I was hoping to get our meetings going a little earlier, however, the election is now almost over and most of us are beyond mid-terms so it is a good time to go back over a few things and set our agenda for the rest of the year. We have benefitted from two innovations in the faculty meeting of September 30^th the first was a second report from the Ad Hoc Committee on Child Care and the second, a report from the Ad Hoc Committee on Faculty Salaries.

The Child care committee has initiated discussion with the Director of the Swarthmore Friends Nursery School about developing an after school program on the site. They have also inquired about reserving slots in their program for incoming faculty and they have initiated within the Faculty Staff Benefits committee a discussion about subsidies on a sliding scale for childcare.   I noticed that there are still major issues on child care that the Child Care committee is yet to resolve. We have never received an adequate explanation for the missing (and then found) $300,000 donated for childcare and then acquired by the Benefits committee for purposes never discussed within the community, but rather designated by senior staff. To some this is a done deal and we should move on, and yet to others we have far too much to lose by simply ignoring the injustice of this slight of hand administrative maneuver. We should look for another Child Care report in the Spring. Meanwhile, the question was raised in the faculty meeting: “Can we move forward to a sliding scale subsidy for child care for the entire community, including faculty?”

The second report came from Cheryl Grood of the Ad Hoc Committee on Faculty Salaries. Much of what follows comes from the Faculty Minutes of September 30^th. After a short history of the committee, Cheryl explained that :

“The original committee noticed that starting in 2004 the number of long serving associate professors was starting to rise, which resulted in the unintended consequence of inflating the average salary of the associate professor rank and the professor rank, impacting the comparison to the reference group, and resulting in raises being moderately lower than they should have been for those two ranks.”

This was by way of explaining the model created by then Associate Provost Richard Witcentowski, which predicted salaries based on everyone being promoted at year nine of service to the college. He estimated that salaries from 2011 were anywhere from $200 to $11,400 lower than they would have been had everyone been promoted at year nine. The most effected were junior full professors and senior associate professors. For more detailed information on Cheryl’s report please take a look at the minutes for the Septemer 30^th Faculty Meeting. The most important thing for the AAUP is that much of our discussion a week earlier was superseded by this long overdue report on salaries. Discussions over salary will now certainly include the issue of the 41 senior faculty members and it will include issues of gender and cohorts in salary scale. The issue of including the median as opposed to averages would certainly improve things. We hope they can provide more seniority and a gender breakdowns of salaries in future reports which might give us more transparency.

Cheryl also reviewed the recommendations of the 2014-2015 Joint Faculty Board Committee on Faculty Compensation, which were as follows:

1) Faculty in years 1-8 post tenure will be compared to associate professors elsewhere. Faculty in years 9 through retirement will be compared to full professors elsewhere.

2) Before calculating salary increases for the 2016-2017 academic year, associate and full professors who have been adversely affected by the increase in LSAs will have their salaries adjusted upward to the 2015-2016 level dictated by The Model.

3) Salary increases for the 2016-2017 academic year for all associate and full professors will be based on the 2015-2016 salary levels calculated by The Model.

4) The 102.5% target with respect to the comparison group should be changed from total compensation to salary + retirement benefits.

Recommendations one and two have been implemented, a modified version of recommendation three is being implemented, and recommendation four has been delayed to allow the Finance Committee of the Board of Managers to decide. It is important to note that the idea to recoup money from senior faculty members was not part of the Ad Hoc Committee’s plans. Apparently, as Mark Kuperberg explained the Board suffered some sticker shock in addressing the cost of fixing the salary scale and so this was an attempt to lower the total cost. It appears that the committee will be working this year to address points two and three, hopefully without taking out a lien against senior salaries.

Am I giving AAUP too much credit here to mention that we are finally getting committee reports at faculty meetings that actually affect us? Our discussion at the September party would have been much more informed had we some of this information before we met. Yet, we still have much to do to keep information flowing and to move the conversation forward.

Marjorie Murphy