[Englecturers] Saving Money

[benjha at ucr.edu]

Hi Everyone,

I'm sure you're all aware of the impending fiscal crisis in
California, and I hope you also know that the UC is trying to
prepare for across the board 10% budget cuts.

We should look for ways to economize, especially since the
writing program will be getting more expensive in a year when
everyone else is supposed to cut costs.

With that in mind, I'm making the following proposals:

1) Everyone should adopt ieval, the online evaluation system.
 It's paperless, and when we use it, no one has to transcribe
badly written rants for us.  There are other advantages: you
get your results sooner, and you don't have to use class time,
standing in the hall while children grade you.

2) Everyone should use igrade, the online grading
system.  It's also paperless, and less prone to errors (except
our own).  An added advantage is that one usually gets an
extra day to grade.  Note that we aren't allowed to post our
own grades when we teach English 4 and 5.

3) Everyone should drastically reduce the use of photocopied
handouts.  Really--we should cut photocopy use by 90%.  I
promise to go completely paperless next quarter.  Even the
syllabus and in-class quizzes can be projected on the screens
in the smart classrooms and made available on-line.  Another
advantage is that we cut down waste.  This quarter I've thrown
away at least 40 pages of crap that absent students never
received.

4) We should reassess our need for office phones.  Please, let
me know if you have actually used a phone for school business
this quarter.  If you have, could you have as easily made
contact via email?  The cost of phones is actually quite high,
and I wager that the vast majority of us don't use them.

I'm interested in other ways we can economize.  Please, post
ideas.

Ben Harder