San Francisco State University -- Academic Senate Meeting
MINUTES OF OCTOBER 7, 1997
The Academic Senate was called to order by Chair Mark Phillips at 2:10 p.m.
Senate Members Present:
Barnes, Paul; Bartscher, Patricia; Bernstein, Marian; Blank, Mark; Cancino,
Herlinda; Chen, Yu-Charn; Cherny, Robert; Choo, Freddie; Collier, James; Consoli,
Andres; Corrigan, Robert; Craig, JoAnn; Duke, Jerry; Eisman, Gerald; Gillotte,
Helen; Goldsmith, Helen; Graham, Michael; Hammerstrom, Gary; Hammett, Jennifer;
Harnly, Caroline; Haw, Mary Ann; Hom, Marlon; Homan, Bonnie; Houlberg, Rick;
Hu, Sung; Kelley, James; La Belle, Thomas; Lee, Wanda; Leitao, David; Lyles,
Lois; Nicholson, Joel; Oñate, Abdiel; Pestrong, Raymond; Phillips, Mark;
Raggio, Marcia; Scoble, Don; Smith, Nina Jo; Shouse, Amy; Swanson, Deborah;
Terrell, Dawn; Thomson, Lana; Turitz, Mitch; Wade, Patricia; Warren, Mary Ann;
Warren, Penelope; Wilkinson, Nancy; Fox-Wolfgramm, Susan; Wong, Alfred; Wong,
Yim Yu; Woo, George; Yee, Darlene; Zoloth-Dorfman, Laurie
Senate Members Absent: Fehrman, Ken(exc.); Rivas, Mario; Verhey,
Marilyn(exc.); Smith, Erna; Tarakji, Ghassan; Flowers, Will(exc.); Aaron, Eunice;
Chang, Paul(exc.); Mallare, Marie.
Senate Interns Present: Anna Avant, Sara Leon, Joseph Childers.
Guests: J. Dopp, N. McDermid, D. Schafer, G. West, D. Cunningham,
M. Kasdan, J. Veeder.
Announcements and Report
Chair's Report
- The CSU has appointed Charles Reed of Florida as the new Chancellor.
- Chair Phillips reported that Shannon Perry extended an invitation to the
grand opening of the new Baby Friendly Room in HSS 110 on October 8 at 10
am. The Baby Friendly Room is open to students, faculty and staff for breast
feeding mothers and bottle feeding fathers. For more information, call extension
2317.
Agenda Item #1 - Approval of Agenda for Meeting of October 7, 1997
As there were no objections, the agenda was approved as printed.
Agenda Item #2 - Approval of minutes for Meetings of September 9, 1997
As there were no additions or corrections, the minutes were approved as printed.
Agenda Item #3 - Elections
Student Center Governing Board
Larry Medcalf agreed to stand for election. As there were no other nominations,
M/S/P (Gillotte, Barnes) to elect Medcalf by acclamation.
Faculty Representative to the Associated Students Legislature
Paul Chang, AS President, requested that Lorraine Dong be elected. As there
were no other nominations, M/S/P (Barnes, M.A. Warren) to elect Dong
by acclamation.
Agenda Item #4 - Initial Presentation of the System-wide Internal Partnership
Phillips briefly stated that SIP has to do with a public/private partnership
to help build the technology infrastructure system-wide. The Senate will also
hear future presentations in early November on this topic from Don Scoble, VP
for Business Affairs, and Statewide Senator Gary Hammerstrom. He introduced
Vice President Scoble to give an initial introduction to the topic.
Scoble reported that the process is in a scheduled period of consultation
that will continue into November. There will be several occasions for faculty,
and other groups, to provide input to the process. He stated that SFSU is one
of the aggressive campuses in the CSU concerning the technology infrastructure,
however adequate access is not always available even on this campus. This initiative
is an effort to provide ubiquitous access to appropriate technology. The price
tag for this access is anywhere from $250-400 million. The normal capital outlay
funding through the State will simply not take care of this need, so there is
no identifiable source of adequate resources to build out this infrastructure.
