Faculty Senate
Meeting
Attendees: Kurt Anderson, Sharon Anderson-Gold, Tom Apple, Anne Bilynski, Georges Belfort, Curt Breneman, President Linnda Caporael, Loretta Ebert, Gary Gabriele, Prabhat Hajela, Kim Keating, (Mercer) Andrew Klein, (Mercer) Gerald Korenowski, John Mitchell, Jon Newell, Ralph Noble, Bud Peterson, Curtis Powell, Susan Sanderson, Trina Sego, Mary Anne Staniszewski, Mary Ann Waltz
Agenda
Approval of the Minutes from
Report on
Report from Standing Committees:
Planning and Resources Committee
Faculty Compensation - Curtis Powell & Mercer Group
(NOTE: Minutes are longer than usual to include details of faculty compensation report.)
Approval
of the Minutes from
President Caporael brought the meeting to order and asked for
approval of the minutes and appendix of the
President Caporael asked for a slight change in the order of the agenda, as well as noting that Joseph Flaherty, Chair of the IT Constellation Search would have to postpone his presentation until the Senate's next meeting.
Report
on
Georges Belfort, Chair of the
Biotechnology Constellation Search Committee, described the committee's
objectives, members, and activities to date. The process has been somewhat
slower and more complex than anticipated, in part because
Report
from Standing Committees
Chair of the Curriculum Committee, Mary Ann Staniszewski, stated the committee discussed the importance
of having IT representation. It was felt that although IT has become part of
the
Planning
and Resource Committee
Ralph Noble, Chair of the Planning and Resource Committee, presented the committee's considerations regarding the graduation tuition policy issue. The committee was to meet directly after this meeting and all were invited to attend to discuss this issue.
Susan Sanderson, Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee on
Faculty
Compensation – Curtis Powell
Curtis Powell introduced the compensation consultants from
Mercer. First, Dr. Andrew Klein, the Higher Education Practice Leader and the
top consultant from Mercer with 15 years experience, who is also an adjunct
faculty member in the
Powell presented an executive summary of the recent benefit changes. (attached) The senate would like to review these changes, as well as dates of the Benefit Fair, and other issues, and give further consideration to the necessity of a Faculty Compensation Committee, which would review these type issues in the future and make recommendations to the faculty on a timelier basis.
Powell suggested anyone who wasn't able to attend the town meetings could visit the link on the Human Resource web site: http://www.rpi.edu/dept/hr/townhall/index.html. He is still looking for feedback on how to improve communications on this initiative to both faculty and staff. Issues of retention and recruitment of new talent are of key importance to their goals.
Andrew Klein noted that one of the agenda items of the Rensselaer Plan is to raise the standing of the University, and to do that means world-class faculty, and that means competitive compensation. "We are comparing faculty salaries, by discipline, against the top 25 schools [colleges and universities] in the nation." "If we want to be a world class school, what does that mean? Does it mean being top 10? Does it mean being top 10 in every school? Top 25? We don't have that definition yet. But, it is clear that raising pay, without essentially the "push" on the other side, [building the structure, level of contribution] is going to be a funding problem."
"We're looking at three systems. One is really a base-pay program. The second is a dual-track faculty compensation system, differentiating contributors from world-class folks. And potentially the third, we have just started discussing, is any kind of bonus or supplemental program to recognize a particular contribution." In response to a couple questions, it was apparent that Mercer was not charged to look into supplemental pay issues, nor are they doing any kind of affirmative action analysis, nor discrimination analysis. "We are not looking at individuals, we are looking at positions (i.e., Associate Professors in the Management School are benchmarked against a group of other Associate Professors in Management Schools in the top 25 schools); that's the analysis and this is blind to any of the Title VII areas of discrimination."
The "compression" issue was discussed. Presumably a person who got above average raises every year since they were hired, would have only a slightly higher pay than a new person who just started. This is a merit matrix issue and organizations that use a merit pay program have that compression issue. It is not avoidable within a merit matrix design. It is avoidable by going beyond those designs, which may provide some relief.
In response to a question regarding dual-track compensation,
Klein claimed that almost 100% of other schools practice it.
Criteria that emerged from conversations with the Deans and the President regarding what a dual-track program "ought" to be doing, are: raise the prestige which ultimately translates into the increased ranking of the institution, the reputation of the institution, the quality of it's education, world-class faculty, and world-class graduates, to name a few.
At