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Articles
The University and the College of Arts and Sciences
Located in the heart of downtown Atlanta, Georgia State University (GSU) was founded in 1913 as the Georgia Institute of Technology's "Evening School of Commerce." It has since evolves into a major public research university, with a school of policy studies and colleges of business, education, health and human sciences, law, and arts and sciences. At last count, GSU enrolled more than 30,000 students and employed over 1,400 faculty members in full- and part-time positions.
Along with the College of Business Administration, the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) was on of the two original colleges of the university. In academic year 1999-2000, A&S offered thirty-four undergraduate majors, twenty-eight master's degrees, and eleven doctoral programs. The college employed 214 tenured faculty, 122 tenure-track faculty, 31 full-time non-tenure-track faculty, 85 full-time visiting faculty, 9 part-time faculty, and 26 part-time visiting faculty. These numbers shifted rather dramatically as the composition of the A&S faculty underwent some major changes in Fall 2000. At that time, there were 387 full-time tenure-line faculty, 47 full-time non-tenure-track faculty, and far fewer that 85 full-time visiting faculty employed earlier. Many of the once-visiting positions were to convert to regular tenure-track and non-tenure-track lines.
1993...A Big Year for Self-Examination
Salary
In 1993, then Associate Dean Abdelal noticed some cases of salary inequity among faculty members in the college. According to David Blumenfeld, associate dean for humanities and the fine arts, Abdelal knew from twelve years of experience as chair of biology that practices existed all over the college that were strikingly, if not intentionally, unequal. For example:
• Two distinguished professors were earning $20,000 leas that colleagues in the same department with comparable records and equal years in rank
• A more aggressive chair was able to secure more departmental funding than a less aggressive chair, though their funding applications were equally meritorious.
• Adept negotiators were routinely able to secure higher salaries in the faculty recruitment and hiring process than less adept negotiators, as well as higher yearly raises than merit would suggest.
• A faculty member who happened to publish a book during a year in which new state money was plentiful received a higher raise than a faculty member who published an equally commendable work in a year in which little or no money was available for such rewards.
According to one administrator, "Everyone knew the salaries were out of whack." In the words of another, "Where individual negotiations rather than systematic criteria determine raises, inequities are bound to result." And so they did.
Workload
Salary inequity represented one side of the coin, workload the other. Until 1993, it was nearly impossible to compare faculty members' work across disciplines. For example, an assistant professor of fine arts and an assistant professor of psychology, both wit the highest credentials in their fields, operated in wholly different spheres. One taught a small but intense studio are class to majors, the other a mammoth introductory course with the help of graduate teaching assistants. Without some way to level the playing field with respect to workload, discussions of salary, raises, merit and productivity traditionally relied on random criteria at best. "[I]n 1993 the administration of the College of Arts and Sciences at Georgia State University reviewed faculty workloads and concluded that it needed a policy to establish workload comparability across varied disciplines and to provide optimal utilization of faculty talents" (Abdelal and others, 1997, pp.61-62).
The goal of the new workload policy was to endure equity while recognizing and supporting faculty members' diverse strengths, talents, and contributions to different areas of the college. (See Exhibit 2.1 for the College of Arts and Sciences faculty workload policy.)
According to Abdelal and others (1997), three main premises undergird the workload policy. First, because the tasks associated with teaching an English course, for example, differed substantially from those involved in overseeing a biology lab, GSU needed "well-defined criteria for comparing workloads across disciplines." The college administration and department chairs worked in convert to create a policy that assigned workload credit to a range of teaching assignments, from conducting ensembles to supervising fieldwork to teaching a large lecture class. This policy, which was approved by the faculty, allotted a faculty member teaching a writing- or technology-intensive course greater "workload credit" than someone teaching an otherwise similar course that was not writing- or technology-intensive. It likewise provided greater workload credit for teaching a large course (with ninety or more students) without a graduate assistant than for teaching a smaller course. The second premise recognized that faculty members at different stages in their careers have different roles and responsibilities. First- and second-year junior faculty, for example, was offered a reduced teaching load so they could concentrate on course preparation and initiation research activities. Similarly, more established tenured faculty were recognized for the greater role they played in institutional governance. The third premise, and the key to the policy, was that the reward structure needed to recognize comparable stab in diverse areas.
