Campus Investments to Improve CU º£½ÇÉçÇø's Working Environment
Campus Investments to Improve CU º£½ÇÉçÇø's Working Environment
Updated May 2025
Investing in CU º£½ÇÉçÇøÂ
CU º£½ÇÉçÇø recognizes the challenges that the high cost of living in the city of º£½ÇÉçÇø presents to faculty, staff, graduate, and undergraduate students. Improving the salaries, benefits, and working environments of our faculty, staff, and student employees is a permanent priority of the CU º£½ÇÉçÇø administration.
Faculty and Staff Pay Enhancements
- CU º£½ÇÉçÇø has, since 2021, consistently awarded annual merit increases of 3% or above to faculty and staff.
- During that time, CU º£½ÇÉçÇø has also enacted other pay enhancements:
- In July 2023, the campus minimum wage was increased to $18 an hour for staff and to $16 an hour for hourly student assistants.
- Increased pay for promotions of tenure track (promotion to associate and to full professor) faculty (2022)
- Offered retention bonuses for frontline staff (2021, 2022)
- Increased the minimum wage to $15 per hour, including related compression adjustments (2021)
- CU º£½ÇÉçÇø has enacted more than 25 separate measures to improve pay, including those listed above, since 2021.
Graduate Student Enhancements
- Regarding Graduate Students on appointment, the university in recent years has:
- Remitted graduate student fees (2021) for all graduate students on appointment.
- Enacted 3% across-the-board increases to the standard campus rate for graduate student assistantships (2022, 23).
- Enacted 4% across-the-board increases to the standard campus rate for graduate student assistantships (2024)
- Improved medical and dental benefits (decade-long rolling effort).
- Instituted six weeks of paid parental leave (2020)
- Within the first six months of his tenure at CU º£½ÇÉçÇø, Chancellor Justin Schwartz has pledged to:
- Extend health insurance benefits to graduate student family members.
- Accelerate efforts to create faculty and graduate student housing plans for CU South, the executive residence property near Williams Village, and the Louisville US36/McCaslin property owned by the university.
Additional Benefits & ProgramsÂ
- In addition to its commitments to pay increases, the university offers 43 related to health and wellness, plus dozens of other programs, perks and offerings in such areas as child and elder care, learning and development, financial literacy and planning, and discounts on goods and services, that provide supporting resources for work-life balance and stability.
Working Environment Improvements
- Alongside these pay and benefit improvements, the university leadership has worked to improve CU º£½ÇÉçÇø’s working environment by strengthening shared governance partnerships with CU º£½ÇÉçÇø Staff Council,Ìýthe º£½ÇÉçÇø Faculty Assembly,ÌýCU Student Government, and the Graduate and Professional Student Government.
- Within this shared governance framework, each entity can bring forward to campus executive leaders its concerns, grievances, and ideas for improving policies, programs, and procedures, in order to solve problems together and constantly improve the university experience for students, faculty, and staff.
- In addition, CU º£½ÇÉçÇø is committed to increasing student affordability and access to higher education. Recent actions include the elimination of course and program fees and the expansion of the CU Promise program. The campus has also taken key steps to improve student hiring.