Faculty Compensation Committee
Dear Deans, Department Chairs and Directors,
The Faculty Senate ad hoc Committee on Faculty Compensation has been charged with comparing UF faculty compensation with that of other AAU institutions. As members of that committee, Prof. Katovich and I have been charged with developing metrics for a merit based faculty compensation plan. As such I would value your input on the criteria your Colleges, Departments and Centers use to determine Merit Raises.
Obviously merit raise criteria should be tied to the university mission of teaching, research, and service. In this regard I would appreciate any quantifiable criteria (e.g., course evaluations, number of publications or creative works, editor or society officer, etc.) you may already employ in determining merit raises.
Further, as a stated goal of this university is to raise UF to the "Top Tier" of US universities, one aspect of merit based raises should reflect college and department rankings. An obvious, if over used, set of rankings are those provided by US News and World Report. Attached is the methodology used by US News to determine graduate school rankings (undergraduate school ranking methodologies appear to have little to do with individual faculty performance).
As can be seen in the methodology some graduate school rankings are based on faculty controlled performance criteria while others are not. Examples of what I would consider to be a ranking criteria that faculty have some control over, and thus should impact their merit raises, are in Engineering: Faculty Resources, PhD/faculty and MS/faculty ratios, National Academy members (I assume other honors should also be relevant for our criteria), and number of PhD degrees granted; and Research Activity, research dollars per faculty member. Examples of ranking criteria within the Engineering methodology that faculty would have little direct influence over are: Quality Assessment, dean or corporate recruiter assessment; and Student Selectivity, GRE scores.
Many, if not most, of the graduate school methodologies fall under the category of Quality Assessment which, unfortunately, is difficult to directly tie to individual faculty performance. In that regard, are there other college and departmental rankings that you feel are more relevant than US News and/or more quantifiable?
I would appreciate any an all input you may have on this as expeditiously as possible.
Sincerely,
Prof. Eric D. Wachsman
Senator, Faculty Senate
Materials Science and Engineering
University of Florida
www.mse.ufl.edu/~ewach