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By Amy Geiszler-Jones

During its meeting earlier this week, WSU’s Faculty Senate discussed two Board of Regents issues that have significant impact on the lives of faculty — intellectual property and salaries.

Staff at the Board of Regents have been working on developing an intellectual property policy for more than a year.

Most recently, regents staff members have started gathering information as part of the board’s campaign to lobby legislators for increased faculty salaries.

For more than a year, the Board of Regents has worked on developing an intellectual property policy. Its first draft caused quite a brouhaha among faculty at WSU and the other regents institutions.

“Originally, the Board of Regents owned us and everything we thought, everything we wrote and everything we did,” said Sen. Will Klunder who had been charged with representing WSU’s faculty in working with regents staff to revamp that earlier, more broad policy.

“This has come a long way,” Klunder said, when the new draft was presented at the Oct. 26 meeting. “I assure you this is a much better policy than the state had presented to us.”

The original draft had caused concern because it was so far-reaching, including compositions, novels and artistic works. Now the ownership of such works, along with a number of other works, will still be retained by the creators, unless the works were created under a contracted work-for-hire situation. The new policy also addresses the creation of technology, including mediated courseware, such as Internet courses.

The draft, which is expected to be adopted by the regents during their November meeting, mandates that each institution must create its own intellectual property policy. The Faculty Senate passed a resolution asking that the faculty affairs committee be charged with creating that local policy. The senate also asked that the local policy “affirm ownership resides with the creators” and that it shouldn’t “contravene traditional academic freedoms.”

As a whole, salaries at the six regents’ institutions average 89 percent of what is paid at their peer institutions. At 92.2 percent, WSU’s faculty salaries compare the best among the regents’ institutions with their peers.

At the Oct. 26 Faculty Senate meeting, a regents document containing anecdotal information as to how lower faculty salaries have impacted each institution was discussed. A number of senators voiced their concerns that the information regarding WSU salaries was quite limited in scope (comparisons were made only to salaries in the Midwest while other universities showed national comparisons) and disciplines (the WSU information focused primarily on situations in the School of Nursing and the psychology department). President Hughes, an ex-officio member of the senate, said much more information was provided to the regents staff, but he had no idea why they whittled down the anecdotes.

According to a memo from regents interim executive director Tom Bryant, the information in the document will be used to develop brochures and other printed materials as part of the regents faculty salary campaign.

The Board of Regents plans to ask the Legislature for a 7.6 percent annual increase in faculty salaries for three years. As part of their campaign, they plan to show that because Kansas salaries are falling behind those of their peers and national averages, Kansas universities are losing top faculty who can get better-paying jobs elsewhere.

Inside WSU is published by the Office of University Communications for Wichita State University faculty and staff on Fridays - with an exclusive online versionevery other Friday - during the fall and spring semesters. Items to be considered forpublication should be sent to campus box 62 or amy.geiszler-jones@wichita.edu 10 days before publication.

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Amy Geiszler-Jones

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