Post-Tenure Review
Discussions of salary and workload comparability formed a backdrop for the larger issue of faculty productivity in general and tenured faculty productivity in particular. In 1993, three years before the Georgia university system mandated that all institutions conduct some form of post-tenure review, the faculty, administration, and university senate at GSU began discussing the issue on their own. According to Provost Ron Henry, "We were interested in formulating a policy for ourselves before the university system stepped in and imposed one on us."
Those involved in the policy discussions realized quickly that a positive, formative model of post-tenure review, one that identified and rewarded faculty strengths, was more consistent with the current efforts to equalize salaries and workload than the so-called "negative" model of identifying and "punishing" unproductive tenured faculty. (See Exhibit 2.2 for the College of Arts and Sciences faculty post-tenure review policy.)
Phased in over three years, with the first reviews occurring in 1995, the College of Arts and Sciences' post-tenure review policy reflected the college's view that "even the most successful faculty can profit from periodic discussion od their performance problems, are beyond the hope of real improvement" (Abdelal and other, 1997, p 65). Along with this positive emphasis, proponents wanted to ensure a smooth review process that minimized the bureaucratic burdens associated with many post-tenure reviews. To that end, reviewers relied on information- including annual reviews, curriculum vitae, teaching evaluations, and publication records- already collected by the dean's office. According to one chair, "The basis for the post-tenure reviews was the annual reviews, which people were doing anyway. So taking, five years' worth and combining them was not a major task." In addition, faculty members were asked to write a two-page statement of goals and accomplishments, which, according to another chair, "enabled them to be reflective about their work and was a key part of the review process."
Putting It All Together
The discussions about salary, workload, and evaluation could easily have taken place separately, as discrete issues at different times. "But Abdelal's genius," one observer noted, "was in integrating the three initiatives into a cohesive package." In fact, the degree to which each policy informed the other two directly contributed to the success of the policies and to the support each enjoyed among the faculty and administration.
The themes of equity and reward pervaded the three policies, which applied to all ranked, nonvisiting faculty members in A&S (visiting faculty followed separate guidelines). First, the workload policy provided a common yardstick so that faculty couls be paid at levels commensurate with their effort and productivity. Than, a merit-based salary initiative kicked in to ensure that "faculty with equal rank and merit in...the four discipline areas of the college receive equal compensation." Within each department, an executive committee advised the chair to award each faculty member up to six "points" each for teaching and research and up to four for service; such a quantified approach, when combined with a review of experience, credentials, and annual evaluations, provided a systemative basis for salary increases. In fact, this point system had a built-in check-and-balances mechanism. Each department chair brought his or her ratings to a meeting with the other department chairs within the same family of disciplines. Then then sat down together and, after reviewing all of the performance data, including evidence of teaching effectiveness, either agreed to pass the original chair's recommendation forward to the associate dean or to adjust the rating. This process helped to guard against favoritism; it also held chairs accountable to their peers.
Dean Abdelal explained the impact on salary in detail:
We...approach the question of the relationship between faculty ratings and salaries in two ways. First, we examined the percentage increase in salary over a four-year period...the scatter gram and best-fir regression line (see Exhibit 2.3) indicate that higher merit ratings were associated with greater percentage increases in salary. The regression analysis indicates that 57 percent of the variance in percentage salary increase was accounted for by the merit ratings. Specifically, an increase of one point in merit rating resulted in an additional 5.1 percent being added to the percentage salary increase on average. For example, the average four-year salary increase for a faculty member with a merit rating of 4 (very good) was 15 percent whereas the average four-year salary increase for a faculty member with a merit rating of 5 (excellent) was 20 percent. Second, we examined current salaries. Factors such as rank, time in rank, and area are well known to affect salary and these data are no exception: 77 percent of the variance in salaries was accounted for by these three factors. However. An additional 6 percent of the variance in salaries was accounted for by merit rankings. Specifically, controlling for rank, time in rank, and area, an increase of one point in the merit rating resulted in an additional $4884 being added to salary on average [Letter dated November 2, 1999, for Dean Abdelal to Richard Chair, professor of higher education, Harvard Graduate School of Education].
