PROVOST: SCRAP ACROSS-THE-BOARD FACULTY PAY HIKES

Southeast Missouri State University Provost Charles Kupchella wants to eliminate across-the-board pay raises for faculty and move strictly to a merit pay system.

About 100 faculty members attended a forum Wednesday afternoon at the University Center, where Kupchella discussed his proposal.

Kupchella said he wants to scrap the current system of annual across-the-board pay hikes, coupled with $1,000 merit pay raises.

He said he would like to see all faculty receive salary increases entirely on the basis of merit, beginning with the 1994-95 school year.

Faculty members, he said, should be paid on how well they do their jobs. They should not get "an entitlement just because they happen to be here and breathing at the time," observed Kupchella.

But several faculty members expressed concern about such a change.

Grant Lund, a professor of art and a longtime faculty member at Southeast, told Kupchella that many faculty don't trust the administrators who would determine individual pay raises.

"There is oftentimes a lack of trust of those in control of us," he said.

Over the past 10 years at least, it's been a "win-lose situation" at Southeast, said Lund. When the administration has won, the faculty has lost, he said.

"The issue of trust and control has come up a lot," replied Kupchella. But he contended that it should not be a win or lose situation.

Kupchella said that even with an all-merit pay plan, there would be an appeals process.

He maintained most faculty would do well under a strictly merit pay system. If there's money to accommodate salary hikes of about 4 percent, the median salary increase would probably be just under that percentage, he said.

Rather than having faculty members draw up merit pay plans where people are rewarded if they "jump through hoops," Kupchella said he wants a system where faculty can show annually what they have done in terms of teaching, scholarship, and public and professional service.

Under Kupchella's plan, department chairpersons would be responsible for making recommendations for faculty salary hikes, with the deans of the colleges reviewing the recommendations.

Under the current system, faculty members can earn merit pay in addition to an across-the-board hike. But Kupchella said he doesn't like a merit pay system where the choice is $1,000 in merit pay or nothing.

He said the merit pay system being proposed would allow for differing pay hikes.

Kupchella also said he would like to have the same standards for both granting of tenure and promotion of faculty to associate professor.

It makes no sense to promote a faculty member one year and deny tenure the next, he said.

Southeast has no specific criteria on granting tenure, said Kupchella, but rather "glittering generalities."

The university, he said, should automatically grant tenure to college deans and department chairpersons as a condition of their employment.

That would help in recruiting people to such positions, Kupchella said. Southeast has had four or five people refuse such positions in recent months because there was no automatic tenure policy, he said.

Kupchella, himself, was granted tenure in the biology department when he was hired last year as provost.

Without tenure, it's harder for department chairmen to make the tough decisions that might be unpopular with some of their faculty colleagues, Kupchella said.

It's also difficult for them to obtain doctorate or other terminal degrees necessary for tenure, while handling both administrative and teaching duties, he said.