FACULTY SENATE FINE TUNES MERIT PAY PLAN

In a continuing effort to fine tune a faculty merit pay plan at Southeast Missouri State University, a divided Faculty Senate Wednesday approved a measure clarifying eligibility for such pay.

The measure, approved on an 11-7 vote, states that all full-time faculty would be eligible for merit pay, including dual-appointment faculty and those faculty with 50 percent or less released time for non-teaching duties in their departments, research and grant projects, and advising responsibilities.

"Faculty members with greater than 50 percent released time for university administration responsibilities will not be eligible for merit pay," the amendment reads.

It also excludes faculty members whose salaries are "administrative-based."

The amendment was proposed by Faculty Senators Alberta Dougan and Darlene Dunning.

The measure was criticized by Faculty Senator Roy Farris who expressed opposition to including any faculty member, now handling university administrative tasks as opposed to departmental tasks, in the merit pay plan.

Farris said the measure, in effect, sanctions dual-appointment positions. He said dual-appointment positions are "neither fish nor foul."

In such cases, he said, teaching and other departmental duties suffer.

Faculty members who have accepted university administrative chores have done so at their own choice, he emphasized.

The result, he said, is that such faculty members have a "divided loyalty" between that of the faculty and that of the administration.

In most cases, he maintained, such faculty members have a greater loyalty to the university administration than they do to their fellow faculty members.

"If these individuals aren't good enough to be classified by the administration, why should we accord them this even higher honor of classifying them as faculty?" he asked.

He said the senate should voice opposition to the dual-appointment system at the university.

But Faculty Senator Albert Hayward questioned what "loyalty" has to do with merit pay.

He argued that people should be judged on the basis of their professional work and not on some loyalty code.

Dougan said that those persons who receive administration-based pay are eligible for a merit pay plan of sorts, in which they can apply for available funds on the basis of meritorious service.

Those faculty members who quality for administration-based pay are those who have been given 75 percent released time to handle university administrative chores, she said.

Dunning said it's important to clarify the situation in order to avoid "double dipping," in which a faculty member/administrator could receive merit pay for both duties.

Faculty Senator Shelba Branscum, a key architect of the much-discussed merit pay plan, conceded that the plan isn't perfect. But she said it's important to implement the plan now rather than later.

But many of the senators at Wednesday's meeting said they wanted to see a final, written draft of the merit pay plan before endorsing it.

The Faculty Senate developed a merit pay plan last academic year, but the Board of Regents this summer rejected a key provision of the faculty plan that would have provided an across-the-board 3 percent pay hike annually for each of the next three fiscal years, beginning in the 1993 fiscal year.

Regents said they didn't believe a general across-the-board pay hike should be a part of any merit plan.

The senate subsequently has sought to adopt merit pay procedures that come within the regents' guidelines.