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Guide for UTCS New Faculty

University

Faculty Orientation

• There is a new faculty orientation put on by the Center for Teaching Effectiveness that is very useful, both as a source of information and as an opportunity to network with new faculty from other departments. They have booths set up to get your EID, your parking permits, sign up for benefits, etc. You won't want to go to all of the talks. But some of the talks on teaching and curriculum development are actually quite well done.
• The orientation is only done for faculty starting in the fall. If you start in the spring, you'll either have to fly in for it early, or wait until the following fall for it.

Faculty Annual Report

• You will have to fill out an Annual Report of your activities each year. You can download the forms from http://http://www.utexas.edu/provost/policies/annual_report/index.html. This task will be much easier if you make notes of your activities during the year. Look at the categories of information required by the report and make a document to keep track of each thing you do. If you want a template, one of the other relatively new faculty can probably give you one.

UT Identifications

• Get a UT EID (electronic ID) as soon as possible, even before you get here. You need the secure version. You can get this from afar by filling out a document (available online) and getting it notarized.
• UT EID website: https://utdirect.utexas.edu/nlogon/eid_suite/general
• Get a UT physical ID. Go to the ID office, which is in the general Student Services building on 26th St.

Pay Rates, etc

• The university only pays faculty for nine out of twelve months. You're responsible for funding the three summer months of your salary out of grants. You can teach, but there is a cap on the amount you can earn in a summer of teaching (6, 9, or 12 week courses) of $11,000.
• Pay rates for undergrads and grad students are standardized. For undergrads, they vary by class year. Send email to accounting@cs.utexas.edu to obtain the latest rates.
• There are no benefits charges for undergrads if they have less than a 4.5 month appointment.
• There is a benefits charge for grad student RA's. The rate is approximately 25%-30% but it's a fixed amount, and it varies depending on the number of dependents they have. You also have to pay for their tuition; this is not included in the 25%-30% rate above.
• Because UTCS teaches undergrad courses, there are a number of T.A. slots for grad students. It is not uncommon for students to remain supported by T.A.'s even while they are working on their dissertation. This avoids the need to support them with an R.A., but of course they do not have as much time to devote to research. In the current environment, with undergrad enrollments, and therefore TA slots, decreasing, such an approach is becoming less sustainable. Ultimately, all professors are expected to limit their advisees to roughly the number that they can support as RAs (give or take one or two).

Parking Permit

• Kathy (kathy@cs.utexas.edu) can pre-apply for you.
• Assistant professors can get an F26 permit (underneath parking garage #1). This lot never fills up, so you can come in whenever you want without having to worry about getting a parking space. The one exception to this rule occurs when there is a special event on campus that brings in hordes of people who don't realize how thoroughly UT enforces its parking rules.
• The F16 surface lot is closer than F26, but usually you need to be an associate professor to get an F16 permit. Sometimes new professors (e.g. in EE) get an F16, but the allocation algorithm is unknown.
• You need to pick up the permit in the parking office, which is in one of the parking garages on campus (PG7). Check the parking office website for details (http://www.utexas.edu/parking). Don't delay on this; you'll get a $50 ticket if you park without a permit.
• If you do get a ticket, if you know you were in the right, always appeal it. Usually the amount of the ticket is reduced on appeal, at least for the first ticket of the year.
• In the summer, you can sometimes upgrade from an F26 to an F16. This is done on a first-come first served basis, so make sure to show up as early as possible on the day they open this process. You will get an email about it. They run out of upgrades to F16 within a few hours.

Visitor Parking

• If you have a guest coming to visit (e.g. from a local company), it's nice to give them a parking validation sticker that allows them to park for free in the campus garages. They use this sticker when they leave the garage, so you can wait until you see them to give them the sticker.
• You can get validation stickers by asking Kathy, admin@cs.utexas.edu.
• Even better, you can ask Kathy to order a bunch of these stickers for you (probably charged to one of your accounts), and keep them in your office to give out to visitors.

Building Repairs

• If you have a problem with malfunctioning building facilities (e.g. lights, air conditioning), you call the university's "zone repair" people at 471-7728 to report it.

Affirmative Action at UT

• The Hopwood court decision a few years ago that banned university awards based on race, gender, etc was recently overturned, and the University has implemented new affirmative action policies in admissions..

HR/Personnnel/Retirement, etc.

