A letter from the president of FS.

July 14, 2004

Dear Faculty Senators,

This is an update on the faculty raises, and the efforts of the Executive Committee of the Faculty Senate regarding the raises. We have had
lots of meetings with administrators at various levels. We first met with Gregg Lassen (chief financial officer of USM), then had a meeting with the deans plus provost Hudson, Gregg L., and Kay Wall. We used a powerpoint presentation at
the "deans meeting" to present the framework for our ideas regarding the raises. All the deans did not agree with our views; however, it was an extraordinary meeting in that following our presentation there was a thorough and lively discussion of the approaches everyone had been considering regarding the awarding of raises.

Last Friday, Bill Powell, Mary Beth Applin and I met with Dr. Thames. We had a very good meeting in which we presented our viewpoints and discussed and answered questions about the raises. Dr. Thames asked us, later in the afternoon, to come to the Executive Cabinet meeting this past Monday and present our ideas. We did so, and again a very good discussion of raise related
issues took place. I regard it as a hopeful sign that we were asked, after meeting with Dr. Thames, to talk to the Executive Cabinet meeting.

Either Mary Beth or I will send a copy of a portion of our powerpoint presentation to you over e-mail. There are some notes in the margin which
should be helpful in explaining the main points. However, I would like to provide some comments for you regarding the slides. The first slide is a Title Slide. The 2nd slide uses the term Merit Steps. This is synonymous with "flat amounts" or "block amounts," however we were worried that flat amounts would be interpreted by the college board as being "all the same," so we decided Merit
Steps would be accurate and provide a better example of our intent. We decided on three categories of merit: excellent, good (exceeds expectations), and meets expectations. The third slide shows that we chose dollar amounts for
each of these categories (Excellent = $2600, Good = $2200, Meets expectations = $1800). These particular amounts are not magic nor set in stone. They were provided as an example of flat amounts (merit steps), rather than a percentage model. We strongly considered leaving this as is, however, we decided to add a $200 differential for each step up in rank (see Slide #4). The rationale for
this was that faculty with long years of service deserved a little bit more than relatively new faculty. However, the difference between ranks was not large, as our philosophy througout this process was that since the last sizeable
raise for the majority of us was in the last century, everyone, or almost everyone, needed an appreciable raise, and that the bulk of the raise money should NOT be devoted to those at the upper level of the salary scale!!

We favored merit step increases over percentage increases (See the next slide) for the following reasons. 1) The raises should be truly merit based.
Example: We did not think a person making a salary of $90,000 with a merit of "meets expectations" should get a greater raise than a person making $50,000 with an excellent rating. [Given a 3% raise for the $90,000 person vs. a 5%
raise for the $50,000 person, the person in the lower merit category would receive $2700 vs. $2500 for the person in the excellent category] 2) We think that merit step raises rather than percentage based models will provide more
money for more faculty rather having most of the money go to faculty at the higher end of the salary scale (see my example above). It should be clear that we do NOT propose penalizing people at the high end. If their merit category is
the same as someone else they would receive the same amount (actually slightly more if they were full professors). 3) Merit step increases do not exacerbate differences among faculty; percentage based models do. Example:
Two faculty members each receive a 4% raise, one has a salary of $50,000, the other $100,000. Clearly they do NOT receive the same raise: one receives a $2000 raise, the other $4000 and the difference in their salaries has increased
from $50,000 to $52,000.

We then showed a little spreadsheet (next slide) in preparation for the next spreadsheet which showed some scenarios for merit step increases (see the other file attachment). I do not want to go into excrutiating detail about the
large spreadsheet. Basically, it shows that the mathematics are pretty easy in order to determine raises given a pool of money if you want to use either a model of x, 1.2x, and 1.4x for the various merit levels (or actually any multipliers you choose), or if you prefer to use fixed amounts such as the $1800, $2200, and $2600 we used before.

I will finish by describing two very important parts of all this. I think the model being considered by the university to determine the amount apportioned for raises to the colleges was to add up the total faculty salaries for a particular college and multiply that number by 4%. We argued against doing it that way for the following reason. If a particular college has many salaries which are markedly higher than another college the college with the
higher salaries will receive a markedly higher amount of raise money, per capita, than the college with the lower average salaries. We did not think this fair, nor wise after so many years of no raises. So we have suggested that the
pool of raise money per college should be done on a per capita basis, i.e., a college with 200 members should receive twice the amount of raise money as a college of 100 members. The second important piece of all this is that we have
asked that departments/chairs/governance options be given the liberty of determining for themselves which option they choose for raises: merit steps, %, or a hybrid ofthe two.

I think the administration will make a decision on how to apportion the raises, how to award them, etc. in the very near future. On the very positive side, we have presented our views to all levels of the USM administration, and they have been willing and careful listeners. We will see if our efforts have been fruitful! I am sorry this message is so long, but I thought I should be
as informative as possible about this important matter. If you have any questions about this I (and we - the Executive Committee of the Faculty Senate) will be happy to attempt to answer them. While our approach may not be applauded by all
600 plus faculty members, it has the support of the past and present Executive Committees of the Faculty Senate, the Faculty Senate, and, I think, the majority of the faculty. I hope you are having a good summer.
Best wishes,
Dave Beckett