOUB News, informs eligible employees that there are now alternate exit dates for participants.
The original separation date is May 31, 2020 but there are now options for “circumstances where the university has determined and documents a business necessity for the university.” The new exit dates are:

June 27, 2020
August 15, 2020
December 31, 2020

Carly Leatherwood, spokesperson for the university says, “The alternate dates were provided to provide flexibility based on curricular needs and to ensure we are providing the best possible student experience.”

This announcement comes less than a week after Ohio University’s President Duane Nellis warned employees of additional budget-related cuts. Faculty and students continue to voice concerns regarding the impending loss of faculty and those who contribute to the educational environment at Ohio University.

Ohio University is offering certain faculty, administrators, and custodians an early retirement agreement to help save money.

Eligible employees received details about the voluntary separation plans Wednesday, February, 5, a little more than two weeks after the idea of offering a plan was approved at the Board of Trustees meeting in January.

Organized by age, a list of faculty eligible for the Ohio University 2020 Voluntary Separation or Retirement Program.

According to a press release, the program is offering 608 tenured faculty/administrators and 66 custodians a financial incentive to retire or “voluntarily separate” from the university by the end of May.

Eligible Ohio University employees include tenured professors, associate professors, administrative staff who have tenured or associate professor rank, and custodial staff. Employees of the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, among others, are ineligible for this incentive program.

The faculty and administrators are being offered one year of their current base salary and a payment toward finding a new insurance plan. The eligible custodians would receive 15-thousand dollars or 100 percent of their salary for fiscal year 2020 – whichever is less. They will also get additional funds for buying insurance.

You can read the full proposal offered to faculty here.

Targeted employees have 45 days to make a decision.

This personnel move is one of the ways Ohio University is trying to make up for a multi-million dollar budget deficit executive administrators primarily attribute to decreased enrollments. According to the university, they are, “also in the process of implementing functional alignment in selectadministrative areas and planning additional administrative unit budget reductions.”

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