AA/PPS 04.01.50 - Faculty Merit and Retention Salary Adjustments

POLICY STATEMENT

Texas State University is committed to adhering to fair and competitive compensation policies, programs, and practices to attract, retain, and reward highly qualified faculty.

1. BACKGROUND

   1. Texas State University is committed to a fair and competitive compensation structure that supports and enhances the institution’s ability to attract, develop, reward, and retain high quality faculty while ensuring strong fiscal stewardship and responsiveness to market conditions. Faculty compensation is informed by multiple factors, including teaching discipline, faculty title and rank, experience, qualifications, and market data.

2. DEFINITIONS

   1. Additional Compensation – any payment in excess of institutional base salary (IBS) for work beyond a faculty member’s regular responsibilities and outside normal work hours.

   2. Extra Service Pay – any compensation from funds administered by the university received by the employee above the employee’s base annual salary excluding: teaching appointments, overtime, state compensatory time, state longevity, hazardous duty, and performance awards (bonuses).

   3. Institutional Base Salary (IBS) – the annual compensation the university pays an employee for the performance of all professional obligations required by the individual’s appointment, whether that individual’s time is spent on research, instruction, service, administration, or other activities.

      1. The compensation relevant in determining IBS is the amount that is guaranteed and established in advance, by contract, offer letter or within salary ranges established in the University Pay Plan.

      2. IBS must be associated with and in proportion to the effort obligated by an individual’s appointment and paid through university payroll (e.g. IBS for part-time faculty is based upon the customary compensation paid for part-time academic assignments).

      3. IBS shall include salary paid from any and all funding sources.

3. INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES

   1. The university shall assure that salary charges are accurate, allowable, reasonable, and properly allocated.

      1. An employee’s IBS shall be used as the basis for calculating budgets and for accurately charging salary expenses.

      2. IBS will not be increased or decreased during a fiscal year as a result of receipt or loss of salary support from grants, contracts, and other revenues.

4. COMPONENTS OF INSTITUTIONAL BASE SALARY

   1. IBS includes the following university-paid salary components:

      1. research;

      2. teaching;

      3. service;

      4. collegiality;

      5. community engagement;

      6. advising and mentoring during the academic year;

      7. professional development (e.g., attending meetings and conferences);

      8. scholarship (e.g., research that is funded or unfunded);

      9. administrative effort, such as serving as department chair or on institutional committees;

      10. effort expended on preparing proposals;

      11. Endowed appointments; and

      12. Benefit Replacement Pay (BRP).

   2. IBS excludes the following university-paid salary components:

      1. state longevity and hazardous duty pay;

      2. faculty summer salary (for faculty with nine-month appointments);

      3. temporary supplemental compensation for incidental or irregular work not part of an individual’s regularly assigned duties (Extra Service Pay);

      4. teaching appointments (unclassified staff);

      5. overtime, state compensatory time and fringe benefit payments;

      6. incentive pay, awards, bonuses, honoraria, or other one-time payments;

      7. reimbursed expenses; and

      8. income that an individual may be permitted to earn outside of an individual’s regularly assigned responsibilities (intra-institutional consulting or external consulting).

5. PERFORMANCE-BASED MERIT ADJUSTMENTS

   1. Unless otherwise mandated by the Texas Legislature or by The Texas State University (TSUS) System Board of Regents, the primary mechanism to award faculty salary raises at Texas State is through the merit procedures outlined in this document. This policy is supplemented by department, school, and college annual performance evaluation policies and workload policies. All continuing percent-contract faculty are eligible for merit raises awarded through this process, with the exception of doctoral and graduate assistants, chairs or directors, deans, and a few specially assigned faculty identified by the provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs (EVPAA). For any faculty or staff funded by external grants, the Division of Research requires that any salary increase (merit, bonus, or COLA) must be budgeted and approved by the sponsor.

   2. Merit raises are unrelated to tenure and promotion salary increases. Faculty members should not be denied merit they would otherwise earn because they have been promoted during the year in which merit is awarded and received a salary increase as a result of promotion.

   3. The merit process and merit raises are not the appropriate vehicles for seeking to redress perceived salary inequities or cost of living adjustments.

   4. The president shall determine the percentage of money that will be allocated to merit raises. As soon as it is practical, after available funding is known, the provost and EVPAA will announce the Academic Affairs’ decision regarding the distribution of new faculty salary dollars (e.g., the amounts to be spent on merit adjustments).

