Gender pay disparities were eliminated across all faculty ranks, schools and colleges at Syracuse University, with the exception of one school, Vice Chancellor and Provost Michele Wheatly announced at Wednesday’s University Senate meeting.

The Senate released a report in January 2018 showing that female faculty at SU generally make less than their male counterparts. In January 2019, Wheatly said the university was finalizing its review of faculty salaries and would recommend final adjustments to deans of schools and colleges.

Wheatly said the university identified only one college where adjustments are needed to eliminate statistically significant gender disparities among some non-tenure track faculty. Wheatly declined to comment on the specific college, saying she would not like to single out just one school.

Wheatly also asked the newly-created Faculty Affairs ad hoc committee on Wednesday to identify an objective tool to measure faculty performance in teaching, research and service.

“This might not result in a singular solution for all schools and college,” Wheatly said. “But rather might call for solutions or tools that are more specifically tailored and relevant to the wide variety of disciplines represented at our university.”

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Margaret Thompson, a senator and associate professor in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, asked how the committee would handle the cumulative inequity of past salaries, in which raises were based on lower salaries. She also asked how the committee would work to prevent future inequities in pay.

Whealty said that some of that work would be done through the committee, but also in schools and colleges across the campus.

Dana Cloud, a senator and director of Graduate Studies, said that objective measures to judge a faculty member’s contribution to the university are already in place.

“I’m kind of surprised that in response to the questions and the formation of a committee that the response is, ‘Let’s do more meritocracy,’” Cloud said. “That is sort of baffling to me.”

Later in the meeting Senator Matt Huber, an associate professor in Maxwell, presented a faculty census created by the Academic Affairs committee. The census determined the academic rank makeup of professors at SU and how that composition changed between 2017 and 2018.

The report showed a 8.1 percent increase in total part-time faculty and a 3.2 percent decline in full-time non-tenure track faculty, according to Huber’s presentation. The presentation noted, though, that those changes were reversed for the 2016-17 year, so a trend could not be established.

Overall, the university has a 51 to 49 ratio of tenure- or tenure-track to non-tenure track faculty, said Crystal Bartolovich, a senator and associate professor of English. She said a decrease in tenure or tenure-track faculty could affect academic freedom, faculty governance, peer review and the employment of graduate students.

“This is something we should be thinking about, not just letting happen,” she said.

Bartolovich also said that tenure could affect whether a school is considered a research university. She said that, because of the faculty census data, she did not think any SU schools or colleges could be considered research schools — excluding Maxwell, which she said was made up of 75 percent tenure-track faculty.

At the Senate meeting, John Liu, vice president for research, was asked what effect tenure-line faculty percentages had on research designations given through the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. SU has an R1 designation, the highest tier possible.

University officials have said that recently funded Cluster and Signature Hires, both of which are tenure-track hires, were created to strength SU’s research programs.

Liu said that he was not sure about the relationship between tenure line faculty and research designations, but he said that most of the R1 schools’ faculties are comprised of about 60 percent tenure or tenure-track faculty.

Published on March 27, 2019 at 11:33 pm

Contact India: irmiragl@syr.edu