The Griffon News

Missouri Western faculty may soon see a change in the way salaries are increased.

The current system awards increases across the board with cost-of-living adjustments. 

The Faculty Senate Salary Committee has introduced two proposals that could change faculty salary increases.

One proposal that will be studied next year is for a performance-based increase. This proposal intends to give incentive for faculty to perform their best.

James MacGregor, assistant professor of history and faculty senate liaison to the salary committee, is in favor of the change.

“It’s a way of rewarding the faculty who perform really well while at the same time not acting in a detrimental fashion on a faculty member who has had a slow year,” MacGregor said.

Not everyone favors such a change. Mike Cadden, chair of the Department of English, Foreign Language and Journalism, believes Western already has a performance based system in place with the Distinguished Professor Program and the promotion schedule which has generous increases in salary.

The Distinguished Professor Program allows an assistant professor to earn $3,000 more, once they are at rank, if they receive the award. Associate professors can bump their salary by $5,000 and a full professor by $7,000. Full professors may apply for the program every five years.

This is in addition to promotion increases. When promoted to associate professor the increase is $5,000 and $7,000 for promotion to full professor. Cadden believes these are enough of a performance based system.
“I’m less interested in something that’s going to put too many salary decisions in the hands of the chair people. I hope that the chair people are not handed a pile of money and said `Here, distribute this among the faculty however you think is best,” Cadden said.

Another proposal involves increasing the minimum salary at each rank and could be in effect for the next academic year.

The need to meet minimum salaries comes from the Senate approval to raise starting salaries by $10,000 in each rank in order to attract and retain quality faculty. If the administration chooses to follow this recommendation, minimum salaries would increase to $40,000 for an instructor, $46,000 for an assistant professor, $50,000 for an associate professor and $56,000 for a full professor.

Existing faculty would receive a four percent raise to accommodate the cost-of-living, a raise in salary to meet the minimum and equity increases based on years of service.

For example: under the proposal an assistant professor currently making $40,000 after three years of service would see a four percent ($1,600) cost-of-living increase and an additional $4,400 to reach the minimum salary of $46,000, and also a $500 equity adjustment for three years of service.

The equity increase would allow faculty members that have been here awhile to be above the minimum starting salary of new faculty members and increases with number of years of service.

The cost of this proposal to the university, if approved by administration, would be $700,000. James Scanlon, Western’s President, agrees with the need to increase salaries, but cautioned the full amount may not be possible.

“Unfortunately there are limits, with Missouri ranked 47th in the country in per capita funding,” Scanlon said. “These are the fiscal realities we have to work with.”

“The problems we face are not institutional, they are state wide,” Evan Noynaert said at the April 17 Faculty Senate meeting. “Many state schools had big lay offs, we did not.”

The salary for a full professor at Western averages $67,246 with the state average being $74,342. Professors here at Western are fairly close to the state average, but Missouri overall falls below the national average of $84,210. However, Western cannot adopt a salary increase plan from other universities.

“We need a system that works for this faculty,” MacGregor said.