SEMO PRESIDENT WILL URGE 3 PERCENT RAISES

Southeast Missouri State University faculty would get a 3 percent across-the-board pay raise for the next fiscal year under a proposal that has the backing of school administrators.

In addition, another $500 would be added to the salary of each faculty member who qualifies for "extraordinary merit" pay, said Terry Sutton, Faculty Senate chairman.

"It is certainly better than I thought it was going to be," Sutton said Thursday.

He said university President Kala Stroup recommended increasing the "extraordinary merit" pay from $363 to $500.

The school's budget review committee had recommended the lower figure, but the president proposed cutting the budget in other areas to increase the merit pay.

Sutton said Stroup deserve's the faculty's applause.

Art Wallhausen, assistant to the president at Southeast, said salary hikes also are proposed for the university's other employee groups.

The administrative/professional staff, as a group, would receive a 3 percent pay hike. But that pool of money would be divided among those employees strictly on the basis of individual merit.

The university's top administrators would receive the same percentage pay hike as that of the administrative/professional staff, Wallhausen said.

Clerical and service employees would each receive a pay hike of 2 percent or $300, whichever is greater. Technical employees would get a 2 percent raise or $400, whichever is greater.

Clerical, technical and service employees would all benefit from a pool of merit pay money. That pool of money would amount to an additional 2 percent increase in pay for those employees as a group.

Wallhausen said all the figures are tentative as the budget has yet to be approved by the Board of Regents. "None of it will be finalized before June," he said.

Southeast has operated for the past three years under a merit pay plan that stipulates an across-the-board pay raise for faculty equal to the Consumer Price Index or 3 percent, whichever is greater.

The pay plan also states that $1,000 will be added to the base salary of each faculty member who qualifies for the merit pay.

But Sutton said there isn't sufficient money to provide each eligible faculty member with $1,000 in merit pay for the coming fiscal year.

Under the salary package now being considered, the university would make it a priority to make up the difference in the 1995-96 fiscal year, Sutton said.