Our council discusses issues that affect all UW employees, such as medical and dental benefits, life and disability insurance, and retirement. This year FCRIB has focused on retirement issues for faculty, librarians and staff.

These include federal changes affecting pensions and retirement, review of the University of Washington Retirement Program (UWRP) and the Voluntary Investment Plan (VIP), and changes in the UW Faculty Code and policy relating to faculty retirement age, titles and re-employment.

Federal Reforms
Federal pension reform effective in January has provided additional flexibility and savings opportunities for UW employees. The UW has updated both the UW Retirement Plan and the Voluntary Investment Program effective Jan. 1, to ensure that many of these new features are available to UW employees.

• The Voluntary Investment Program (VIP) deferral limit for most employees is $11,000 for 2002, and this will increase each year through 2005.

• Changes to the VIP now permit rollovers into the plan by participants and surviving spouses from other types of tax-favored plans including 401(a), 403(a), and governmental 457(b) plans.

• The UWRP still does not allow rollovers into the plan; however the language of the UWRP has been updated to ensure that on separation or retirement, participants are free to roll UWRP funds into the variety of investment vehicles available including IRA’s and those listed above.

• Changes incorporated into both the UWRP and VIP now allow greater flexibility by permitting lower minimum distributions at age 70 and a half.

Review of UWRP and VIP
Many of us have seen our retirement savings shrink with the downturn in the economy during the past year. We want to ensure that our faculty, librarians and professional staff are offered high performing retirement plans.

The UWRP offers four fund sponsors (TIAA-CREF, Fidelity, Vanguard and Safeco) while the Voluntary Investment Program offers TIAA-CREF, Fidelity, Vanguard and Calvert. These retirement programs, as well as the funds offered and the performance of the sponsors have not been evaluated since the program was expanded four years ago.

An FCRIB subcommittee is developing a proposal for conducting a formal and on-going, evaluation of the performance of the fund sponsors and individual funds. The proposal will identify criteria for determining whether fund sponsors or funds should be added or removed.

The subcommittee is currently drafting a charge statement for a Fund Review Committee, outlining the responsibilities and structure of the committee, and preparing a timeline.

UW Faculty Code and Policy Changes
We are proposing legislation to change the Faculty Code regarding the use of emeritus and senior professor titles. The proposed legislation will allow faculty to receive the emeritus title at age 55 with 25 years of service to the UW, at age 60 with 20 years of service, or at age 62 with 10 years of service. This legislation also allows re-employed emeritus faculty to use the title “senior” faculty, which may be advantageous for obtaining grant funding.

In addition, we propose changing UW policy to increase the flexibility of the 40 percent re-employment program for UW retired faculty. The proposed change allows departmental or local definition of the duties under re-employment.

Duties for faculty paid from institutional funds would include mentoring students and research related to instruction, in addition to classroom teaching. Faculty paid from research funds would continue to conduct research. The policy would also increase the flexibility of payment for re-employment across quarters worked.

Future Plans
In the coming months, our Council will be exploring ways in which we can improve your benefits and work/family life. Some of these require minimum investment by the university and others are paid by the user.

By researching the best programs and receiving a discount as a large employer, we can offer a program of higher quality at a lower rate than you might find on your own, and it may be more convenient to use.

We are considering ideas such as, veterinary insurance, legal insurance, improved childcare options, summer programs for teens, college tuition waivers for UW employees’ children, college placement services, and financial counseling.

You may view your benefits and any changes in them via the MyUW Web site, Employee Self Service http://myuw.washington.edu/. Please contact me (dianemar@u.washington.edu) or other members of our council if you have suggestions for how we may improve retirement, insurance and benefits at the UW.