The provost's office awarded Ohio University faculty members a $750,000 merit pool, but the office's manner of distributing that money has angered several Faculty Senate members.
After allotting a specific amount of money for each college, Executive Vice President and Provost Pam Benoit placed limits on the percentage of faculty members in each college who could receive money from the merit pool. Although she met with the college deans to discuss that, she did not check with Faculty Senate - which led senators to say Benoit didn't honor the principle of shared governance.
Each college received a piece of the merit pool proportional to its Group I faculty's percentage of the total salary pool.
From there, the deans and chairs from each college would normally decide how to distribute the money according to merit - in similar cases from the past, almost all faculty members received something, said Joe McLaughlin, chair of Faculty Senate.
This time, however, Benoit limited the percentage of faculty in each college who could receive funds from the merit pool. Most colleges were told they could distribute their part of the pool to between 20 and 40 percent of their Group I faculty, said Ann Fidler, Benoit's chief of staff. The College of Arts and Sciences was allowed to go up to 50 percent.
It's hard to pin it on as specifically as people want us to
Fidler said. What the provost said to the deans is 'Here's a range. Look at what your faculty have done and decide what you want to recommend in the way of merit.'
The College of Arts and Sciences received additional latitude because it tends to spread merit awards across a greater number of faculty members, Fidler said.
Dennis Irwin, dean of the Russ College of Engineering and Technology, said he was in favor of the percentage limits. For some of Russ' faculty, a larger percentage of the merit pool might have been a necessary incentive to stay at OU.
To address retention and equity with such a small merit pool it really is necessary that some people receive a much larger percent
Irwin said. That leaves some people at zero percent
but not really
because of the 1 percent raise pool earlier.
OU administrators have said limiting the merit pool is justified because all employees recently received a 1 percent raise pool.
College of Business Dean Hugh Sherman also said he approved of how the merit pool is being distributed. He and the college's department chairs have selected about 35 percent of the business faculty to benefit from the pool.
I feel comfortable that we're awarding the top performers
Sherman said. Especially for younger faculty members who are really doing well - they need to be recognized because we don't want to lose them.
Faculty Senate passed a resolution last week expressing dissatisfaction with the merit pool distribution.
We just want to go on the record formally and have a vote to say that we don't agree
McLaughlin said. This is a much narrower definition of merit than we've had in the past. I believe that in a time of low morale and high anxiety
it's misguided to send a signal to over half of the (tenured and) tenure-track faculty that they're not appreciated.
The provost had been out of the office for several weeks while having two surgeries, making the timing for a meeting with senate difficult, Fidler said at the meeting. However, senators said the administration still should have consulted them.
If the purpose of this exercise was to make the faculty as angry as possible against the administration
this is brilliant
said Steve Hays, classics and world religions senator. You've got 50 senators pissed off because no one came to talk to us before making this decision.
