Dear Roadrunners,
In the wake of this past spring’s campus protests, many of you provided feedback on how we can work together to keep campus safe and focused on our educational mission while promoting open dialogue and peaceful assembly.
Campus leaders have taken to heart the input you shared during community Listening Sessions in spring and responded to calls for clearer information and guidelines.
For example, the University has created a new MSU Denver Civic Guide to help our community members navigate election season. The guide offers comprehensive civic-engagement resources, including campus-specific advocacy and engagement information.
And we’ve collaborated with Auraria Campus to ensure that emergency communications are as clear and specific as possible. The campus has implemented a new standard response protocol for its Emergency Notification System.
The protocol introduces new standardized language that will be used in alerts that deliver real-time updates through text and email to all actively enrolled students and employees.
Here are key actions described by the new language and what they mean:
- Hold: Stay in your current room or area. Keep hallways clear until further notice.
- Secure: Move indoors and lock all outside doors. Remain inside until the situation is resolved.
- Lockdown: Turn off lights, stay out of sight and remain silent. Do not leave your location.
- Evacuate: Safely leave your current location as directed.
- Shelter: Seek shelter in a safe location, particularly during severe weather or hazardous conditions.
These new directives are designed to provide specific, actionable steps that can be quickly understood and followed during an emergency, whether it’s a weather event, fire, accident, intruder or other safety threat. To receive these alerts, it’s critical that Roadrunners update and maintain their contact information in our RAVE Emergency Alerts system.
Catch up on Comp Equity Study findings
Thanks to all of you who packed the King Center for last week’s Fall Welcome Back event, where President Davidson delivered her annual State of the University address and announced pay raises resulting from the hard work you’ve done to support student recruitment and retention.
In addition to celebrating our accomplishments over the past year, the event featured a presentation on the results of a Compensation Equity Study that the University commissioned to better understand our pay competitiveness and internal pay equity.
The study found that, overall, MSU Denver salaries are competitive with peer institutions; however, outlier salaries and compression clusters exist.
The University is committed to raising salaries for those employees whose pay falls below the minimum of their pay range. The approximately 10% of staff whose salaries were identified as low outliers will be elevated into the competitive range this fall.
To avoid further salary-compression issues, Salary.com recommended that faculty pay structures first be implemented before pay adjustments are initiated. Academic Affairs will collaborate with Salary.com, faculty and MSU Denver’s Total Rewards team on how to best approach the recommendation and salary adjustments for low-outlying faculty salaries.
Watch Town Hall meetings
Salary.com, the company that conducted the study, recommended multiple ways to remain competitive and, following Thursday’s Welcome Back event, explained those recommendations in detail during a series of town-hall meetings. The session recordings and presentation decks are available on the Human Resources Sharepoint site.
Join me for lunch
If you have burning questions you would like to ask me, would like to discuss University operations or just wonder what I’m having for lunch, we’re resuming “Lunch With Larry” at at noon tomorrow. I hold these informal sessions on the first Friday of every month in our continuous effort to foster open communication and collaboration across our campus.
I kick off these sessions with a few remarks on recent campus developments or topics of interest, followed by an open forum for questions, discussions and sharing of ideas.
The sessions vary between virtual and in-person gatherings to ensure everyone has a chance to participate. Tomorrow’s meeting will be virtual. So mark your calendar, and bring questions and a bite to eat. Should you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to reach out to [email protected].
Beware of AI phone scam
MSU Denver employees have received disturbing phone calls that appear to originate from the Auraria Campus Police Department and include a very convincing artificial-intelligence-generated version of a loved one’s voice. The callers often tell the recipient that a loved one was in an accident; however, some calls have turned into threats to the loved one’s life and safety. The ACPD has investigated these calls and confirmed that all have been fakes as part of an AI scam. If you receive a call of this nature, please contact the ACPD directly to report.
Other updates
- The Regional Transportation District has completed the first phase of its Downtown Rail Reconstruction Project three weeks ahead of schedule. Downtown detours have been lifted. Visit RTD’s Downtown Rail Reconstruction Project webpage for more information.
- Reminder: Fire drills begin today and continue through Sept. 12.
- The City and County of Denver will complete sewer-line repairs outside the Cherry Creek Building in the coming weeks. Learn more on the Auraria Campus website.
- The Health Center at Auraria is offering influenza and Pfizer Covid-19 vaccines at no cost to Auraria Campus students, staff members and faculty members with valid campus ID badges. Vaccines will be administered Oct. 1-Nov. 20 on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. on a walk-in basis.
As always, thanks for reading and for making MSU Denver a top-notch place to work and learn.
Sincerely,
Larry Sampler
Chief Operating Officer and Vice President for Administration
Metropolitan State University of Denver
