Promotion

Promotion, Tenure, and Salary Committee Report and Recommendations, Part I

2006-2007 Academic year

(Members: Joe Anderson, T.J. Brooks, Pat Dirocco, Anne Galbraith [Chair], Mark Headington, David Koster, Sandra Krajewski, Richard Pinnell, Mark Sandheinrich)

Part of our committee’s charge this year included the following from Senate Chair Carmen Wilson:

In addition to the committee's normal duties, I ask that the committee consider and report on the following special charges:

Investigate departmental procedures for the distribution of merit pay, specifically investigating whether such procedures contribute to salary compression. Include recommendations for the following:

1. At what point should people receive 100% of the merit pay they generate?

2. From where should merit pay come?

You may find it helpful to consult with Ron Lostetter on the history of this charge. Please plan to submit a report to faculty senate on this charge no later than February 1, 2007.

Audit the faculty promotion and workload issues/concerns identified in the Campus Climate Survey. Consult Deb Hoskins, author of the report, and Beth Hartung, Campus Climate Coordinator, for more information and current practices. Please plan to submit a report to faculty senate on this charge no later than February 1, 2007.

These two charges are addressed separately below.

Charge I. Investigate departmental procedures for the distribution of merit pay.

Faculty “contribute” to the merit pool based on a percent of their salaries. However, most departments return this money to faculty by dollar amounts, not as a percentage, so it is possible that this contributes to the problem of salary compression. The PTS Committee requested merit distribution data from Dr. Bill Colclough (Appendix A) from 2006-07. Given the small pay packages during the past many years, we determined that if merit pay distribution is, in fact, a contributor to salary compression, it is a miniscule contributor, at best.

Recommendations from the PTS Committee for Charge I

After investigating this issue, it is clear that merit pay distribution is a miniscule contributor to salary compression relative to other contributors. We recommend that the focus remain on other, more obvious contributors to salary compression (see recommendations below).
The main contributors to salary compression continue to be competitive starting salaries for new faculty, followed by small wage increases thereafter. The competitive starting salaries are necessary to attract good people to our institution, and we must continue this practice. However, the small wage increases that compound over time result in compressed salaries for those at higher ranks. We used a large portion of the pay package from the 2000 pay plan and the 2001–2003 pay plan to address salary compression across the ranks. In particular, in the 2001-2003 pay plan, 10% of the pay package was used to address compression across ranks (in addition to the Chancellor’s discretionary fund.) Of this money, 2/3 was given to Full Professors and 1/3 to Associates. In addition, promotion adjustments for faculty ranks were also increased by 2/3 of the compression adjustments. These “promotion bumps” must continue to increase with the pay plans as originally recommended by the PTS Committee.
We recommend investigating the addition of a “longevity bump” to be considered as a method to formally address salary compression issues. In this scenario, for example, an automatic percentage pay increase would occur after a faculty member has been promoted to the rank of professor and has attained “X” number of years of service at UW-L.

Charge II. Audit the faculty promotion and workload issues/concerns identified in the Campus Climate Survey.

The PTS Committee requested a copy of the survey that was distributed to the university community in Spring 2004 (Appendix B) and a copy of the survey report that was authored by Dr. Deb Hoskins (Appendix D). After perusing the report, we had Dr. Carmen Wilson break out the responses by faculty and instructional academic staff (IAS) (Appendix C) so that we could better focus on issues that were germane to these two groups.

When we approached the data in this way, we observed that there were three issues of concern to faculty and two issues of concern to IAS (with one of these issues, promotion and salary, in common between the two groups). Unfortunately, the survey responses for faculty could not be further subdivided by rank. We defined “of concern” to be those issues with average responses hovering at or just below 3. (Note that the responses on the survey could range from strongly agree -5- to strongly disagree -1).

Faculty issues:

· Workload (2.88)

· Promotion and salary (3.01)

· Collegial decision making (3.04)

IAS issues:

· Promotion and salary (2.84)

· Career growth (2.85)

We met with Beth Hartung, Campus Climate Coordinator, to find out about any policies or activities that may already be in place to deal with these issues, and learned the following:

The Campus Climate Council (CCC) is planning to do another survey in about a year.
The CCC currently performs exit interviews with faculty who leave UW-L, and are interested in doing a one-year follow-up as well.
More female faculty are leaving UW-L than male faculty.
Although these exit data have been gathered, the data are not currently analyzed or utilized for anything.