One associate professor, who has taught at GSU for thirteen years, appreciated the openness of the system and its reliance on objective criteria. For him, the availability of the salary data symbolized this openness. "I'm now aware of what people in my department make," he said. "I was clueless for my first six or seven years here, but now it's open. If there are inequities, they're there for all to see, and you have an opportunity to discuss them. The process diffuses suspicion and resentment." Another administrator comments, "There's an audible sigh of relied from junior faculty when they hear about the rules and the process. They're pleased it's so open and systematic." A department chair, too, appreciated the pervasive candor. "Knowing the process is open forces me to be clear about the rating I assign and encourages me to really get to know my faculty."
Like the merit pay initiative, the post-tenure review process operated according to the principle that merit and positive reinforcement must be tightly coupled. According to Associate Provost, Time Crimmins, the post-tenure review process "has worked very well in Arts and Sciences because it's tied into the workload model and compensation system.... The anticipation of a reward helps motivate faculty."
In fact, when the board of regents mandated post-tenure review for the university system in 1996, the system initially proposed a stricter, more punitive model. According to Associate Dean Blumenfeld, "In [the proposal] model, only faculty would be reviewed, and their tenure would be in jeopardy if they failed to correct their problems within three years. At that point, Dean Abdelal argued that although a negative model may sound tougher and more rigorous, a positive approach actually gets better results."
And by most accounts, the results have indeed been positive. For high-achieving faculty, the reviews offered a formalized setting in which they were praised and given encouragement for continued excellence. These reviews also directly influenced the merit rating a tenured faculty member received, which, in turn, influenced his or her salary and the size of any raise. For those in need of improvement, the review afforded the faculty member an opportunity to devise a plan of action in conjunction with the chair and dean to target areas of weakness and enhance performance. Individual plans varied considerable, but many involved reconfiguring workload, creating a time line by which to complete manuscripts or research experiments, or mentoring by a more experienced colleague. The key to the success of this approach was twofold: the administration was willing to be flexible about work assignments, and, perhaps more significantly, the college was committed to providing the necessary resources to make improved faculty performance a reality.
The Role of Resources
Resources played a key role in both merit-equity and post-tenure review. To advance merit equity, the college undoubtedly needed resources to raise salaries to equitable levels and to offer high performers substantial raises. In the post-tenure review context, these resources, such as graduate research assistants, summer stipends, or release time from teaching responsibilities, formed the backbone of the improvement plans. The ability to award these financial perks may lead one to assume that the College of Arts and Sciences was flush with cash. On the contrary, explained David Blumenfeld, the willingness to allocate resources to these efforts is more a reflection of the college's strategic priorities than of the state filling the college's coffers with gold. In some senses a chicken-and-egg relationship, resources and priorities are mutually reliant. Blumenfeld noted:
Let me concentrate first on merit equity. Certainly it is true that we had several good years (6 percent raise money in 1996-1999) and that this helped us achieve our objectives more quickly than we otherwise would have. But, in fact, we made progress toward salary equity even in years when state funding was not high. In 1993, for example, when the university received 3 percent for raises, the dean persuaded the chairs that the college should reserve .5 percent for correcting the most prominent salary inequities... With the chairs' consent, the dean persisted in holding between .5 percent and 1 percent for merit equity through 1999, by which time the salary structure in the college was finely tuned...[I]t has now become university policy to provide a fraction of the salary raises (normally between .25 percent and .75) for correcting equities.