   5. The provost and EVPAA will distribute the funds available for merit raises to each college using a formula based on the budgeted salaries of continuing percent-contract faculty in each college. Instructions to the deans will include the evaluation period to be considered, which should be communicated to merit-eligible faculty.

   6. College deans shall not unilaterally add merit for individual faculty members but may make adjustments following consultation with the appropriate department chair or school director.

   7. All merit raises from funds allocated to departments or schools will be recommended by chairs or directors based on policies adopted by departments or schools and colleges. These recommendations will be based on annual evaluations conducted in accordance with approved policies for the performance evaluation of faculty and faculty workload.

   8. College deans and the provost and EVPAA have the responsibility to approve and periodically review departmental evaluation policies, workload policies, and any other policies and procedures associated with salary adjustments.

6. PROCEDURE FOR CONDUCTING PERFORMANCE EVALUATIONS

   1. An annual performance evaluation will be conducted for all merit-eligible faculty, regardless of whether funds are available for merit raises. Any faculty member whose performance fails to meet department or school expectations will be subject to actions prescribed for continuing and non-continuing faculty in AA/PPS No. 04.02.10, Performance Evaluation of Faculty and Post-Tenure Review.

7. PROCEDURES FOR AWARDING MERIT

   1. A merit raise shall be defined as additional salary to the base to be awarded to faculty members whose performance was clearly exceptional during the designated merit evaluation period.

   2. When merit raises are to be given, faculty will be evaluated for merit purposes on the basis of clear criteria, documented performance, and accomplishments at Texas State during the identified evaluation period.

      1. Each department or school shall adopt criteria that reflect faculty responsibilities in the areas of teaching, research, scholarly or creative activities, and service. Effort in each of these areas should be weighted according to the faculty appointment type, duties, and assigned workload for the individual faculty member.

      2. Criteria and processes that are adopted and approved by the college dean must be clearly documented, disseminated to all faculty, and followed consistently and rigorously.

      3. Merit awards should be based on meritorious performance for the identified evaluation period, normally three years. The rolling multi-year period allows faculty who have stellar accomplishments in one or two years, but fewer in the others, to qualify for an averaged degree of merit.

      4. Merit increases should be based on the faculty member’s performance, faculty appointment type, duties, and assigned workload. For example, a lecturer whose primary responsibility is teaching should not be penalized for lack of research and scholarship or creative activity.

      5. The department or school is the most appropriate level for making merit determinations and resolving objections to them. In developing merit recommendations to the dean, the chair or director shall convene the department personnel committee, or its designated subgroup, to review the annual evaluations of eligible faculty for the relevant period and to secure the advice of that group regarding merit salary increase recommendations. Before making final merit recommendations, chairs or directors shall be required to indicate to each faculty member, without necessarily mentioning a specific amount or percentage of increase, whether the chair or director intends to recommend that faculty member for merit and the approximate level of merit determined for that faculty member (e.g., high, medium, low).

      6. After receiving the chair’s or director’s preliminary recommendations, faculty who believe their accomplishments have been overlooked or undervalued may, within five working days, request a meeting with the chair or director. At this meeting, the chair or director shall explain the reasons for the level of merit or for denying merit, and the faculty member may ask the chair or director to reconsider the preliminary decision on the basis of accomplishments or achievements that may have been initially overlooked or undervalued. After reconsidering the accomplishments of all faculty who request a review of their activities, the chair or director will proceed to make final merit recommendations to the dean.

      7. Faculty who are dissatisfied with the chair’s or director’s final merit recommendation may appeal to the college dean and shall be afforded an opportunity to meet with the dean to offer information in support of their appeal (see Section 09.).

      8. Chairs or directors may, but are not required to, inform their faculty of the final merit award for all faculty members in the department or school.

8. PROCEDURES FOR APPEAL OF MERIT RECOMMENDATIONS

   1. Individual appeals of the chair’s or director’s final merit recommendation may be made to the college dean. If the dean upholds the chair’s or director’s recommendation, they shall provide a rationale to the appealing faculty member. The college dean’s decision is final.

   2. All merit determinations, including those resulting from an appeal, must be finalized and merit awards made during the current merit cycle. No merit increase resulting from an appeal shall be withheld until the next merit cycle.

   3. A summary of all appeals submitted to the dean using the Merit Appeals Form, however they are resolved, must be maintained on file in the dean’s office. Subsequent appeals regarding performance evaluation and merit recommendations may be made through the faculty grievance process (see AA/PPS No. 04.02.32, Faculty Grievance Policy).

