Faculty Council addresses gender
pay disparity

The Faculty Council on Feb. 7 voted unanimously for a resolution that addresses faculty pay disparities between women and men.

The action was in response to a comprehensive study conducted by the University's Office of Institutional Research that was presented to the council last November.

The study was designed to detect whether female and all African-American faculty members earned less than their white male counterparts.

It found, on average, that all African-American faculty members were paid slightly more than their white male colleagues. Women, in contrast, were paid less, with numbers showing a far wider disparity in Health Affairs than in Academic Affairs.

The resolution passed Feb. 7 creates mechanisms designed to fully address the disparity in pay for women. Much of the work that went into the resolution came from the Faculty Council's Committee on the Status of Women that is chaired by Etta D. Pisano, an associate professor in the radiology department.

In essence, the resolution calls for a system of annual monitoring of pay inequities from department to department and school to school. Further, the resolution creates mechanisms by which faculty members can be involved in this process from start to finish.

Under the resolution, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Robert Shelton has been asked to establish an ad hoc faculty advisory panel that will assist him in reviewing and evaluating salary reports submitted by each department and to assist in developing appropriate means of monitoring and correcting inequities.

The reports will be used to identify female faculty members whose salaries fall below the statistical norm. In technical language, that means salaries that could not be predicted by the multiple regression model that was used as part of the 2002 study by the Office of Institutional Research.

Under the resolution, woman faculty whose salaries are far enough below the norm to come under review will be so informed as their individual cases are studied.

At the same time, faculty committees will be elected within the College of Arts and Sciences, each professional school and each center or institute that initiates tenure-track or fixed-term faculty appointments.

These elected faculty committees will be charged with reviewing the gender equity reports before they are forwarded to the provost and his advisory panel. The committees can also make recommendations on how to correct whatever pay inequities are found in these reports.

In addition, Shelton was asked to ensure that all public information on faculty salaries fully documents all compensation from the University, including stipends, bonuses, supplements and other compensation over and above base salary.

The resolution also specifies the following information that deans, chairs and directors should provide in their annual reports to the Provost's Office:

•   Salaries, supplements and bonuses of men and women by rank and length of time at rank.

•   Percentage of male and female faculty who are tenure-track versus fixed-term appointments.

•   Percentage of newly hired faculty who are women as compared to men, and those same percentages by gender for all applicants, for all applicants who were interviewed and for all applicants invited to interview for a second time. Composition by gender for all search committees should also be listed.

•   Percentage of male as opposed to female faculty who stay in their department through their first tenure review. Percentage of men as opposed to women who reach tenure review and who are awarded tenure, along with the percentage of women as opposed to men who are promoted to professor.

•   Percentage of women as opposed to men who have been nominated and awarded distinguished professorships, endowed chairs and University and national prizes.

•   Descriptions of non-salary compensation in start-up packages for all new faculty members, including summaries of efforts to obtain employment for their domestic partners.

•   Descriptions of non-salary compensation provided to all male and female faculty, including such details as square footage of office and research space, secretarial support and discretionary funding.

•   Estimated percentages of time spent by men as opposed to women faculty in doing research, teaching, committee work, clinical work and other responsibilities. A separate study of duties by gender should be complete by rank from contract professors to full professors.

•   Accounts of retention strategies that had been used for all faculty members who left the University within the past year.

Beyond the data collection, the provost will be requested to set benchmarks for success in gender equity over defined periods of time for each administrative unit, based on that unit's unique circumstances.

In other action at the Feb. 7 meeting, the Faculty Council adopted a resolution to establish a "Committee on Appointments, Promotions and Tenure" that will be composed of 12 faculty members who hold permanent tenure at the rank of professor.

Four members each will be appointed from within the College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Medicine and from among all the various professional schools outside of the medical school.

The committee was formed to relieve the increasingly heavy workload of dealing with personnel matters that had previously fallen to the Chancellor's Advisory Committee.

The committee will serve in an advisory capacity only to the Provost's Office and faculty personnel matters deemed important by either the provost or the committee. One of these key areas would be any appointments, reappointments and promotions that would have the effect of conferring permanent tenure.

The chair of the new Appointments, Promotions and Tenure Committee will fill an automatic seat as one of the nine members of the Chancellor's Advisory Committee, along with the chair of the faculty and the secretary of the faculty.