Salary data prompted plenty of discussion at the Academic Council’s meeting Thursday, the first session attended by the 2005–2006 members.
Faculty were eager to question the results of the biennial study of salary equity. Michael Lavine, chair of the Faculty Compensation Committee, reported that although race and sex have a statistically insignificant effect on salary, both appear to be tied to the rate of promotion.
Lavine, an associate professor in the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, gave members a crash course in statistics as he explained the analysis. He noted the need for University administrators to control for other factors—such as rank, department and experience—in considering salary differences between races and between genders.
“It is true that the ranks of full, associate and assistant professors have different proportions of men and women in them,” Lavine said. This disparity affects overall average salaries for the two genders.
This year’s study included a new component: an examination of the length of time needed to earn promotion from associate to full professor.
After serving the same number of years as associate professors, women seem to be promoted at about half the rate as men, while the promotion rate for minorities is about double the rate for Caucasians, Lavine said. He added that chance variations could not explain racial differences in promotions.
“Minorities are being promoted to full professor faster than Caucasians,” Lavine said. “Those results are fairly consistent across the [University].”
Many hands went up during his presentation. Several faculty members asked why the study did not consider the potential equity problem of gender distribution among distinguished professors. Others inquired about the effects of leave time on rates of promotion.
Provost Peter Lange stood up to address the professors’ concerns. “One of the ways that you get promotion from associate professor to full professor is to ask or to press,” Lange said, adding that according to anecdotal evidence, “Women ask to be promoted less frequently and less forcefully than their male colleagues.”
Lange informed the faculty that he and the divisional deans carefully consider the cases of any individuals whose salaries are one standard deviation below the mean for others of similar positions and experience.
Lange explained that sometimes he and the dean conclude that a faculty member is receiving unfairly low compensation.“Within a year or two, the dean rectifies through his normal or her normal salary mechanism the salary that has been identified as low,” Lange said.
In other business:
The council elected three new faculty members to the Executive Committee of the Academic Council. Sally Kornbluth, associate professor of pharmacology and cancer biology; Elizabeth Livingston, associate professor in the Division of Maternal and Fetal Medicine; and Marjorie McElroy, professor of economics, were elected to two-year terms. Serving on the executive committee “is a task that takes considerable time and thought and energy,” said Dr. Nancy Allen, chair of the Academic Council.
Additionally, David Jamieson-Drake, director of the Office of Institutional Research, updated professors on the progress of the online faculty survey, which went live Monday and will remain available for about a month. So far, about 27 percent of professors have responded.
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