The push to improve faculty salary inequities at this university made progress yesterday after the University Senate Faculty Affairs Committee received suggested principles that could create a plan to regulate them.
During a Faculty Affairs Committee meeting yesterday, members received the statement of principles rough draft, which would address widespread inequity among faculty salaries on the campus. The draft concludes that this university does not have a clear way to address those issues and suggests that it needs a way to regulate and make faculty salaries more fair and transparent.
“Salary inequities are rooted in a variety of long-term structural and cultural characteristics, which will require concerted effort and significant institutional change to address,” the draft states.
These principles are under committee review and do not portray any official senate or Faculty Affairs Committee member opinions. At yesterday’s meeting, however, several Faculty Affairs Committee members expressed interest in making the statement of principles into an actionable item instead of a packet of information.
Before this university can implement any changes, the Faculty Affairs Committee must revise the rough draft to make it an actionable item and send it to the Senate Executive Committee before a full body senate vote can take place. Devin Ellis, the Faculty Affairs Committee chairman, said the committee plans to submit its findings to the SEC by the end of this semester.
The charge to investigate the salary inequities came from the SEC on March 26, 2013. The initial charge asked the committee to examine policies regarding faculty salaries and “the overall principles of distribution of raises to merit, retention, promotion, and salary inequities.”
This rough draft, a statement of general principles and findings of the Faculty Affairs Committee and possible future actions to consider, includes work and revisions the committee has put into the issue throughout the past two years.
Ellis said the primary reason the Faculty Affairs Committee has been unable to produce significant action on the issue is because of the issue’s complexity.
“We are really talking about a data management problem that calls for that level of approach,” Ellis said. “We’re talking about a bounded but nevertheless complex set of variables that go into determining why one faculty member is paid X and one is paid Y. To create policy on the basis of a flawed understanding … would be just as bad as doing as nothing.”
Senior government and politics major Andrew Podob is one member on the Faculty Affairs Committee who said he worries about this issue.
“As an undergraduate student who interacts with faculty members each week, and as a soon-to-be Ph.D. student who will one day be a faculty member at this university or elsewhere, I am deeply concerned about the salary inequities between faculty members at this university, and at other universities around the country,” Podob wrote in an email.
Podob also emphasized that this is a problem that affects students as well as large salary inequities can drive away faculty if they are financially shorted and could lead to a decrease in faculty morale. He also said alleviating this issue could take some time, especially in making sure the money can come from this university to support it.
“President [Wallace] Loh, or the Faculty Affairs Committee or me cannot simply wave a wand and make it disappear,” Podob wrote. “Solving the problem requires significant data collection and statistical analysis to fully understand the problem.”
The committee’s draft recommends the formation of a body to investigate this matter further, which would include the necessary resources and staff to further analyze the issue. Committee member Michele Eastman said at the meeting that she feels it is important to establish a specific committee to examine faculty salaries, to regulate the issue.
“Years ago, there was the women’s salary equity committee,” Eastman said during the meeting. “There was a process, so there could be a process to look at the salary inequities campuswide.”
The committee plans to discuss and revise the statement at the next meeting on March 23. The next full body senate meeting where Senate Executive Committee approved items will be voted on is scheduled for April 8.
