This afternoon’s Faculty Senate meeting focused primarily on a bill regarding tenured faculty pay scales. Most of the meeting was spent discussing the appropriateness of the bill’s structure and language and how the bill will be integrated into the Sacramento State academic community.

The bill – the Periodic Evaluations of Tenured Faculty – addresses the idea that once faculty members reach the end of their possible pay scale increases, there should be an opportunity for them to continue receiving pay increases based on their teaching performances over time.

Faculty pay increases are determined by the pay scale range that is established when a faculty member is hired. The supplemental salary increase works on a step scale; increases in pay depend on where one gets hired on the pay scale at the beginning.

The tenured faculty evaluation bill attempts to establish assistance for tenured faculty members to maintain or improve their teaching effectiveness. It also seeks to evaluate faculty members in chosen areas of performance when they apply for a post promotion salary. Faculty members can choose to be evaluated based on their teaching, scholarship, service to the university or the community.

The controversy over the bill focused on whether or not it should be possible for faculty members to combine their required instructional performance review, which occurs every five years, and the post promotional salary increase (p.p.i.) review process.

“We need to focus on how to integrate people review with the five-year instruction review,” said David Wagner, vice president of Human Resources. “We need to ensure for the faculty members who don’t select teaching for their p.p.i. that the only thing that they are being considered for when being evaluated is their teaching.”

The committee needs to know that the evaluations go to two different places and understand the dual roles of review, Wagner said.

One of the Senate’s concerns was the structure of the bill’s language. The Senate members voted to send the bill to the Executive Committee to clarify the language. The Senate will reconvene and re-discuss the bill on Dec. 13.

“We need to make sure that the language of the contract is fulfilled. The bill was sent to the committee to clarify the language to avoid an unintended consequence of combining the people with the ability of choosing the area for review with the p.p.i.,” Wagner said.

Amber Kantner can be reached at [email protected].