Salary and Compensation Slides

A personal story

Let's start with a somewhat personal story - my personal story.

My salary history

Context

Our salaries

Let's take a look at how our salaries compare across the system.

Average salaries at UNC System schools

(across all non-medical employees)

Observations

• UNCA salaries are currently near the bottom in the system.
• Adjusted for inflation, our salaries are dead last, by a good margin.

The Salary and compensation committee

History

• November of 2021, Chancellor Cable announces the new budget including funds for the revitalization plan and a 2.5% salary increase.
• Shortly afterwards, Peter Haschke points out that our salaries actually decreasing significantly, relative to inflation.
• By January, Peter organizes an informal working group to draw more attention to this issue.

Members

• Mark McClure (Chair)
• Judy Beck, Senior Lecturer of Physics
• Robert Bell, Director of the Writing Center
• Gary Ettari, Associate Professor of Literature
• Melissa Mahoney, Associate Professor of Economics
• Sophia Ungert, Executive Director of the Family Business Forum

Ex officio advisors

• Jaime Head, Associate Director of Compensation
• Jeff Konz, Director of Institutional Research
• John Liposchak, Interim Vice Chancellor for Budget & Finance
• Kimberly van Noort, (then) Interim Provost

Charge

Two-fold

1. How does compensation at UNCA compares to various benchmarks? And
2. What recommendations do we have to improve the situation?

Our recommendations consist of two main components:

1. We definitely believe the revitalization plan has a lot of positive aspects. But
2. We nonetheless simply must have more support from the State.

In addition, we have a few comments on how to improve the campus climate in the short term.

The revitalization plan

Key components

• A philanthropic campaign,
• Expansion of Summer programs,
• Strengthened partnerships,
• Investment in student success,
• and (reasonable) enrollment growth

Mostly makes good fiscal sense.

Challenges with the revitalization plan

• Instability among the senior leadership
• Takes too long and still need help from the State

So, what to do?

• Recognize that our colleagues are all facing these same challenges.
• Faculty especially, recognize that staff are in a more difficult situation.
• Admin: Explore low dollar ways to improve climate, like meals on the one card.
• Also Admin: A higher dollar (but well funded) idea is to channel revitalization funds to current employees, when appropriate.

Liberal arts enrollment trends

Part of the point

We are up against strong economic and poltical trends.