NMSU takes steps to boost salaries to keep faculty

LAS CRUCES, N.M. (AP) - Faculty members and staff at New Mexico State University will be getting raises this summer as part of an effort to keep employees from leaving over lagging salary levels.

Several faculty members said the efforts to boost compensation are steps in the right direction, but the university still lags behind its peers. Some also said morale remains low across the main campus, the Las Cruces Sun-News reported.

In all, 224 faculty members have departed the NMSU system since 2008. That's a turnover rate of about 5 percent.

Of those departures, exit interviews done by the university show that 23 percent left because of salary.

"Eighty-eight percent of NMSU faculty are below market compensation levels," NMSU spokeswoman Minerva Baumann said in an email.

Education professor Herman Garcia said pay has not kept pace with inflation. And in recent years, the university has either cut positions or been slow to rehire because of its financial struggles, which has led to greater workloads for faculty across the board.

"We feel frustrated; we feel unsupported," Garcia said. "I'm 62, and it's not like I can pick up and go to another institution."

Full-time professors at NMSU earned salaries on average of about $81,500 in 2011-2012, according to a recent report from the American Association of University Professors. Full-time professors at the University of New Mexico earned about $102,300 annually.

NMSU associate professors earned about $67,400 — $7,300 less than their peers at UNM. NMSU assistant professors earned $56,300, about $10,600 less than UNM, according to the report.

College instructors received $40,400 yearly — roughly $20,600 less than UNM staff in the same category.

A review done by a committee of the NMSU Faculty Senate found that full-time professors' salaries lagged behind the most, when compared to a group of peer institutions. That was followed by associate professors and then assistant professors.

"If every NMSU full professor received a $10,000 increase in their base salary, our full professors would still be ranked in the bottom third among our official peer institutions," the group's report stated.

This summer, the university will issue a 1 percent across-the-board pay raise for faculty who were hired before Jan. 15 and have at least satisfactory performance evaluations, Baumann said. Exempt staff also will receive the same 1 percent increase.

Faculty and non-exempt staff also will be eligible for a second 1-percent increase that will be merit-based. Individual colleges and divisions will set the criteria for awarding the merit-based pay increases.

Another round of market "equity adjustments" is planned for 2012-13 and distinguished achievement professorships will be established, Baumann said. About 50 professors will be granted that title and awarded a salary adjustment of $10,000.

In all this year, 1,024 faculty and 2,579 exempt and non-exempt staff are expected to get raises, Baumann said. They'll be effective July 1 for year-round employees and Aug. 20 for nine-month employees.

Faculty Senate Chairman Stuart Munson-McGee said the impending pay raise and other measures will help, but they're not enough to close the wage disparity gap that currently exits.

"The direction is great," he said. "It's just not going far enough fast enough."

Even so, Frank Alan Ward, a full-time agriculture business and economics professor, noted that the economy across the state is poor. He said he thinks NMSU administrators and the state Legislature are doing the best they can. A number of states cut faculty positions when the economy sank, he said.

While pay could stand to improve at NMSU, he said: "I think most people probably feel fortunate they're not losing jobs like in California and Arizona and Nevada."

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Information from: Las Cruces Sun-News