Minutes of the Senate Retreat of December 12, 2009
Discussion: 9:45-11:00
Faculty Positions Defining terms, conditions, expectations: what policies should govern titles, ranks, reviews? From initial advertisement to retirement agreements.
- The Provost started the discussion by saying that the quality of the faculty is extremely high in spite of obstacles of considerable magnitude.
- The Board of Trustees Faculty Development Committee was established to look at these areas and the senate as representative of the faculty could present to the Board a plan to move us forward with Faculty Development. The BOT realizes they must use the facilities (AUC) well. This is the time for a productive conversation. The conversation has been opened knowing that they must spend more money on faculty than they have so far.
- We need to re-exam and replace procedures for faculty evaluation and appointments. Our existing procedures lack transparency. There is a need to clarify standards for hiring because presently they are unclear and lack transparency due to several things including reliance on old Egyptian and American labor laws.
- A major overhaul of what the instructor’s title and what he/she should be doing is necessary for fair evaluations. In other words job descriptions are needed. Many faculty members do not have one.
- There is a need for input from the Senate to better describe job responsibilities, designing a draft of an improved evaluation process. No one should expect to be worse off materially with an improved evaluation process.
The Provost described changes. Comments and questions from the floor.
a. Change the process of advertising for faculty positions. Ads must now specify rank, tenure track or not, terms and conditions must be clear and so on. We should no longer issue short term contracts as well as faculty appointment. No longer have contract renewal but all faculty members would be on academic appointment and the review processes used for continuance.
b. All junior faculty members would know if they are tenure track when they come in. Tenure review will be in the sixth year and the department can decide to have candidates apply from year 2 to 6. If the department has a good candidate and can make a case, the tenure rule of 60% tenured faculty in a department can be overruled. The tenure rule of 60% is applied university wide.
c. The title Professor is a tenured position.
d. The title Research Professor I s non-tenured faculty appointment at the university without salary but awarded benefits from the university. Research Professor positions are paid through research grants.
e. Visiting Professor. Many of our visiting faculty are important but the numbers should be reduced.
f. Need clarification on Instructor rank.
g. Describe very clearly appointments people have.
h. We need to understand what kind of faculty we want to have and design something fairly simple.
i. The Provost’s Office would design a bare bones system for the whole university and the department would then define the appointment.
j. Our current system is one size fits all but there are exceptions.
k. You can hire at the Professor level but the appointment would be professor without tenure for a limited time. It is very confusing to have professors without tenure.
l. Can I hire a professor if there is no tenure opening?
m. If recruiting tenure professors, we will not bring people in with tenure to be tenured. They will be hired a non-tenure faculty. BTW 6 years is short compared to US universities. If a department has faculty member who is offered tenure elsewhere, we can offer tenure here to convince them to stay. Faculty can come up for tenure between 2 and 6 years dependent on department recommendations.
n. You (Provost) said you wanted to reduce seconded faculty. How can you do this? Traditionally they have been hired for a short term.
o After 6 years, a seconded faculty member is not short term. They should be offered a contract. Seconded faculty numbers should be reduced. We need to decide if we want them as part of our faculty or not and move on.
p. Research support is pretty generous.
q. Newly recruited faculty should have an idea of what is expected. Career trajectory is not good for them. Need more mentoring of your junior colleagues. A common understanding across the university of what the faculty appointments are. Flexibility over the course of a faculty member’s career. Three elements are research, teaching, and service. Rhythms of career vary by discipline.
r. One of the problems is the movement of faculty to research from teaching. This does go well, however, moving from research to teaching is easier.
s. We are used to being a teaching institution but are now moving into a research institution. We need Ph.D. programs.
t. Local recruitment vs. expat recruitment. We should be looking for people to visit. Appointments could be made, say 5 years at half in our institution and 5 in another. We need a system which permits us to do this.
u We should have joint appointments and it should be easy. Here there seems to be resistance to joint appointments because one appointment is complex in itself and two would naturally be worse.
Faculty Compensation : Defining salaries and benefits: who gets what, when, why and how? From recruitment to retention to retirement.
- Compensation. There are several clauses in our current system. Payment in dollars and in Egyptian pounds is a complicated structure but it is how it is. The SAP system has been catastrophic in its effect on payroll.
- Salaries: Half the faculty salaries include housing, which is now taxable income. The housing allowance is no longer a benefit but will be added into salaries and then deducted as rent. Taxes and social security will be an issue and is being worked on.
- There is the fiction of equal salaries. One is the belief that benefits are compensation.
- Discrepancy in compensation for relocated faculty and Egyptian faculty is the second.
- The current system is unfair. We can’t compare with other markets. Some fields make more than other fields which is as it is. The trustee supplements function as merit increase.
- We need to think about what things in the compensation package for relocated faculty belong. At some point we will have to take the housing benefit and move it to salaries.
- For local faculty, an increase in their salaries will have to be made in order to bring faculty with the same qualifications, teaching responsibilities and rank into alignment. They should be paid the same.
- We will begin to calculate on the basis of market and merit. There is data published which has this information.
- We would have to model a multi-year plan to improve local hire salaries. This would cost 1-4 million dollars a year.
- More transparency is required on compensation for faculty.
- We will require a salary scale and it is going to take a long time to get this process done but it is the only way to sustain quality faculty.
- We need to agree on this and submit a plan to the Board of Trustees.
- We could design a relocation package for relocated faculty with a time limit.
Comments and questions:
Comment: There is a significant difference between relocated and local faculty in salaries and benefits. The Trustee supplements are given to relocated faculty.
Comment: The discrepancy should diminish.
Housing and educational allowance for children’s education. Schooling is an issue for local faculty and they should get some consideration.
Response: Everyone pays for housing while not everyone pays for schooling. It should be left out of the salary adjustment.
Comment: Would salaries be equal to peers in the U.S.?
Response: We don’t know now. We have no way of ascertaining that. Relocated faculty will continue to receive increases while the Egyptian faculty will be moved up to equal their peers. In some fields things are changing so fast that junior faculty members are making more than senior faculty. Comment: We need a better system of evaluating people. Evaluations are very time consuming.
Comment: By equalizing local and foreign hires’ salaries, AUC may not be able to do other things that are needed.
Downtown/New Cairo: What should take place where, who should do it, why and when?
- If you have an office on the New Cairo Campus you cannot have one on the Downtown Campus. (General Rule)
- What would be the exceptions?
- Provost does not want to make decisions on her own as to who should and who shouldn’t.
- If you are teaching in the Management Center, the Engineering Institute or the School of Continuing Education you can reserve an office for the period you are teaching on the Downtown Campus.
- All academic programs should be on the New Cairo Campus.
- Presence of AUC downtown is important.
Submitted by Cheryl Rueby, Senate Secretary and Kathleen Saville, Senate Vice Chair