Dave Appleyard and Scott Bierman

Among the most important of the recommendations made by the 21^st Century committee was to adopt new strategies to increase and strengthen the College community of faculty and staff of color. Academic departments at Carleton, with the support of the Dean and President, have worked very hard to recruit and retain an increasingly diverse faculty. Table 1 identifies the number of regular minority faculty teaching annually at Carleton over the last ten years.

Table 2 simply recasts the numbers of non-white faculty as percentages of all regular faculty.

One simple measure of the degree to which these energies have been successful is to simply calculate the change in different demographic categories since the 21^st Century Committee first started its work. Table 3 reports these results.

As Table 3 shows, the change in minority regular faculty over this time period is more than 100% of the change in total regular faculty. While this suggests a substantial degree of success in strengthening the faculty community of color, it is also obvious that Carleton has not been particularly successful in increasing the number of black faculty.

Changes in the demographics of exempt staff over the last five years are muddied by changes in the classification of jobs during that time. The casual evidence suggests that while there have been some significant improvements in staff diversity, these have not been as dramatic as what was just reported for faculty.

The 21^st Century Committee also recommended that the College reaffirm its commitment to fair and competitive compensation for all employees. For faculty we have often used a group of sixteen highly selective colleges with whom we compare our salary and compensation data as one way to measure the degree to which we are maintaining our competitiveness. Tables 4 and 5 below show average salary data for Full and Assistant Professors for the academic years 1998-99 and 2002-03.

Clearly the college has made significant efforts to improve its competitive position with respect to faculty salary and compensation.[1] This, of course, is a commitment that needs to be constantly maintained or we run the risk of losing these gains.

On the staff side, the evidence of the College’s commitment to competitive compensation for exempt staff is shown in Figure 1.

Of particular interest is the shift from the relatively high percentage of exempt staff being paid more than 10% below the target level in 2000-01 (46.9%) to a relatively high percentage of exempt staff being paid more than 10% above the target level in 2002-03 (41.0%). This was a change that needed to take place, and did.

Figure 2 shows the same type of wage distribution breakdown for non-exempt staff.

There is not the same improvement in competitive position for non-exempt staff that exempt staff and faculty have enjoyed. Clearly the College will need to pay attention to the increase in the percentage of non-exempt staff who are paid more than 10% below the target.

Another major recommendation the 21^st Century Committee made was: Intensify the College commitment to faculty and staff development. Faculty development has long been a high priority of the College, and the years since the Committee’s report have been no exception. The College has adopted an accelerated faculty sabbatical leave program, funded additional “targeted opportunities” for a broad range of course releases and projects, implemented an improved process for promotion to full professor status, and acquired additional outside grants to support other faculty development. Faculty members on the Faculty Council and others are generally pleased with the College’s efforts to support faculty development. The main issue at present for the faculty is that of faculty workload; in particular, the current teaching load, heavier than that of colleges with which we compare ourselves, prevents faculty from taking full advantage of the many faculty development opportunities now available. (Of course, it also impinges upon faculty members’ abilities to participate fully in other aspects of College life.)

What is noticeably missing since the Twenty-First Century Committee report has been any increased commitment to staff development. In August 2001 the College convened the first-ever Exempt Staff Retreat, which focused on exempt staff development. In September 2002 an exempt staff task force was created to analyze the current situation for exempt staff development, to study what is done at other institutions, to develop a College policy statement on exempt staff development, and to submit a report with recommendations and a plan for their implementation. The task force is still at work, and we talked with its co-chairs. Except for a few minor changes (such as the implementation of a program for academic department assistants), the exempt staff program appears to be the same as it was five years ago: minimal. In our subcommittee report five years ago, we suggested that the College (a) provide more encouragement to staff to apply for opportunities for and encourage suitable and especially upward mobility of staff; (b) establish professional development accounts for exempt staff, (c) make funds and time available to biweekly staff College-wide for both on- and off-campus professional development opportunities, including workshops and conferences; and (d) expand the current program of sabbaticals available to exempt staff. While there has been College attention to (a), virtually no attention has been paid to (b) or (d). In the time available, we were not able to assess progress in (c). But we gather from various conversations that, at present, there is virtually no established program for biweekly staff development.

In the area of faculty and staff development, we recommend these issues be targeted in the capital campaign: (a) reducing the faculty teaching load in a way that minimizes the impact on the curriculum; (b) establishing professional development accounts and increasing sabbatical leave opportunities for exempt staff; (c) addressing biweekly staff development in some innovative way.