Effective July 1, funds amounting to a 4 percent average salary increase will be allocated to deans, vice presidents, vice provosts, and the director of Libraries to distribute to faculty, professional staff, and librarians on the basis of merit. For teaching and research assistants, a 4.5 percent salary increase allocation includes a pro rata share of the recruitment and retention fund for ’99-’00.

President McCormick and I ask that you consider several issues as you deliberate on merit salary increases in your units. First, the proposed new salary policy pending before the Faculty Senate includes an annual 2 percent increase for all meritorious faculty. The spirit of this policy is to assure salary progression for UW faculty through the course of their careers. While this policy cannot be implemented in time for the July 1, 1999, merit raises, please bear it in mind as you make salary allocation decisions for your unit. Second, the allocated funds include monies intended by the Legislature to enable the UW to retain faculty and professional staff whom we are at risk of losing to our competitors. Thus, considerable focus should be given to rewarding meritorious faculty and professional staff whose salaries are simply not competitive. Third, we ask that you give special consideration to meritorious faculty whose salaries are lower than their internal peers due to compression.

Additional funds will be provided to fund faculty promotions at 8.9 percent (3 steps). We are also reviewing the current levels of faculty salary floors. If they are adjusted upward, funds will be provided to support these changes.

For the biennium, $2.4 million has already been committed to support recruitment and retention of faculty and professional staff. In addition, $1 million will be distributed to deans and vice presidents to support college and school retention efforts.

This allocation structure provides funds to the deans to respond to the schools’ and colleges’ outstanding retention obligations, thereby allowing all faculty and professional staff to compete for the full 4 percent average merit/extraordinary merit salary increase to be allocated to their units.

Centrally we will retain $4.3 million (0.53 percent of the salary base) to be distributed throughout the biennium to assist with specific challenges related to individual and unit recruitment and retention problems. Of these funds, a small amount will be reserved for creating new positions, generally related to the recruitment of new deans or to exceptional hiring opportunities.

Because such a large proportion of available funds is being allocated to salaries, a great many other needs in the coming biennium will go unmet. However, this decision is the result of a campus-wide consensus that the UW’s faculty and staff are the source of its excellence far beyond any other factor.

Allocation amounts, forms, and instructions for the salary increase implementation process will be distributed soon by the Office of Planning and Budgeting, and directions for reappointments and the processing of Personnel Action Forms (PAF) will be issued as well. We ask that you follow the timetable that will be included with the instructions, which will make it possible to implement the increases in time for the July 25 payroll. A note on salary steps: The proposed new faculty salary policy pending before the Faculty Senate will almost certainly eliminate the faculty salary step system. Because the policy cannot be approved by the general faculty until the end of June at the earliest, we must proceed under the present step system. However, you may freely use the “off-step” notation to override the system.

While the UW continues to have significant salary gaps with our peers, President McCormick and I are very pleased that during this biennium we will be able to make some progress toward reducing these gaps. This results primarily from the tremendous effort that was poured into convincing the state of the UW’s pressing salary needs. UW representatives worked long and hard in Olympia. They include especially President McCormick, Associate Vice President Sherry Burkey and Kevin Evanto of the Government Relations staff, Vice Provost Harlan Patterson, Faculty Legislative Representative JoAnn Taricani, and many others. I would also like to thank Governor Gary Locke and those legislators who worked on our behalf.

Sincerely,

Lee L. Huntsman
Provost

cc: Board of Regents

¹ Because the UW’s actual annual GOF salary base is $18M more than the state calculates, the allocation is a bit less than 3 percent + 3 percent.

² The administration will propose to the Board of Regents that the full 4.6 percent/3.6 percent tuition increase be adopted for resident/nonresident undergraduate, medical, dental, law, and MBA programs, and that resident/nonresident graduate tuition be increased by 3 percent each year of the biennium.

³ Estimated net between the salaries of retiring faculty and those of newly hired junior faculty in the coming biennium, including reserves. While the salary policy discussions have included a model that estimates a 1.35 percent recapture of base faculty salary, this is a long-term average estimation. The current realities of salary compression are such that not more than 1 percent is likely to be available from internal position rebudgeting in the next few biennia.

⁴ Over the course of the ‘97-’99 and ‘99-’01 biennia, $22M of $26M in new tuition revenue will have been applied to the salary pool. ¶