Merit pay plan terms agreed on

By Amanda Hunt

Arizona Daily Wildcat

Having discussed the proposal since January, the UA Faculty Senate finally approved a merit-based pay plan for faculty.

The Proposed Performance-Based Compensation System for Faculty has spent the past three months volleying back and forth between the Senate and the Academic Personnel Policy Committee.

The objectives of the plan are to "link salary more directly to performance," "improve and maintain pay equity," "integrate regular review and the promotion and tenure review process," and "provide an improved faculty review procedure after tenure or continuing status is attained."

To meet these objectives, faculty will be reviewed on a two-or three-year basis depending on status and will receive varying salary increments based on the results of the review.

A faculty member receiving an "unsatisfactory" review will have no pay increase. An "acceptable" review will only result in the state issued salary increase. "Good," "excellent" and "truly exceptional" performance will be rewarded with increasingly larger salary increments.

There was some confusion about whether the pay increases would be linked to state-issued increases. In his report to the Faculty Sen-

ate, President Manuel T. Pacheco announced that the State Legislature has approved an increase of 2 percent for salary increases based on merit.

Nathan Buras, chair of the committee, said state increases are not linked to this plan and increases would only be in the form of dollar amounts, not in the form of percentages.

Provost Paul Sypherd said what will most likely happen is that the money from the 2 percent increase would be distributed "from top to bottom" of the performance scale "until the funding runs out."

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