Certainly strong state financial support facilitated the college's ability to meet its goals. Ultimately though, was the college's success due to increased funding, or rather to its reordering of budgetary priorities? "It was due to both," asserted Blumenfeld, "though reordering our priorities was the essential factor."
The Dean
When visitors enter Dean Ahmed Abdelal's office, a brass plaque on his desk stands out: "It's all one budget," it reads. The sign might as well state, "Special interests and sly negotiators need not apply, for we're all in this together." And by all accounts, Dean Abdelal takes his philosophy to heart. In his seven years as dean and his twenty at the institution, Abdelal has earned the respect of his colleagues and is credited, though perhaps not single-handedly, with the recent improvements in faculty work life in A&S. According to one associate professor, "Ahmed's approval rating is over 90 percent. His policies and charisma have driven this success."
After earning his Bachelor of Science degree at Cairo University, Dean Abdelal completed a Ph.D. in microbiology at the University of California at Davis. He taught in both Cairo and California before joining the GSU faculty as an associate professor of biology in 1975. He earned tenure in 1978, and the following year was promoted to full professor and named chair of the biology department. Dean Abdelal remained chair for thirteen years until, in 1992, he was named Dean of A&S. Since 1999, Abdelal has also been director of Middle East Center for Peace, Culture and Development, which, among other initiatives, offers a joint MBA with Cairo University, collaborates in biotechnology research with institutions in Egypt, Israel, and Jordan, and provides advanced pedagogical and English-as-a-Second-Language training for Egyptian teachers. Abdelal has coauthored a textbook for graduate students and produced fifty-five refereed publications.
Dean Abdelal values openness, championing issues he believes in, and works tirelessly to find common ground among squabbling constituents. Dr. Lauren Adamson, associate dean for social and behavioral sciences, commented, "Our dean is indefatigable at building bridges. He will sit down with folks until a bridge is found, or he will go and build it himself."
Dean Abdelal's leadership skills are valued, not only by those who must answer to him, but also by those to whom he himself answers. When the Georgia Board of Regents mandated post-tenure review three years after A&S established its own post-tenure review policy, it ultimately abandoned its preferred model in favor of the one at A&S. In fact, the board was so impressed by the work at GSU, it invited Dean Abdelal and Provost Henry to present their post-tenure review model at a series of workshops for chairs and deans across the state.
Though Abdelal leads by example, his collegial approach relies, by definition, on the strength and commitment of those with whom he works, be they fellow administrators, department chairs, or faculty members. One administrator commented, "There are multiple players in terms of leadership on this campus. The chairs, in particular, have played a major role in all of these initiatives. Chairs here are not just put out on a limb only to be sawed off later." Faculty, too, played a major role in the formation and implementation of the various policy initiatives. Abdelal described the A&S team approach:
In each case, the dean's office drafted an initial proposal, which it presented to the chairs' council and to the elected faculty who constitute the College Executive Committee. Discussion in these bodies produced modifications that resulted in proposals with broad-based support in the college. The final proposals balanced faculty prerogatives and administrative concerns and created a system that could be administered equitably and with relative ease. After achieving consensus in the executive committee and chairs' council, the dean presented the workload policy to the full faculty as an initiative that had the support of the college's principal faculty and administrative committees. After we adopted the workload policy, members of elected departmental executive committees assisted in its implementation and helped guide their chairs to administer it in ways designed to further its basic objectives [Abdelal and others, 1997, p. 71]. And while this approach has worked well at GSU, according to one faculty member, "it hasn't worked as well statewide as we would have liked."
What about time? Some would say this is the most precious commodity to overworked faculty members and harried administrators. According to one department chair, "The policies work well, but we had to hold interminable meetings to get where we did. The dean's style is to go over every single nuance."
Part-time Instructors - the Next Big Hurdle
The time-consuming nature of generating and carrying out the integrated initiatives has not been the administration's only concern. So, too, has the outcome of a recent effort to reduce the number of part-time instructors at the college- a move that struck some as a sincere attempt to promote even greater equity among the faculty and struck others as a weak gesture to placate a discontented, and increasingly vocal, constituency.