The infrastructure includes all of the wiring, cabling, fibering, intermediate
hardware, all the way up to the desktop and the need to refresh or renew these
items.
In October, the Chancellor presented to the Presidents and Trustees the notion
that the CSU would enter into an unprecedented partnership with the private
sector that would meet the needs of both parties. The CSU would receive access
to the resources to build out the infrastructure and the private sector partners
could expect an adequate return on investment. This would not be a procurement
nor a gift, it would be a true partnership.
Each of the 22 campuses was asked to provide a delegate to the SIP team and
Scoble said that he is the SFSU representative. The SIP team includes a variety
of people including VPs for Business Affairs, for Academic Affairs/Provosts,
Chief Technology Officers, representative from the Chancellors office involved
in technology leadership, and a number of consultants. Since there was no model
for this process, the SIP team defined the CSU needs, derived a process to develop
the partnership, and selected potential private sector partners. Most of the
staffing for SIP was provided by the consultants since the other SIP team members
have full time jobs, but the entire team met monthly to approve policy and direction.
Scoble explained that the SIP team had to sign non-disclosure statements concerning
proprietary information, so details could not be given out until a selection
had been made. Approximately six firms ended up as potential finalists and,
through a rigorous iterative process, three written proposals were seriously
considered. The three teams considered were 1) IBM and PacBell; 2) Ericson,
Oracle, HP and MCI; and 3) GTE, Microsoft, Fujitsu Business Communications Systems,
and Hughes Global Services. The GTE team was deemed to be the most responsive.
The SIP proposal calls for the formation of a five-entity private corporation
called California Education Technology Initiative (CETI). The CSU would be one
of the partners and the GTE team members would be the other four partners. The
corporation would have no employees. There would be a CEO, but compensation
for the CEO has not yet been defined. There would be a nine-member board of
directors on which the CSU would presumably have a majority and the CSU would
be assured the position of chair.
The key elements, as Scoble outlined them, would include the build out of
the infrastructure in three years with completion by the year 2000 and periodic
refreshing of the infrastructure. Financing of the venture would be arranged
by CETI. Cash flows would come from existing CSU cash flows and be used for
a lease back of the infrastructure from the corporation. Borrowing would include
bond financing as well as loans with a $36 million capital infusion from GTE
and the private sector corporation partners. The proposal also includes plans
for revenue generation. Some ideas for this include access to CSU markets by
the corporation partners, joint development of instructional materials for sale,
becoming an independent service provider (in competition with AOL and others),
sales of telecommunication services, and development of other commercial products
Scoble stressed that this is the beginning of a period of campus consultation.
This is a starting point and he felt that there will be opportunities for input.
A letter has already been sent to the central office indicating an initial set
of concerns. No contract is in place right now as the negotiation process has
not yet begun. The negotiation process will presumably culminate in January
and a signed contract is expected then. Since Scoble is appointed to the agreement
team, he felt that this campus has some advantage in the process. He will share
information as it becomes available.
On Monday, October 13, representatives from the Chancellors Office and the
private sector firms will be in McKenna Theater for a public briefing of the
University community. He stated that there will be an opportunity for audience
questions and encouraged all interested people to attend.
Eisman felt that the program sounds very exciting because it includes
access, an improvement in services, and the infrastructure which is the transparent
aspect of computing. However, he had concerns about Microsoft software being
the platform upon which services will be built particularly for academic programs.
According to the documents that Scoble had handed out, the Microsoft Windows
NT Server is to be the foundation for the teaching and learning curriculum.
Eisman was concerned that CETI would be dictating to the faculty the products
upon which the curriculum would be built. Scoble responded that those
concerns are shared by a number of members of the SIP team. He felt that the
concerns are legitimate, that they have been recognized, and that those concerns
must be addressed in the negotiating process.
