Non-tenured faculty might see changes in salaries, evaluations

by Becca Manning
Staff Writer

Ohio University's Faculty Senate is considering changing how the university pays and evaluates non-tenured professors.

Members of both the senate's Professional Relations and the Finance and Facilities committees of are working to review salaries and workloads of Group II faculty members, PR committee chairwoman Annette Graham said.

"The role of a Group II faculty member is impossible to define across campus," Graham said. "Salaries are all over the place. We're trying to figure out the easiest way to look at the issue."

Group II faculty members are hired on one-year contracts or on a quarterly basis. In some OU schools and departments, these faculty members are teachers, Graham said. But in other schools, they do much more.

Last fall, Group II comprised about 11 percent of the faculty members in the Athens and regional OU campuses, according to the OU Office of Institutional Research Web site (http:/www. ohiou.edu/instres/faculty/TotalFaculty.html).

No formal review system exists for Group II as it does for Group 1, tenured faculty members. Group I faculty members must document the courses they teach, their scholarly work, publications and service and are evaluated by students, Graham said. But Group II faculty members are not always evaluated this way.

Faculty Senate committee members want to require evaluations of Group II faculty, Graham said. Each college would be responsible for developing its own evaluation methods.

"The resolution proposes a good start at having the administration pay more attention to the issue," Graham said. "We need a better handle on what our Group II faculty members are doing."

Graham said she hopes to bring the proposal to a vote at the next Faculty Senate meeting, on Nov. 19.

Gary Pfeiffer, last year's Faculty Senate chairman, said during the past four or five years the senate has done much survey work to understand the various duties of Group II employees on campus.

Senate has discussed an 80 percent system, in which a Group II member with the same degree and length of service at OU and who has done similar work as a Group I person would receive 80 percent of the pay raise a tenured staff member would earn, Pfeiffer said. But this idea still is in discussion stages.

OU Assistant English Professor Chuck Naccarato, a Group II member for 15 years, said Faculty Senate and OU administrators have made great strides to improve the Group II members' situation.

"We are well ahead of most universities," Naccarato said.

A common misconception is Group II members are asking to be paid the same wages as Group I members, but that is not the case, said Naccarato, one of two Group II faculty member representatives on the senate.

The defining difference between Group I and Group II is Group I members are required to do research projects and Group II members are not, he said.

But Group II members do make important contributions to the university, he said.

"Some people just really prefer to be at this position without the research component," Naccarato said. "There are (Group II) people who have been here 20 years or more. They've been approved again and again by the university as having done a good job, or they wouldn't still be around."