REGENTS AMEND MERIT PAY PLAN; BOARD SCRAPS ACROSS-THE-BOARD MERIT PAY INCREASE FOR FACULTY

The Southeast Missouri State University Board of Regents Thursday approved an amended faculty merit pay plan that excludes annual across-the-board merit pay increases.

A merit pay plan recommended earlier this year by the Faculty Senate would have awarded faculty members an across-the-board pay raise of at least 3 percent annually for each of the next three years. Also, eligible faculty members would have received an additional 2 percent merit pay increase, under the Faculty Senate plan.

But at Thursday's board meeting, several regents said they didn't think merit pay should be awarded across-the-board to faculty.

"I want to go on record in favor of the concept of merit pay, but not some of the things in this bill," said Regent Donald Harrison. "There are certain things in here I don't think are as they should be."

Harrison said a merit pay plan should be something that awards salary increases only to accomplished individual faculty members. He said the pay plan as submitted was essentially an automatic pay increase.

"I think merit pay and base salary are two different concepts," Harrison added.

The final plan approved by the regents doesn't contain any across-the-board pay provisions. The new proposal includes three general guidelines for determining merit pay that weren't part of the former policy. They include:

Establishment of peer review and evaluation procedures to assess individual performance. The evaluations would be used to recommend appropriate salary increases.

Provision for an appeals process for pay increase disputes.

Creation of a faculty development plan that establishes priorities, outlines professional development activities and provides for the review of faculty reports of achievements.

Southeast Provost Leslie Cochran, who had backed the initial merit pay plan, said he considered the issue of across-the-board pay hikes a "form of negotiation" that the board was free to reject.

But Southeast President Kala Stroup said it was important for the board to adopt a new merit pay plan.

The university has had a merit award system since 1987. But that system has been more of an awards system than a merit pay plan.

"One of our dilemmas here is we have a 1987 plan, and if we're going to move forward we have to replace it with something," she said. "If we don't stick with the 1987 plan, which basically everyone's dissatisfied with, you need to say which principles and guidelines we use (for a new plan)."

Regent Daniel Williams said he also thought across-the-board pay hikes should be separate from merit pay.

"The big problem in calling something a merit pay plan is it should be just that," Williams said. "If you have another complete package of pay raises, it should be separated. It should be a fairly easy task to ferret out the two."

Alberta Dougan, who was the Faculty Senate chairperson when the pay plan was drafted, said the across-the-board increase was included because faculty members felt they should be guaranteed some pay hike for ongoing meritorious performance.

Dougan said that, given the ongoing threat of state funding shortfalls, it's impossible for Southeast to guarantee annual faculty salary increases, and the base merit pay would set aside funds for such increases.

"The notion was that in years where there were no salary increases in the budget, teachers still would be recognized for merit," she said.

But Carl Ben Bidewell, chairman of the Board of Regents, said the board couldn't guarantee 3 percent annual salary increases regardless of whether it was considered merit pay or not.

"That has to be a year-to-year thing," Bidewell said. "We can't get saddled with a 3 percent raise. If things were right, I'd rather see an 8 percent raise, but we can't tell what's going to happen year to year."

Cochran pointed out that the Faculty Senate proposal does include a provision that allows for the 3 percent general merit pay to be withheld from a faculty member who did not warrant the increase.

Such pay could be withheld only with the agreement of two-thirds of the full-time faculty of the affected department and the concurrence of the department chairperson and dean.

But Cochran admitted it likely would be a rare occurrence when a faculty member would be denied the general merit pay.

Regent Mark Pelts suggested that the language referring to base salary increases be omitted from the merit pay plan. He said the new merit pay guidelines for evaluations and appeals should remain intact.

"Faculty Senate wants us to adopt some principles, albeit anything we do is going to have to be contingent upon funding," Pelts said. "I think we'd perhaps have a compromise here.

"The Faculty Senate has done a lot of work, and I don't what to just throw it back in their faces."

Stroup said she would take the general guidelines in the board's amended plan to the Faculty Senate, which would propose specific recommendations prior to salary negotiations next year.