9. FACULTY RETENTION SALARY ADJUSTMENTS

   1. Texas State is committed to an effective program of faculty retention, including appropriate and competitive salary compensation. Deans, chairs, and directors are encouraged to develop practices for investing in faculty before they seek or receive offers from other institutions. Based on the following parameters, the university may consider a counter-offer salary adjustment for a faculty member who has received an offer of employment from a comparable academic institution or industry. It is the faculty member’s responsibility to notify the chair or director of an impending outside offer or related circumstances if they are requesting a retention offer.

      1. Each counter-offer salary adjustment presents unique circumstances and factors. Minimally, the faculty member under consideration must have received above-average merit evaluations in recent reviews, possess an outstanding academic record, and have had a clear impact on university programs consistent with rank and experience.

      2. Retention scenarios are first assessed by the chair or director and dean. After consultation with the personnel committee, the chair or director and dean may make a recommendation to the senior vice provost for a salary adjustment using the form for a retention offer.

      3. Upon acceptance of a counter-offer salary adjustment, the faculty member agrees to remain committed at Texas State for a minimum of three additional years and agrees to withdraw from all active searches.

      4. Salary adjustments to retain specific faculty members do not justify salary adjustments for other faculty members.

      5. Additional guidance on the process is available at in the Faculty and Academic Resources Faculty Hiring and Retention website.

10. ADDITIONAL COMPENSATION

    1. Faculty members may be eligible for additional compensation in excess of IBS for engaging in activities that contribute to the university’s mission, are clearly in addition to regular faculty responsibilities, and require the faculty member to perform work outside of their normal working hours.

    2. Each faculty member is accountable to the university for 100 percent of their regularly assigned duties and may not receive compensation for more than 100 percent time for performing those duties aligned with their assigned workload.

    3. This section does not apply to teaching overloads (AA/PPS No. 04.01.40, Faculty Workload); department chair and school director stipends (AA/PPS No. 04.01.04, Chair and Director Hiring); or summer assignments (AA/PPS No. 04.01.41, Summer Faculty Workload).

    4. Requests for additional compensation must be submitted in writing before work begins using the stipend request form detailing the work to be performed and demonstrating how the compensation requested is reasonable and the commitment is appropriate given the totality of the faculty member’s workload.

    5. Department chairs and school directors have the primary responsibility of ensuring requests for additional compensation are reasonable, appropriate, and will not have an adverse impact on the department or school or faculty members’ ability to successfully accomplish their assigned workload.

    6. Faculty may not receive additional compensation for work in which they receive a workload waiver or adjustment.

    7. Excluding teaching overloads, chair and director stipends, and summer assignments, faculty may not receive more than 25 percent of their annual IBS each fiscal year in additional compensation.

       Example: If the nine-month base salary for a faculty is $100,000, the compensation in excess of base annual salary limit for the academic year is 25 percent, or $25,000.

    8. If allowed by the funding sponsor, extra service pay may be paid from grant funds to faculty members that provide a level of effort on the grant. The request must be approved by the Office of Sponsored Programs via the stipend request form. Extra service pay from sponsored programs must comply with requirements as noted in each sponsored program agreement, uniform guidance, and Division of Research policies on extra pay.

11. FACULTY SALARY EQUITY STUDY MODEL

    1. A periodic faculty salary equity study provides critical information about the university’s faculty salary structure. The study is conducted to ensure a faculty salary system that fairly compensates faculty members for their services.

    2. The periodic faculty salary equity study is based upon a model or method developed to identify current salaries and potential inequities in the existing salary system. The model includes a number of variables that are related to salary, including historical hiring and salary patterns, past performance and merit decisions, and other factors, and is based on an approved method for faculty salary analysis as determined by the provost and EVPAA.

    3. Equity adjustments are not appropriate in cases where salary gaps exist due to failure to earn merit salary increases.

    4. Deans, in consultation with college budget committees and department chairs and school directors, will make recommendations for individual faculty salary equity adjustments to the provost and EVPAA. Department chairs and school directors will have consulted department and school personnel committees. The provost and EVPAA’s final approval is required for all such adjustments.

12. REVIEWER OF THIS PPS

    1. Reviewer of this PPS includes the following:

       Position	Date
       Senior Vice Provost	January 1 E5Y

13. CERTIFICATION STATEMENT

    This PPS has been approved by the following individuals in their official capacities and represents Texas State Academic Affairs policy and procedure from the date of this document until superseded.

    Senior Vice Provost; senior reviewer of this PPS

    Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs