Curriculum and Instruction
TO:C&I Faculty and Staff
FROM:Jim Lehman, Head
DATE:April 21, 2008
RE:Annual merit reviews and raises
The budget process for next year is underway now, and in the coming weeks when the university has completed its process you will be receiving information about your specific merit pay increase for next year. At Purdue, all raises are considered merit-based. There is no “standard” raise or cost-of-living allowance, and doing only what you’re assigned to do is not considered meritorious. How does the merit review and raise allocation process work in C&I? This memo is intended to describe how thecurrent process works in the department. The faculty process is described below, and the staff process is described at the end of the memo.
The faculty merit review process is separate from but in some ways parallel to the promotion and tenure process. At the end of each calendar year, all faculty members and permanent teaching staff are asked to submit an updated vita and highlights of contributions for the past calendar year. Faculty members' contributions for the year in the areas of teaching/learning, research/discovery, and service/engagement are reviewed and independently rated by the department head and assistant head using a scale of 0-3, where we consider 1 as “baseline.”(Clinical faculty members, who do not have an expectation for doing research, receive a prorated score in that category.) Using the merit grid as a guide, Maribeth and I award higher scores to what we perceive to be meritorious activities (e.g., getting high teaching evaluations, publishing multiple articles, getting grants, providing major service to the department and college). It is a subjective process, and we must rely on the information that you provide to make our judgments. So, it is important that you provide clear and comprehensive information for the review process by the established deadline. It is also worth noting that unlike the promotion and tenure review process, which takes into account your whole career, the merit review focuses on the past year only. Works in press, grants or awards that will be given in the current year, etc. are noted but do not count in the review of last year’s efforts. Maribeth and I then meet to go over our ratings. If our ratings agree, we do not have further discussion. Where we differ, we discuss our ratings and reasons for them, and come to consensus. In the end, each faculty member receives a score in each of the three categories based on our sense of the faculty member's contributions during the past year.
After the ratings are completed, I begin by totaling the merit points for each faculty member and then for all faculty members. As a starting point, I take most but not all of the dollarsallocated in our faculty merit pool, divide by the total number of merit points, and come up with dollars per point for each faculty member. This provides a base raise for each person. This approach tends to
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result in higher percentage increases for lower paid junior faculty and lower percentage increases for higher paid senior faculty. This is a bias that I personally find acceptable, especially since junior faculty tend to score a bit lower on the merit reviews simply because they are not doing as much at this stage of their careers as more senior faculty.However, it does create some difficulties, such as some disproportionately low percentage merit increases for more senior faculty who are performing well. I use the remaining dollars in the merit pool as a kind of “fudge factor” to help adjust some merit increases upward.
This year, the university is providing a total merit pool of 3.5% for the department. However, department heads have been asked to withhold 0.5% for special merit increases (what are known locally as EMMEs) that are designed to reward extra-meritorious performance, address retention and equity issues, or be used in other flexible ways. In the past, we have received a separate pool of EMME dollars with restrictions on how they could be used (e.g., no more than 1/3 of the faculty members in the department could get one). Given how it is being handled this year, the base allocation on which merit increases were calculated was 3%. I developed recommendations for allocating the additional 0.5% merit pool (the EMMEs) based on factors such as high merit evaluation scores, notable accomplishments such as winning an award or landing a major grant, etc. (Over a period of years, I have tried to distribute EMMEs to different deserving faculty members, so that a number of faculty members have occasionally gotten an extra boost in a good year.)Although handled separately, these additional merit dollars are simply folded into the merit increase that selected faculty members receive this year. Individuals who are being promoted next year also receive a special allocation, a lump sum provided by the university, which is added in to the overall raise.
For individuals who are jointly appointed, I confer with the head of the other department about the merit increase. Usually, the head of the department where the majority appointment is located takes the lead in recommending merit increases for those faculty members. If necessary, we then negotiate the final recommendation that goes forward since the dollars that support jointly appointed faculty are shared across departments.
As a final step in the process, I meet with the dean to review the process and the recommendations for merit increases. The dean can and sometimes does make adjustments to the department’s recommendations to change (either increase or decrease) the recommended merit raise for a particular faculty member. Once the final figures have been agreed upon, they are forwarded to the central administration for final approval. Compensation statements for next year will be distributed when the university has completed its process with all departments/colleges.
For administrative and clerical staff, the process is somewhat more straightforward. A standard evaluation form is now used throughout the College of Education. This form goes to all the faculty members who work with a given clerical staff member. Completed forms are compiled and reviewed by Deb Aldridge and myself. Deb and I confer about the merit increases for members of the staff. This year, a separate 3.5% merit pool was provided for clerical and administrative staff members. Because this is a relatively small pool, there has been discussion of combining the reviews of administrative and staff members across the college, which would provide a larger pool of dollars with more flexibility for varying percentage increases. However, this was not done this year. As with faculty, departmental recommendations are reviewed by the dean, and the final figures are forwarded to central administration.
That’s a brief overview of the process. If you have questions or suggestions for improving this process, please feel free to contact me.