• You need to enter your address, phone, etc., etc. via UT Direct. There are several different addresses - make sure to set all of them.
• Despite your best efforts, old addresses may persist in some university databases. For example, when you got reimbursed for your recruiting visit, you probably were entered in the university's "vendor database", with your address at the time. Once you arrive here, it's easy for people to inadvertently send travel reimbursement checks to this old entry in the vendor database. (This happened to one of us - it's lucky we got the check at all). Call 471-3273 to ask to have your "vendor" address updated to match your CS department address to eliminate this source of potential problems.
• See 'HR' and various faculty web sites, as listed earlier, for additional info.
• There's a 4-hour orientation every Monday. It's worth going to.
• Read about the retirement plan on the web. There are two options. One ('TRS') is a classical pension system. Do not choose this one -- it's not portable, and you don't control the money. Instead, choose the 'ORP', which is a 403b (essentially a 401k, but for a non-profit employer). As with all such plans, you can take the money with you if you leave UT. The university provides a matching contribution for the ORP, so unless you're really tight on cash, make sure you're contributing enough to get the full matching amount. YOU NEED TO SIGN UP FOR THE 'ORP' WITHIN 90 DAYS OF STARTING WORK, TO AVOID BEING PERMANENTLY SIGNED UP FOR THE TRS!!!!
• You can also sign up for a supplemental retirement account (not matched) that lets you put in an additional amount -- a little over 10K per year -- pre-tax.
• Recommended preparation for signing up for the retirement plan:
  • Choose your investment company from the list of allowed ones (e.g. Fidelity), and call that company to get their enrollment forms.
  • Get the UT ORP/403b enrollment forms off the web.
  • Fill out as much of this as you can, then set up a short meeting with H.R. to do the rest. It is complex, and they can help you get it done quickly.
  • Direct deposit can be set up via UT Direct.

Recommended Customization of UT Direct

• UT Direct provides you with "Messages". In particular, this is how the library sends overdue book messages. You will probably want to customize UT Direct to send these message via email, so you don't have to poll for them on UT Direct. To do so, click on the boxed "E" that appears on the far right of the Message Center "title bar" on your UT Direct home page.

Holidays and Vacations

• The university's official holiday schedule is online at http://www.utexas.edu/hr/holiday/holiday.html.
• Faculty accrue sick leave at the rate of eight hours a month. You are expected to report when you are out sick, but as long as a faculty member is meeting her or his commitments, only extended illnesses are reported and deducted from the sick leave balance.
• Faculty does not accrue vacation. If they are going to be out of town, they fill out an RTA. Otherwise, they manage their own hours.

UT Gym Access

• You have to pay for it, but it's a good deal. Sign up via the "UT RecSports" web site; they have an online form to apply and pay. RecSports web site: http://www.utrecsports.org/
• There are several gyms, but the Gregory Gym is just a couple of buildings south of Taylor. It has an old swimming pool in it as well as fitness machines in front of TVs, a 1/7th mile track, and a climbing wall. It also has an outdoor explorers (or something like that) office, which can give you all kinds of info on rafting, camping, hiking, etc. They even rent equipment for very little money.
• Gregory has towel service (50 cents per towel), a faculty/staff locker room, and a faculty/staff weight room. There's a waiting list or lockers, but one usually becomes available within a semester or so.
• If you're a big swimmer, you'll want to go to the swim center near the Rec Center. It's got an Olympic sized pool.
• You need a RecSports membership to participate in any intramural teams. People in the department often organize teams, which are usually a mix of faculty and grad students. If there's a sport you like to play, ask around.

Library

• Library web site: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/.
• More useful links are:
  • Online catalog: http://utdirect.utexas.edu/lib/utnetcat/
  • Faculty services: http://http://www.lib.utexas.edu/services/faculty/
• UT has access to numerous digital libraries and journals, including the ACM digital library, IEEE digital library, and others. When you search the catalog, some results may include links to digital versions. However, if it is not in the catalog or there is no direct link, you MAY still be able to get access to the full text. It may be that the UT catalog is simply not a complete superset of the linked libraries. As a result, the best way to find things is to use the ACM or IEEE catalogs directly. However, to have access to the full text you must enter these catalogs from the UT library pages.
• The links in the UT Library web site also authenticate you for full access in the ACM or IEEE catalogs. The best place to find these links is to follow this page:
  • UT Library page
  • Research Tools
  • Databases and = Indexes to Articles
  • Then find the catalog you want. For example, under=20 Compute=rScience they currently have:
    • ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Digital Library, 1991 - present (ACM)
    • CiteSeer
    • Computer Science Index, 1965 - present. (EBSCO)
    • Computer Source, 1985 - present. (EBSCO)
    • Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, Most current edition (Dekker)
    • Gartner.com
    • IEEE/IEE Electronic Library (IEL), 1988 - present. (IEEE) INSPEC (what is this?)
    • Science Citation Index Expanded, 1975 - present. (ISI)
• If you are currently paying for ACM or IEEE, it is probably safe to stop and rely on UT access.
• The PCL library, a few blocks south of Taylor, has most CS materials.It has crummy hours during breaks - 9-5 M-F. During the semester it has pretty good hours.
• To do photocopying in the library, you'll need to purchase a copy card and put some money on it. Keep the receipts that the machines give you, and get reimbursed for these expenses.
• As a faculty member, you can generally check out books for an entire semester.
• You can renew your checked-out books online. Use the "Renew" link on the faculty services page listed above.
• UT has digital library access to ACM and IEEE digital libraries. For info on how to set up off-campus access, see http://proxy.lib.utexas.edu/win/win_ie5_setup.html
• IEEE digital library can be found at http://www.ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/VadvSearch.jsp. (Note: do not use the 'IEEE Computer Society' access point for digital library -- it doesn't work).
• ACM digital library is at http://www.acm.org/dl.

The Center for Instructional Technologies

• This has a lot of high-tech video equipment if you need to convert formats of tapes or create snazzy video demos about your research (for a fee). They’re in GSB 2.130E with a phone number of 475-6386.