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During his convocation address in September, President Milton A. Gordon focused on the importance of both recruitment and retention in maintaining high quality faculty members. Progress is being made in addressing one obstacle to the retention of current faculty: salary inequity. (This is in addition to the goal of conducting 100 tenure-track faculty searches in each of the next five years.)

Earlier this year, the issue of faculty salary compression was raised during an Academic Senate meeting. Why, a questioner asked, were some newly hired faculty members earning more than those who had worked at the university for several years? A significant reason was because the last general salary increase granted by the CSU was in 2002. Yet, the market forces of supply and demand raised starting salaries for new faculty. In order to address this issue, the University invited faculty members to submit applications for an equity salary increase. By May 20, 2005, the initial cut-off date, 170 had applied.

More than half were awarded increases: 87 increases were approved; 83 were not.

"I want to stress that these approvals were based strictly on recently created faculty salary compression," said Gordon. "We had many excellent faculty members who were turned down because their salaries were already in line with newly hired faculty members in their departments. It's important that the faculty understand that we were looking at equity based on what colleges, and in some cases departments, are paying."

One example discussed at the Academic Senate meeting was a department offering newly hired faculty members a salary that was higher than what current faculty in the department were earning. The goal was to reduce this inequity as much as possible.

The breakdown of the approvals is as follows:

By college, the breakdown is as follows: The College of the Arts submitted 10 applications and received 1; the College of Business and Economics submitted 19 and received 6; the College of Communications submitted 9 and received 5; the College of Engineering and Computer Science submitted 7 and received 0; the College of Education submitted 23 and received 7; the College of Health and Human Development submitted 9 and received 4; the College of Humanities and Social Sciences submitted 58 and received 47; the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics submitted 34 and received 17.

This adjustment is referred to as "Round One." That means that faculty members have a second opportunity to apply for a salary equity increase. The deadline for "Round Two" is Nov. 14. The specifics are as follows:

• Those who submitted an application for an equity salary increase to Faculty Affairs and Records after May 20, 2005 will be included in the second phase.
• New applications for equity adjustments, on forms available in Faculty Affairs and Records, will be considered if received by Nov. 14. Faculty applicants must submit their original application to department chairs with a copy to Faculty Affairs and Records by the deadline.
• Department chairs and department personnel committees will provide their recommendations on equity adjustment requests by Dec. 9, 2005.
• Decisions are expected to be announced in March 2006.
• No late requests will be considered during the second phase.

Applicants are advised to refer to Unit 3 Collective Bargaining Agreement Article 31.23 for a description of salary equity. The president's decision to grant an equity adjustment and the amount of the increase shall not be subject to grievance procedure.

Equity increases may not match, dollar for dollar, those of other faculty in the department. The adjustment is meant to create a more equitable way of addressing salary issues.

For more information on the application process, contact Katina Napper in Faculty Affairs and Records at ext. 5187.