By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Bowling Green State University faculty will receive raises of 8.5 percent over the life of a new three-year contract.
That agreement was reached by negotiators representing the union and the administration. It still must be approved first by the membership of the BGSU Faculty Association-AAUP, and if that occurs, by the university trustees.
The increases will be 3 percent in each of the first two years, and 2.5 percent in the third.
David Jackson, president of the faculty association, said the pay increase “continues the excellent progress toward the modest goal of getting our salaries up to our middle peers.”
“Our goal is not to become the highest paid faculty in the state,” he said. “We’re trying to reach the median.”
He said the association leadership will “strongly endorse” the agreement when it goes to a vote in mid-April.
“I’m definitely pleased with progress over the last six years. Both sides have shown a commitment to that modest goal. That aspect is very, very positive.”
The contract also calls for a pool of $580,000 for market adjustments of salaries.
Speaking to Faculty Senate Tuesday, President Rodney Rogers also expressed his support for the agreement. The contract will allow the BGSU “to continue to move forward and focus on the future of our great institution.”
Negotiations, which started in August, were largely without contention, Jackson said.
Salaries and benefits, he said, “are always issues of great sensitivity on both sides.”
He said the new contract shifts some of the costs of health care onto faculty. That’s more than made up for by the increase in salaries.
“We’re not unaware that the university pays the bulk of our health care costs, and that health care costs are rising faster than cost of living,” Jackson said.
He suggested there are other ways to structure premiums, including having those who earn less, pay less. But that will need to be studied after this contract is in place, he said.
The contract also calls for change in titles of non-tenure track faculty. “No one likes to be defined by what they’re not,” he said.
Non-tenure track faculty, of NTTFs, will now be qualified-rank faculty with instructor, lecturer, and senior lecturer ranks to be called teaching or clinical assistant professor, associate professor, and professor.
“Changing titles is a recognition of their equal status to other faculty,” he said. They are just as “fundamental to the mission of the institution.”
Jackson said: “We do a lot of excellent research here but we also do a lot of excellent teaching.”
The long-term goal of the American Association of University Professors, and the BGSU chapter, is to secure tenure for these faculty.
Faculty involved more heavily in teaching need it more, he said, since most challenges to academic freedom involve statements made in the classroom or in “extracurricular utterances” on social media or in print.
However, he said, “the issue isn’t ripe yet.”
