As Rensselaer moves forward with The Rensselaer Plan, the Institute, under its human resources department, is reviewing the faculty compensation initiative. The review, a brainchild of Curtis Powell, the vice president for human resources, is part of the Institute’s effort to place itself among the top 25 schools in the country.
“The Faculty Total Compensation Initiative is the guideline and policy provided by the Institute in rewarding the faculty’s contribution accurately and fairly. The system works based on their academic scholarship, potential, and also performance that they show in their areas,” explained Powell when asked about the compensation system.
The review is seen as a chance to improve the current pay practice. The new initiative will be a simpler, institute-wide system that gives each faculty member a crystal clear understanding on how their contribution is rewarded and what the reward expectation could be. It is built to be consistent but flexible across the campus.
“This new system will be managed by the Provost, deans, and department chairs. The flexibility will be in their hands but must still be within the guidelines,” Powell said.
The guideline basis will be based on the feedback from the faculty themselves. In addition, a faculty advisory group comprised of 30 faculty members representing each school and 20 departments has been formed to share perspectives on current pay issues, review the best pay practices in higher education, assist in developing straw models of these practices, act as a liaison, and share issues and progress of the Total Compensation Initiative with colleagues.
“The current system is broken in a number of ways. There is disparity within departments on pay levels for the same rank, compensation has not kept up with what is competitive in the market, evaluation systems are vague and subjective, and people are often evaluated using different criteria,” said Professor Richard Leifer, who serves on the faculty advisory committee.
He continued, “The Institute is moving towards world class. If we are to be a world-class university, the performance of our faculty must be world-class. If the performance of our faculty is world-class, then our faculty should be compensated at the level that world-class faculty are compensated.”
According to Professor Peter Persans, the president of the faculty senate, the compensation initiative task force started off last year with some public announcements.
“The announcements made by the committee weren’t received with an open hand by the faculty. Sensing the faculty mistrust, the committee now appears to be carefully considering faculty concerns about the process and the speed with which it appeared to be moving,” continued Persans.
Another faculty member voiced concerns over the vagueness of the current compensation system.
“The faculty is concerned about any standardization that would prohibit individual judgments where necessary or would blur the important distinctions between each field,” said Professor June Deery.
According to Deery, faculty have also voiced some concern about too much emphasis being placed on research and not enough on contributions to teaching and service. This would later on affect the students, the focus of the Institute.
Practicality of the new faculty compensation initiative will be put into test with its implementation starting 2004.
“There is no way to tell in advance whether the new compensation initiative will be fair to all faculties,” commented Persans on the implementation of the new system.
As for most of the faculty, anything that replaces ad-hoc adjustments and lack of standard procedures would be welcomed by most of them.
