Chair Talk #5 10.9.15

Oct. 9, 2015

Chair Talk #5  Quality Speaks

Here is a quick report, as promised, on the Priorities Poll we ran this past week.  We got just over 300 participants – not bad for such things, but still less than 15% of the general faculty.  There was pretty clear agreement on the top 3 priorities:

  1. Sustaining high quality research/scholarship  (in top 3 for 218 respondents)
  2. Salaries and compensation   (in top 3 for 186 respondents)
  3. Ensuring quality of Instruction   (in top 3 for 170 respondents)

None of the other choices exceeded 100 by this measure, although governance and administrative issues, captured in several of the items, collectively were mentioned over 150 times.  The Other category was only noted 41 times, so our choices mostly captured the topics of interest.  The Comments box generated a fair amount (13 pages worth) of passion, vitriol and interesting suggestions, sometimes all at once.  We need some time to look these over to see which themes emerge most strongly.

This survey, brief as it was, yielded results that are not really a surprise – we want quality, and we want to be compensated fairly and adequately for the quality we produce, both in the classroom and the lab, library, and performance venue.

The good news is that we are hoping to make progress on each of these 3 priorities this year.  The Quality Brainstorming Groups that are about to get started will help address #1 and #3.  Over 40 faculty have now volunteered and early next week we will set those groups in motion – if you volunteered you should be hearing from us soon.

As for #2, forward motion on salaries is beginning.  You might have read that the UA has addressed the salary situation of some of our faculty colleagues, but the broader campus-wide problem persists – salaries at the UA have fallen well behind our peers, and this is not a situation we can tolerate much longer.  The need is clear, and the will is building, but significant challenges will have to be solved along the way.  We cannot count on additional resources from the state for this purpose, so we are going to have to fund this from within – which means it will come at the cost of not doing certain other things, or being smarter at what we do (that is, more efficient without loss of quality).  We will have to decide what a fair compensation policy looks like, and how it can be sustained over the long haul, which is the only way it can succeed.  It took us years to fall behind and it will take years to catch up – but we need to start soon.  Given the results of the survey, you can be certain that your faculty officers, amongst others, will be keeping this issue on the front burner until we do something meaningful about it.