Metro State’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously Monday to approve the faculty salary initiative proposed by President Stephen Jordan. The initiative aims to remedy the long-standing equity problem affecting associate and full professors and to increase the College’s ability to offer salaries to new hires that are competitive, while minimizing compression on existing faculty.

“It appears that there will finally be an effective method for rectifying these salary issues,” said Faculty Trustee Gene Saxe. “Everyone I’ve spoken with supports this initiative. It is thorough, careful and feasible.”

Trustee Anne Rice added that while she understood that some of the trustees had concerns, she believes that the best interests of Metro State and the faculty were at the heart of the proposal. “This is a step forward toward preeminence,” she said.

The initiative, which takes effect July 1, totals $1,090,000 and is three-fold.

First, the salary adjustments that professors receive when they are promoted will increase as follows:

• Associate to full professor: $6,000, an increase of $3,800 over the current raise
• Assistant to associate professor: $4,000, an increase of $2,500 over the current raise

These raises will go to the new faculty who received promotions at the May 2006 BOT meeting. Faculty who atttained the rank of full or associate professor prior to this initiative will receive the difference between the old rate and the new rate ($3,800 for full professors and $2,500 for associate professors). These increases will be effective July 1.

Part two is an equity adjustment for professors and associate professors who, after the above adjustment, still have a salary that is less than 85 percent of the CUPA (College and University Professional Association) average for peer institutions. The amount of the adjustment will be based on the past five years of evaluations.

Part three of Jordan’s plan calls for full-time faculty who teach in the summer to receive a percentage of their annual salary beginning July 1, 2007.

A unanimous vote, but with some reservation
Before voting, each trustee was given the opportunity to put forth his or her support and/or concerns. All agreed that the initiative was affordable and could be implemented without a significant impact on the overall budget; however, several trustees expressed reservations about the peer group that was used for comparison, even stating cynicism about the use of peer groups at all.

Of greatest concern to the trustees, though, was that while the salary situation was now being addressed, a system for faculty and administrator performance evaluation and pay increases based on merit has yet to be implemented despite it having been a board priority for several years.

Trustee Sean Tonner expressed his hope that the implementation of a merit-based pay system will be addressed by the administration with the same enthusiasm as shown for the salary initiative. 

The issue of merit-based pay is addressed in the first two years of the College's five-year planning model with an allocation of $2.4 million. In addition, the president's salary initiative includes a timeline for revisions to the current faculty/administrator performance evaluation system; however, the first evaluations based on new criteria will not take place until the end of 2007 for faculty and April 2008 for administrators. Several of the trustees were somewhat disheartened by the fact that it will take this amount of time to become fully implemented.

The board agreed that further discussion about peer groups, the merit-based system and other concerns would be held during its upcoming retreat June 26-27.