Dear List: Just a quick note on the situation at Arizona State University in Tempe. We are staffed , budgeted, and reasonably paid. Excellent benefits, more vacation time than we can use and the national holidays are just starting to kick in. Dr. Wanye Bailey totally supports all maintenance requests that help facilitate his mission to make this school reach the top five list of public schools in the U.S. The environment and culture built by a strong administrator is probably the key in making the faculty and staff enthusiastic about working together to achieve his or her goals. The facility, the national reputation of the ASU faculty, the economic growth of the region, the perfect winter weather, all go hand in hand to raise the level of expectation of of each support unit, those expectations cannot be reached unless they are funded at a comparable level, simple as that, and they know it. Rick Florence and Brent Fischer are "Monster Technicians" and if perhaps qualification of such a balantly egotistical statement would be helpful for any official documentation, those of you interested are more than welcome to write or call Mr. Jim Coleman of Tempe, or more accurately, Dr.Coleman. Equally important here is that if the senior technician crashed and burned on his moutain bike the second tech in charge here, Mr. Florence would be able to take the reins with the full confidence of the faculty and carry on. I operate mostly with a shared goverance mindset so we can share our different points of view without threat, the synergetic approach. Facts that they maybe useful for comparisons: 1. School of Music enrollment, about 750, 65 faculty, and 24 staff 2. tech 1 salary about $44,000.00 3. tech 11 salary about $ 41,000.00 4. student worker budget, based on work study $1500. really means $3500. 5. live inventory about 170 instruments a. 34 Steinway grand (4 years old) b. another dozen or so older Steinways c. eight Mason grands nine years old d. about 23 U1 uprights and a few older ones e. assorted older Kawai uprights f. loan program with Kawai and Baldwin/ eleven GE 1 grands Baldwin uprights/ about 34 total loaned pianos 6. budget: only $5000 per year but have been funded well above that with one-time funds thru the nine years I have been here 7. staff development: good travel support to conventions, etc. 8. work schedules: flexible 9. job satisfaction: excellent ------------------- Brent Fischer Senior Piano Technician Arizona State University
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC