Provost targets salary compression with funds from tuition increase
A national search for four new Kenan professors has been launched as administrators put finishing touches on a plan to boost salaries of many faculty members.
Carolina hopes to use the professorships to bring to Chapel Hill four of the nation's top university professors--scholars who are renowned for undergraduate teaching.
But the effort has been criticized by some faculty members who say it's wrong to exclude from the search award-wining teachers already at Carolina--professors who have seen their salaries stagnate during the last decade.
Interim Provost Dick Richardson said he understood why faculty members might be upset.
"I think it reflects, at this particular moment, a special anguish among our faculty about their salaries," Richardson said. "And I'm very sensitive to that."
But Richardson said the professorships offered the University an opportunity to demonstrate vividly Carolina's commitment to undergraduate instruction.
The University will continue to press for higher salaries, including a request the General Assembly match the special $400 tuition increase, Richardson said. Legislators authorized the University to increase tuition and keep the revenue--45 percent going to faculty salaries, 45 percent to student financial aid and the remainder to libraries.
Pay plan
The divisions of Academic Affairs and Health Affairs were developing plans for distribution of their portions of the tuition money.
Academic Affairs, Richardson said, would use its $2.6 million to address salary compression and for distribution among the schools for merit salary increases.
Richardson has asked deans and department chairs to identify by Feb. 15 situations within departments in which faculty members with similar time of service and comparable professional achievements were receiving different salaries for no justifiable reasons.
"We're taking the initiative at this level, which is a little bit unusual," he said.
Faculty members within Academic Affairs will be asked to put their names forward if they feel they meet the criteria and have not been named by their chair or dean, Richardson said.
A committee of faculty members will be involved in the process of evaluating the situations, Richardson said.
Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs Garland Hershey said his division would receive about 18 percent of salary funding from the tuition increase and this would be distributed to the deans to use as needed.
"In Health Affairs, we are attending to the current salary inequities as part of a process we began seven or eight years ago to identify salaries that appeared to be out of line," Hershey said. "The process has identified areas each year that needed, and received, careful review by the deans and department chairs. We have refined the process each year and are engaged in efforts to make it even more effective in 1996."
Looking for teacher-scholars
A search committee chaired by Linda Dykstra, a Kenan professor of psychology, will spend the next year and a half identifying and trying to bring to Chapel Hill four of the nation's top university teachers.
Richardson said: "We're looking for superior scholarship and service that would be of the normal Kenan quality, so it has to be an outstanding scholar. But the emphasis is on exceptional undergraduate teaching skills."
The committee will accept nominations from departments until Feb. 15. Faculty members who want to nominate someone should do so through their chair or dean, he said.
The committee may go beyond the nominations, looking at professors with national reputations, such as those who have won national teaching awards, Richardson said.
"I hope these four will become many things: sterling examples of our commitment at Carolina to undergraduate teaching, who join our already strong faculty and help to make this place even better recognized for instruction," he said.
"I hope they will be connectors across disciplines, helping build ties over disciplinary walls and have appeal to various parts of the campus," he said.
"And, of course, I hope they will greatly enhance the home department in which they are working," he said.
The Kenans' intent
Chancellor Michael Hooker told the Faculty Council last month he had learned from members of the Kenan family and directors of the William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust the original intent for some of the University's Kenan professorships was to lure the nation's top professors to Carolina.
The first Kenan professorship was awarded in 1920 to sociologist Howard Odum, coaxing him from Emory University. Odum went on to help establish Carolina's strengths in the social sciences, including the sociology department, rated among the nation's finest.
Hooker said it was important to honor the Kenans' intent and use these four professorships to bring to Carolina some of the nation's top teachers.
Emphasizing instruction
Richardson said he disagreed with criticism that it would be impossible to find top-notch professors who would emphasize undergraduate instruction.
"I am satisfied there are four fine scholars who are exceptional teachers out there," he said. "If they aren't, we don't want them."
The success of the effort would depend upon support from faculty members, Richardson said.
"I think this is an exciting venture in which we are all engaged and it's going to be a difficult mission to achieve," he said. "The type of the individual we are seeking is going to be difficult to move. If he or she were not, we probably wouldn't be interested in them.
"So this is going to take a lot of skill on the part of the search committee and home department faculty to bring this off," he said.
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