Recommendations from the PTS Committee for Charge II

The CCC should do another survey, as planned. (The CCC should consider taking advantage of expertise on campus to help with the survey design as there are several courses that require student projects, such as designing surveys.) In this survey, faculty should be asked their rank so that responses can be sorted that way. We also suggest that the four issues for faculty and IAS that were identified from the first survey are probed more deeply to tease out any specific sources of discontent. We suggest having relevant committees review the survey before it goes out so that the CCC can receive feedback about its content.
Although this seems obvious, it apparently is not. We recommend that campus climate survey data and exit interview data are analyzed and used to make changes on campus. There is really no point in doing these things if no one responds to the problems that are highlighted. The data need to be worked into a living document, much like the equity scorecard, and then used by the administration to invoke changes to fix problems rather than ignore them.
We recommend that the IAS Committee continue to work on the two PTS issues that were raised from the survey. (We understand that their committee was specifically charged with examining the career growth issue this year, and assume that the related promotion and salary issue will be addressed during their investigation into IAS career growth.)

Respectfully submitted,

Anne Galbraith

Promotion, Tenure, and Salary Chair

Please indicate how much you agree with each statement regarding the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse. If you are unsure how to evaluate the statement, please mark the last column “unsure / unable to judge.

	Strongly Agree	Agree	Neither Agree Nor Disagree	Disagree	Strongly Disagree	Unsure/ Unable to judge
1. INCLUSIVENESS
a. UWL is committed to educating students to function well in an increasingly diverse society and workplace.	q	q	q	q	q	q
b. UWL is committed to creating a workplace that values employees of color, women, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered, non-Christians, older employees, employees from working-class backgrounds, and people with disabilities.	q	q	q	q	q	q
c. UWL’s senior administrators (deans and above) explain to the campus and the community the workplace and educational benefits of diversity for everyone.	q	q	q	q	q	q
d. I agree with the direction UWL is going regarding diversity.	q	q	q	q	q	q
2. CAMPUS ENVIRONMENT
a. UWL is responsive to reports of workplace discrimination or harassment.	q	q	q	q	q	q
b. I know where to find information on discrimination and harassment policies and reporting procedures.	q	q	q	q	q	q
c. I feel free from discrimination in the workplace at UWL.	q	q	q	q	q	q
d. I feel free from harassment in the workplace at UWL.	q	q	q	q	q	q
e. I feel I am treated fairly as an employee of UWL.	q	q	q	q	q	q

3. TRUST AND RESPECT
a. Overall, faculty trust senior administrators (deans and above).	q	q	q	q	q	q
b. Overall, staff trust senior administrators.	q	q	q	q	q	q
c. Overall, senior administrators trust faculty.	q	q	q	q	q	q
d. Overall, senior administrators trust staff.	q	q	q	q	q	q
e. Overall, department and program chairs and unit directors treat staff and faculty with respect.	q	q	q	q	q	q
f. Overall, department and program chairs and unit directors treat staff and faculty with respect.	q	q	q	q	q	q
g. Overall, students treat the faculty with respect.	q	q	q	q	q	q
h. Overall, students treat staff with respect.	q	q	q	q	q	q
i. Overall, faculty treat students with respect.	q	q	q	q	q	q
j. Overall, staff treat students with respect.	q	q	q	q	q	q
k. Overall, senior administrators treat students with respect.	q	q	q	q	q	q
4. COMMUNICATION
a. Open communication is encouraged at UWL.	q	q	q	q	q	q
b. UWL has procedural ways for me to raise problems and make suggestions.	q	q	q	q	q	q
c. Senior administrators (deans and above) of UWL are open with information.	q	q	q	q	q	q
d. Senior administrators effectively communicate UWL's vision, goals, and values to me.	q	q	q	q	q	q
e. Overall, I am satisfied with my level of communication with senior administrators (deans and above).	q	q	q	q	q	q
f. I know where to go to find out what technologies, policies, services, or equipment is reasonable for the University to provide me if I have or develop a disability.	q	q	q	q	q	q
g. I know where to go to discuss or report an act of discrimination or harassment.	q	q	q	q	q	q
h. I would not hesitate to seek accommodations for a disability I have or might develop.