Duke expressed his concern that a division not occur between those
programs that are very involved in technology and those that are not, namely
Creative Arts and Humanities. Scoble replied that the intent is to provide
appropriate technology access to students, faculty, and staff that need it.
He felt that if there are disciplines where the need for technology is less,
that should not have an impact on the University or the curriculum.
Houlberg was concerned that there be a built-in assurance that the
CSU could get out of an agreement if it did not meet the CSU needs, if it did
not enhance teaching and learning, and/or it did not provide more access. Scoble
responded that the SIP team has discussed the inclusion in the contract of an
appropriate exit strategy. The language of such a proposal is not available.
However, Scoble cautioned that since this is a system-wide proposal, the exit
strategy will be built around the needs of all the campuses and those needs
may be different on each campus.
Yee stated that the products and services are impressive, but she was
concerned about the implementation schedule. She felt that there needs to be
a section called evaluation plan in the package to reassess and evaluate on
a campus by campus or system-wide basis whether the implementation schedule
is working. Scoble replied that the SIP team is meeting next week and
he would take that message back to the team.
M.A. Warren asked for specifics as to how the partnership would earn
money, for example how would $502 million in educational content be created
and would the partnership own faculty course notes. Scoble stated that
that is not clear to the SIP team either and that the team has cautioned the
private sector partners that intellectual property rights must be paid attention
to. The private sector partners also expect to have access to the broadest definition
of the campus community and plan to gain from this potential market. Another
way that he felt the partners might gain was by gaining access to geographic
markets in which they currently do not have a foothold. For example GTE has
a strong presence in southern California and perceives this partnership as a
way to extend their presence to northern California.
Phillips stated that the Executive Committee has begun to discuss SIP
and that Gary Hammerstrom has briefed the Executive Committee. He stated that
there may be a resolution coming to the Senate in two weeks concerning faculty
inclusion in the negotiation process and directing the Statewide Academic Senate
to place this as a priority item on their agenda. Phillips asked how much influence
would faculty input have or would the meeting in McKenna be just part of the
sales process. Scoble said that he was keeping an open mind about the
process and that it is important to him and other members of the SIP team to
hear campus concerns. While the SIP team will hear many voices from all the
campuses, he assured the Senate that he will carry SFSU concerns back to the
SIP team.
Agenda Item #5 - Report from the University Promotions Committee (UPC)
1996-97 UPC Chair John Dopp asked if the Senate had any questions about
the report which was attached to the agenda.
President Corrigan stated that, with all due respect to previous chairs,
this is the best UPC report that he has read and that it was a pleasure to work
with Chair Dopp and the Committee.
Cherny agreed with the President's comment and was interested in the
way the report gave grades to the chairs and deans. He asked if the recommendations
(on page 4) that came out of the meeting with Carol Baker will be forwarded
to the Executive Committee and/or committees for action. He was particularly
interested in the recommendation concerning the use of non-faculty personnel
or students to administer and collect student evaluations since this would require
the commitment of resources. Also, he wanted to know the reasoning behind the
recommendation to discontinue the use of in-class peer evaluations of teaching
effectiveness. Dopp responded that Dr. Baker had suggested it is increasingly
difficult for faculty to do effective peer evaluation and there are legal issues
involved, but instead she suggested using peers as mentors for development and
improvement of faculty performance. Dopp said that in his viewpoint that faculty
are really not skilled or trained to do peer evaluation and that the idea of
mentoring seemed sensible. In terms of resources, he could only surmise that
with all the money spent on using all the different forms across campus and
on grievances as a result of non-standardized forms, money might be saved by
having centralized resources. Cherny noted that the biggest use of resources
is in sending somebody into classrooms to distribute and collect the forms.
Barnes asked if copies of the UPC report are distributed to department
chairs. Assistant to the Chair Lana Thomson replied "Yes."
Phillips seconded the comment that the UPC report is a superb report.
He mentioned that the solution to deficiencies in student evaluations was to
strengthen that area.
Fox-Wolfgramm questioned the derivation of the UPC's forecast on the
normal time range between promotions. Dopp replied that the forecast
was made by looking at the various processes on campus that are described in
the report. He felt that promotion is becoming more for prestige/title than
for money, particularly with merit pay.
Dopp thanked all the departments that put tremendous amounts of effort
into the evaluative processes which made the Committee's job easier. He suggested
that the department engage a candidate to pre-write tremendous amounts of material
for the department and then the department should really evaluate the candidate
and whether the candidate evaluated themselves correctly. This would be more
of a self-evaluation versus a department evaluation. He said that if departments
need examples of outstanding reports they should contact those departments and
see if the faculty member would share their reports. He also encouraged departments
to be pro-active and steer people in the direction of improvement when needed.
Phillips, on behalf of the Senate, thanked Dopp and the committee for
their work and the report.
Agenda Item #6 - Discussion of Merit Pay
Statewide Academic Senator Robert Cherny represented the Merit Pay
Task Force and gave some background. He said that at one point Chancellor
Munitz said that there will be merit pay in the future. However, Munitz
also said, at some point, that he wasn't wedded to any particular system of
merit pay and that the best system of merit pay would be the one with the maximum
amount of faculty control. The Statewide Academic Senate took that statement
and formed the task force to bring recommendations concerning merit pay.
Cherny requested feedback on merit pay. As a way of focusing the discussion,
the task force developed 13 questions on key topics, however he suggested not
spending much time on the question "SHOULD the CSU have merit pay?".
He felt that concerns on that question should be addressed to the CSU and CFA.
Phillips asked about the role of the task force relative to the shaping
of merit pay policy. Cherny responded that the task force hopes to have
a preliminary report for the Statewide Academic Senate in January since the
contract negotiations will be beginning around then. The report will be intended
for the Statewide Academic Senate, the CSU, the CFA, and campus senates. He
hopes that the report will not include alternatives but will include principles
that the bargaining parties should take into account in the bargaining process
and that the campus senates should take into account as they implement the contract.
Duke felt that there was not much resistance on campus to the concept
of merit pay but that there is a lot of resistance to the implementation. He
felt that teaching has been in the forefront of merit pay but the campus has
not yet come up with a consistent way to measure teaching. He also felt that
merit pay has also been rejected because of other salary issues.
Swanson asked about how much leeway the committee has concerning what
percentage of compensation should go toward across-the-board increases and what
percentage toward merit pay since she felt that faculty are very unhappy about
the merit pay system. Cherny responded that this issue has come up at
every campus meeting he has been at. What the task force wants to know is whether
faculty feel that salary increase money should go first to across-the-board
cost of living adjustments to close the CPEC gap or first to merit pay.
Barnes asked if the merit pay concept is unique to California or if
any comparative data is available from other states. Cherny replied that
a lot of contracts in higher education include some variety of merit pay. Some
contracts provide for one time bonuses and others provide for additions to base
pay. The CSU contract provides for additions to base pay. He said that there
is wide variation in the procedures, in some universities there is virtually
no faculty role and in others there are faculty committees that have the primary
role in making these decisions. There is a wide range of names for what the
systems are called. One contract provides for exceptional performance raises,
satisfactory performances raises, and no raise with the majority of faculty
falling in the satisfactory range. The City University of New York does not
have a merit pay system, but they have very large allocations for incentive
arrangements for performance where people are given money to do things rather
than given money afterwards. Penn State and Western Michigan both dispensed
with merit pay recently. So he felt that there is a mixed pattern across the
country.
Pestrong stated that it is difficult to argue with the concept of merit
pay being rewarded for merit, but he felt the dilemma develops when there is
insufficient funds to reward all of those who are meritorious. This insufficiency
of funds leads to competition and the competition leads to divisiveness. His
second point was that everyone who submits an application feels that they are
meritorious and are often disappointed when they are turned down. He felt that
colleges should be explicit about the criteria that are considered valuable
within that college so that the committees, which vary each year, could use
the same criteria.
Phillips hoped that the task force would come down very strongly that
across-the-board raises should be paramount since salaries have been proportionately
decreasing. He also felt that the system should start with the assumption that
most faculty are meritorious with a few who are exceptional and a few at the
other end rather than set up a competition between faculty. He also hoped that
the principles that the task force identifies will be unequivocal and pointed
rather than broad and vague.
Duke mentioned that morale of the campus has been discussed greatly
and that since the morale of the campus is usually focused on the top administrators
of the campus, he felt that to have one person responsible for the final decision
is faulty. If someone is denied merit pay, they can blame the President for
turning them down and he felt that this decreases morale and should be changed.
Cherny responded roughly 90% of merit pay awards system-wide were made
based on faculty recommendations and about 10% were awarded on presidential
discretion.
M. A. Warren said that while it is difficult to win an argument against
merit pay, it is not difficult to make a powerful argument against the concept.
Divisiveness is one issue. The fact that the tenure-track faculty have already
been selected from an enormously competitive process means that they have been
excessively culled for merit. She related a story that she had heard on the
radio about the divisiveness and general counterproductiveness of competition.
In this story, a New Zealand professor was visiting the US and the local school
had arranged a cooperative commercial arrangement with a pizza parlor to provide
children with free pizza if they could prove that they had read a book. When
asked what he thought about this program, the professor said that he thought
you would end up with a whole lot of fat kids who can't read. She felt that
if the administration sends the message that the work of faculty is so enormously
unpleasant that the faculty must be offered little goodies in order to try to
do the job well, it is counterproductive. She felt that the arguments against
merit pay should be developed and put forward.
Duke felt that if merit pay were awarded for one year rather than as
a permanent increase in pay, everyone would have incentive to work harder every
year.
Craig stated that all the faculty in her department, International
Relations, are very negative towards merit pay. She listed the reasons they
had discussed as divisiveness, it causes groups to explode from within through
internal strive and envy, and the competition breaks down morale when they should
be more united. Furthermore they felt that even the very process of denying
the merit pay is very degrading and very humiliating and it is done in a very
high handed manner since there is no explanation given for the denial, no suggestions
for improvement, and form letters are very cold.
Chen wondered if criteria could be developed for specific colleges
or the whole university so that, similar to the promotion policy, points could
be assigned for different items that are being evaluated for merit pay.
Bernstein thanked M. A. Warren for opening up the issue of should the
CSU have merit pay. She felt that one of the most distressing things is that
there is an assumption that the only basis on which faculty will do good work
is by offering merit pay. She also felt that all faculty are probably meritorious
and to then assume that some are more meritorious than others, unless they are
truly extraordinary, is absolutely demoralizing. She said that it belittles
the role of faculty and the work that faculty are doing, it is divisive, demoralizing
and insulting.
Kasdan asked Cherny about those campuses that use merit pay as bonuses
or as exceptional/satisfactory awards, is that money given on top of a reasonable
yearly increase or in lieu of a yearly increase. She calculated that in the
CSU over the last seven years faculty have received about a 1.4% increase and
she felt that merit pay instead of a reasonable pay raise is different from
merit pay. Cherny replied that it is difficult to generalize from different
contracts but nearly all of the contracts have a significant amount of every
raise that goes across-the-board and another amount that goes toward merit.
Generalizing from contracts, although the contracts are not always comparable,
he felt that about 2/3 of each increase goes for cost of living adjustments
and about 1/3 goes towards merit.
Lee felt that it is sad to see faculty, who's colleagues would feel
are meritorious, become dejected because they did not receive a PSSI. She felt
that if the principles that underlie the system could be changed so that message
is not given to people, it might help. She related how the National Merit Semi-Finalists
competition is done. A lot of semi-finalists get recognition for merit, but
only a few receive money. So if faculty deemed meritorious by their committees
could be recognized and lauded for their accomplishments, it might take away
the stigma of not getting money.
Eisman felt that the discussion of merit pay is too narrow a focus
and discussed other ways that faculty might get compensated for their performance
if the system allowed. He listed as examples the policy of not being allowed
to earn extra income while on sabbatical leaves, whereas that is expected at
other institutions; if a faculty member invents something that is marketable,
the university owns the invention so the faculty member does not earn extra
income from the invention; if a faculty member develops an on-line course their
intellectual properties are taken away and owned by the university; and if a
faculty member accepts students through open enrollment the extra fees go to
university not to the faculty member. He felt that all the possible options
should be open for discussion and presented to the administration.
Pestrong apologized for falling into the trap of giving up on the argument
about should the CSU have merit pay. He felt that he could generate more energy
for the argument that there shouldn't be merit pay than for the type of merit
pay system. He wanted to know if merit pay is a fait accompli and therefore
the energy should be directed towards sharpening the system of merit pay or
if the efforts should be directed towards eliminating merit pay.
Terrell felt that it is not just an issue of not receiving a PSSI award
but that those things that tend to lead to selection for a PSSI award also take
people out of the classroom. Those activities often have other mechanisms for
compensation such as assigned time or writing in grant support. Those people
who perceive themselves as doing the work of the department, like teaching larger
sections, without added compensation have fewer options for alternative mechanisms
of compensation, which can lead to demoralization while the stars get rewarded.
Leitao assumed that merit pay is here to stay. Assuming that the majority
of faculty are meritorious, he, and his colleagues in his department, favored
numerous small awards and allowing awards every four years or whatever time
period is needed to spread the wealth as evenly as possible.
Zoloth-Dorfman said she noticed a difference between newer hires and
those that have been on this campus longer. Since faculty are presented with
a salary schedule that resembles a ladder, many faculty assumed that there is
a mechanism to climb that ladder. However, if the length of time to promotion
is increasing, that is very different. Also, newer faculty have been through
the fiercely competitive selection process and they also face very high housing
costs, compared to faculty that have been in the Bay Area longer, so she felt
that social location impacts across-the-board in terms of attracting people
and retaining faculty. She felt that there are many competitions around merit
and reward including merit pay, RTP, time off, grants, and the service learning
process and she was concerned that the concerns of newer faculty may not be
heard.
Houlberg stated that in trying to implement the system, there is no
reward for faculty to be on the PSSI committees so it is very difficult to implement
the process. Many people are unwilling to serve on the committees. If the faculty
is most responsible for the recommendations, there must be faculty committees
so there could be a lot of implementation problems. Another issue is letting
people know what qualities successful applicants have. The policy included language
to have each committee write a report to the college outlining the attributes
of the successful applicants. However, that report is now to go to the administrations
to help them evaluate applicants so there is no feedback to future applicants.
Cherny responded to the point of how do you get people to serve on committees,
particularly if you use department committees, since it has been raised on every
campus that he has visited. As an example, if everyone who is meritorious applies,
and those who apply cannot serve on the committee, then by definition the people
making the decisions are not meritorious. One possible solution is to award
everyone who serves on a committee one or two steps, so that by being elected
to the committee they are deemed meritorious. Another possible solution is that
if people are only eligible to apply every three years, then people are eligible
to serve the other two years. In response to how do you let faculty know what
the successful applicant looks like, several campuses printed a booklet that
presented all of the successful applicants and a brief paragraph explaining
what each had done.
Barnes asked who allocates the money to SFSU for PSSIs and where did
it come from. He also asked where the money would go if no one from this campus
applied for the awards. Corrigan responded that the contract specifies
that the money not used rolls over to the next year, but it doesn't specify
whether it stays on the campus.
P. Warren asked whether any campuses have done any studies on the cost
of administering their various plans for distributing the awards. Since there
are many things demanding attention and many people are feeling overloaded and
overwhelmed, if we stand on the principle of peer evaluation it appears that
there would be significant costs. She questioned if anyone had studied the various
costs and if the outcomes would be any different. Cherny responded that
there are different kinds of cost. If the chair and dean make all the decisions,
then the cost to the faculty is minimal, but the cost to the relationship between
the chair and the faculty members is immeasurable. He felt that faculty want
to be involved and asked that faculty members who feel different to let him
know.
Hom said that he was trying to understand the definition of merit.
He wondered if merit pay meant having to do extra work to justify the compensation.
Phillips stated that the idea of people getting merit pay for serving
on peer committees could lead to more difficulties. However, he felt that if
indeed one cannot go up for merit every year and could serve on the committee
on the other years, that makes sense. In response to Pestrong and Zoloth-Dorfman,
he suggested that we not lose sight of the craziness of the situation. Since
the promotion system is presumably to reward merit, to have parallel system
is fundamentally crazy. He encouraged the task force to say that they are strongly
opposed to the concept of merit pay, but to include that if we need to do this,
then here's the way of doing this that makes the most sense. He said that it
is only the CFA that can argue the issue of whether or not we have merit pay,
but he questioned how much power they have on the issue. Cherny responded
that he felt the task force would be sympathetic to creating such a report.
In terms of tying merit pay to the existing RTP process, he also felt that there
would be a lot of sympathy on the committee for that. On one campus, it has
been suggested that the RTP process be the major way to reward merit for those
who are not full professors and a parallel system be available to only full
professors.
Duke revisited the issue of a one-time award and felt that it lessens
the resentment of those who did not receive an award. With life-time awards,
the amount of money for merit pay increases every year, but with one-time awards
the amount of money for merit pay could remain fairly stable.
Swanson said that Phillips remarks underscored her feelings. She questioned
how much the merit pay system is written in stone. She encouraged people to
get involved with CFA and work against merit pay since there seemed to be a
lot of strong feelings against it.
Hammett suggested that the split between the underlying principle of
should we have merit pay versus how do we make it work are not really separate
issues. She further suggested that the procedural problems in the details of
how to make the system work are because the underlying principle is flawed.
She appreciated the beginning of a cost benefit analysis and an awareness of
the incredible costs that this brings to the campus including financial costs,
the costs to collegiality, the cost of divisiveness and other costs. She felt
that there are no apparent benefits that outweigh these costs. She also felt
that it is unconscionable to have this merit pay system while the salary gap
still exists.
Kasdan encouraged everyone with ideas for the CFA to make these positions
heard. Closing the faculty salary lag is a first issue for the bargaining team,
so she encouraged people to voice their positions. She suggested that those
who support merit pay should speak to Susan Meisenhelder, Bargaining Team Spokesperson,
when she is on campus on October 21.
P. Warren clarified that her interest in looking at the costs was not
to see if it makes more sense to have a peer evaluation process or to give it
over to administrators. She wanted to counter the assumption that if we have
a merit pay system we will get more out of people, many of whom are already
working too hard. She questioned whether or not as an institution we get that
much in return for what it costs in collegial relationships and what it literally
costs in faculty and staff time. She wanted to see data collected to evaluate
these costs and to take a position that assumes that we do have a choice.
Jane Veeder/Cinema favored the task force investigating the integration
of the merit pay system with the RTP system. She felt that in addition to the
dejection of people who do not get PSSIs, that people should consider the feelings
of people who have realized that, in this system, traditionally people who do
a lot get about the same as people who do the minimum. She asked that people
consider what that means to encourage faculty or even encourage people to become
faculty. She felt that faculty at higher ranks could better afford difference
in pay leaves which would then allow them to do something to qualify as meritorious
for a PSSI or to get a sabbatical. She felt that lottery grants were a good
idea since it was competition on the basis of ideas and the money went right
to people on campus where they could do something about the quality of education.
She said that she was tired of trying hard with not very much and would settle
for a modest pay increase curve if she could have the needed resources to do
her job effectively.
Phillips thanked Cherny for his work on this task force.
The Senate was adjourned at 4:00 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Bonnie Homan
Secretary to the Faculty