The Association of Part-Time Faculty at GSU was founded in the fall of 1998. The group, which initially attracted twelve members, won money and support from the Georgia chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). Its purpose was to lobby for equitable salary, benefits, office space and equipment, professional development funds, and job security. As on many campuses, part time instructors (PTIs) at Georgia State had traditionally been underpaid, overworked, and ineligible for many of the benefits and job-related perks that often offset the low salaries faculty members have come to accept as par for their profession. The PTI's secondary purpose in forming an association was to seek greater respect from their colleagues both in the faculty and in the administration.
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education , in the fall of 1998, 189 part-time faculty taught 323 courses, at GSU, or "about 36 percent of all the courses offered" (Wilson, 1999, p.A18). Each earned $1,500-$2,000 per course, depending on credentials, and could teach a maximum of eight courses per year. Simple calculations reveal an annual full-time salary of, at most, $16,000, without benefits. At least one part-time instructor took a construction job over the summers to make ends meet.
According to the minutes for the chairs' council meeting on January 6, 1999, Dean Abdelal proposed that: "conversion of PTI positions to faculty appointments with benefits, after graduate students are maximally used, be the budget priority for FY00 for the college. He recommended a salary for visiting lecturers of $24,000 and a workload of eight classes academic year. He noted that this was 50 percent above the current PTI compensation for teaching, plus roughly 29 percent in benefits, increasing their pay by more than 75 percent. He also said that some of the new positions could eventually be turned into tenure-track positions.
The conversion cost the college $1.7 million for the first year, with half of the money coming from the provost's office and the rest from the A&S budget. After passing this proposal through appropriate governance channels, Dean Abdelal announced his plan in April 1999. The original plan was to cut the number of PTI positions in half beginning that fall. In their place, sixty-five new non-tenure track jobs-ten visiting lecturers (requiring a Ph.D. and paying $30,000 per year) and fifty-five visiting instructors (not requiring a Ph.D. and paying $24,000)- would be created. All of the new positions would be full-time salaried jobs with full benefits. Current PTIs would be eligible to apply for the new slots.
One might have expected these PTIs to have greeted the news enthusiastically. After all, the salary of a visiting lecturer with a Ph.D., for example, would skyrocket from $16,000 to $30,000 almost overnight. Yet, as one PTI remarked, "We haven't really defined it as a victory. It doesn't answer all the questions, but it is a move in the right direction." (Suggs, 1999, p.3B).
Among the remaining points of contention were that all of the new positions were "visiting," so there was little job security even for those who had been teaching at GSU for years. Additionally, while the $24,000-$30,000 salary seemed a windfall compared to the old PTI salaries, it still did not compare to the average salary ($36,000-$40,000) of a tenure-track faculty member. Finally, for those faculty members who might have aspired to join the ranks of their tenure-track and, ultimately, tenured colleagues, the heavy teaching load and large classes made devising and carrying out a meaningful research agenda a near impossibility. And according to one faculty member, "It's research and publishing, not teaching, that drives the current tenure-track system."
On the contrary, noted a senior administrator, while many, if not most, research universities place far great emphasis on research than teaching, "it simply isn't true in our college. Teaching and research are weighted equally in our merit-equity system, and our promotion and tenure manual, which is the authoritative guide for our deliberations, places teaching and research" on par with one another.
Thus while some disagreement over the relative importance of teaching versus research may exist, research, whether of primary, secondary, or equal importance, nonetheless remains an important criterion of advancement in A&S.
The Future
While some dilemmas remain to be resolved, all early signs indicate that the A&S faculty is enjoying a greater degree of collegiality, significantly improved working conditions, and increased opportunities for reward than ever before. If the administration is able to sustain its commitment to improving the faculty work life, Dean Abdelal and his colleagues may well find themselves earning support and admiration far beyond Georgia's borders- perhaps from countless other institutions seeking to create a fairer, more harmonious atmosphere for their faculties as well.
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