Faculty promotions may pay more

By Amy Geiszler-Jones

The Legislature has yet to approve the final figures for faculty and unclassified pay raises and enhancements, but when it does, WSU President Beggs hopes to improve raises for faculty earning promotions. He also wants to develop an incentive pay program for professors.

Beggs shared what he called a “two-prong attack” for enhancing faculty pay during the Faculty Senate meeting April 26.

As of April 26, it was expected that the Legislature would approve an increase of 3.5 percent for faculty and unclassified pay and an additional $3.4 million in enhancements regents-wide. Beggs said WSU’s share of that enhancement pool would be between $350,000 and $360,000. Based on those “speculations,” as he called them, Beggs shared his plan for faculty pay enhancements.

For his first prong, Beggs wants to increase the promotional pay raises from $2,000 to $3,000 for faculty earning associate professor rank. Faculty receiving full professor promotions would get a $5,000 raise instead of the current $3,000. He would make the pay raises retroactive, giving those same increases to faculty promoted since fiscal year 1995.

In the second prong, Beggs wants an incentive pay program for full professors who’ve held that rank for at least six years. On a voluntary basis, professors can submit a dossier, detailing their work since achieving that final rung on the tenure and promotion ladder. If they meet the expectations, similar to the tenure and promotion criteria, they can get a $5,000 raise. Professors could apply for the incentive pay after a minimum of six years holding that rank.

On another faculty pay issue, Beggs shared some results he and institutional research staff have learned about variances in salaries at WSU.

When Nancy McCarthy Snyder, director of institutional research, and her staff ran the numbers usingthe three variables generally used in faculty pay studies, they could account for 72.05 percent of the variance in salary. The three variables are marketability of a discipline (how competitive the field is), academic rank and time in rank.

When the three variables used when studying pay discrimination were added — gender, ethnicity and age — the percentage rose to only 72.094 percent.

“Does this say we don’t have a problem?” asked Beggs, referring to possible discrimination in pay. “No, it doesn’t. It says we don’t have a systematic problem.” He didn’t rule out that there may be individual instances of discrimination.

He said WSU is hiring more women to teach than it did 10 years ago.

As the faculty pay continues to be studied, another variable that will be considered is length of contract. Some faculty teach on nine-month contracts, while others hold 12-month appointments.

The senate will hold its last meeting this academic year at 3:30 p.m. May 3.