Chancellor's Task Force on Faculty Salary

Call to Action

The 海角社区 Faculty Assembly identified compensation as the top priority for faculty in its听2024 Survey of BFA Priorities and Actions. Chancellor Schwartz shares the BFA鈥檚 commitment to exploring how CU 海角社区 can offer more competitive compensation and address salary compression issues. To this end, in April 2025, he convened the Task Force on Faculty Salary to make recommendations regarding compensation enhancement options and strategies, with an initial focus on teaching professors and tenure-track/tenured faculty.听

The Task Force is charged with the following actions and assessments:
  • Market and cost of living comparison:听Benchmark CU 海角社区 tenure-track/tenured faculty and teaching professor salaries against AAU public peers and make recommendations regarding ranks and disciplines at CU 海角社区 in greatest need of market adjustments.
  • Promotion and tenure raises:听Assess the impact of current tenure-track/tenured and teaching professor promotion raise levels, including in relation to the market and to positive and negative effects on salary compression. Make any pertinent recommendations about adjustments to raise amounts and/or decompression processes.
  • Retention offer processes:听Evaluate current retention offer processes to determine appropriate criteria for retention offers, and make recommendations for updating or implementing CU 海角社区 faculty听retention offer guidelines as necessary.
  • Budget model:听As preliminary work to assist with review of the CU 海角社区 Budget Model, assess aspects of the budget model that positively or negatively impact faculty compensation practices; include consideration of the Faculty Actions component of the model and make relevant recommendations.
  • Total compensation vs. salary compensation: Benchmark total compensation against salary compensation to ensure comprehensive and competitive faculty compensation packages.
  • Teaching loads: Conduct a peer comparison of tenure-track/tenured and teaching professor teaching loads, by discipline, and review existing policies and best practices to provide recommendations for optimal teaching loads. Assess utilization of听differentiated workloads.
  • College/department planning tools:听Develop or recommend planning tools for use at the college and department levels to better manage faculty salary and workload planning.
  • Compensation levers:听Recommend a range of department/program, school/college, and central administrative levers for achieving enhanced faculty compensation.
  • Faculty Salary Procedures Working Group:听Draw on the recommendations of the 2022-23听Faculty Salary Procedures Working Group to address items above, as relevant; coordinate recommendations with Faculty Fellows for Faculty Salary Procedures.听

Task Force members will make recommendations in alignment with听CU 海角社区鈥檚听compensation philosophy, which 鈥渓ays out the values and principles in which the university鈥檚 compensation structure and practices are grounded. The values and principles themselves derive from the university鈥檚 mission and the campus鈥檚 strategic imperatives. The key values include fairness, transparency, consistency, equity, competitiveness, and merit. These values and the values of Shared Equity Leadership inform the guiding principles and compensation practices.鈥澨

The Task Force will utilize the compensation philosophy, including听compensation terms 补苍诲听guiding principles, and ensure that recommendations comply with the听.听

Timeline

  • The Task Force will submit its recommendations in October 2025.

听