Resolution on Summer Remuneration and Responsibilities

Proposed September 15, 2000; Passed October 20, 2000

WHEREAS:

1. There are departmental, college, and university activities that need to be carried on in the summer just as they are during the rest of the year. Many nine-month faculty who teach in the summer willingly assume some of these activities even though they are not paid to do so. Administrators are examining the possibility of formalizing these additional responsibilities beyond teaching for nine-month faculty who teach in the summer without a change in the pay structure. This amounts to required but unremunerated work and thus an unfair addition of professorial duties. It would also severely exacerbate the unfairness of the current summer payment scheme.
2. Nine-month faculty at USM have for at least twenty years been paid a fixed amount by the course based on rank for summer teaching. In the case of full professors (the example which will be followed throughout, though the issue applies to all ranks), this has been, in the last several years, $3,000 per course (with an additional $500 in the last two years for all faculty teaching nine-hour loads in the summer).
3. Clearly the per course remuneration concept, by definition, means that other, non-course related tasks are unremunerated.
4. The university seems to wish to have its cake and eat it too, by paying summer faculty well under half their normal rate of pay, yet expecting them to conduct all of the responsibilities associated with the nine-month contract. This is so even though they are specifically being paid by the course in the summer.
5. The mean salary for a full professor at USM for FY 1999-2000 was $71,229 based on a nine-month contract (Institutional Planning and Analysis data). This represents $7,914 per month during the nine-month contract year. A full professor teaching a full load of nine hours in the summer earns $3166 per month ($9500 divided by 3). Therefore, the average full professor teaching full-time in the summer earns in a summer month almost exactly 40% of what he/she earns per month during the nine-month contract period, even though he/she is considered full-time in both periods. Put otherwise, the average full professor takes a 60% pay cut to work full time in the summer, even though the summer teaching load is actually heavier. When this heavier load factor is considered, the pay cut is actually 65% (see items 6 and 7 below).
6. Since summer courses are ten weeks as compared to fall and spring courses which are fifteen weeks, a nine-hour/three course summer load is equivalent to a 13.5 hour/4.5 course load in fall or spring. Thus a "full load" in the summer is in fact an overload.
7. Based on the official twelve hour teaching load during the nine-month contract period, the average full professor is paid $1,978 per course, per month ($71,229 divided by nine months, divided by four courses). In the summer the per course, per month amount is $703 ($9500 divided by three months divided by 4.5 courses) or 35% of the fall and spring paycheck for the equivalent amount of work, with non-teaching obligations being implied but not specified or officially required. Again, however, it should be remembered that many if not most summer faculty perform these non-teaching duties gratis.
8. Our sister institution, Mississippi State, pays 8% of a faculty member's nine-month salary for each course taught in the summer up to a maximum of four courses, or 32%. Thus that faculty member, though teaching a higher load, receives approximately the same paycheck in the summer as in the fall or spring.
9. While there is paperwork associated with summer employment, there is no summer contract.
10. Most faculty who teach in the summer probably do unremunerated tasks in the summer out of a sense of commitment to their students. These include but are not limited to reading doctoral proposals and dissertations, attending defenses, attending Preview, advising new students, conducting research, reading comprehensive exams, participating in committee meetings, department meetings, and the various other responsibilities of being a professor. However, the possibility that summer employees would be compelled to do these unremunerated tasks as a component of one's "contractual responsibility" (as one chair has put it) would be seen as even more unfair than the current summer remuneration system and unacceptably coercive.
11. By common consensus, summer pay at USM has always been exploitative. Full-time summer pay annualized for nine months would equal a salary of $28,500 ($9500 multiplied by three) for a full professor's regular nine-month contract.
12. Summer pay is clearly an issue in both hiring new faculty and losing existing faculty. At least one department on campus lost an existing faculty member to another comparable university where summer remuneration was commensurate with 9-month remuneration; the same department was unable to hire a faculty member from another in-state public institution due to the significant loss in summer pay.

THEREFORE:

Faculty Senate urges the administration to implement the summer pay plan set forth by Faculty Senate in 1997-98 and re-affirmed in 1998-99. This calls for paying summer faculty at a rate commensurate with their nine-month contract salary but divided in thirds based on the number of courses taught. That is, pay each summer course at the rate of 11% of the professor's nine-month salary. Additional duties similar to nine-month duties would therefore be quite naturally expected as a part of faculty's normal rate of pay. In other words, with the exception of part-time summer employees, pay faculty their normal salary and expect of them their normal work responsibilities.

However, given current budgetary constraints, Faculty Senate recognizes the difficulty of an immediate implementation of this plan. Faculty Senate therefore urges the administration to implement the following intermediate plan: Continue to pay faculty at the fixed rate, with a full load still defined as nine hours, but with three hours being released time for non-teaching duties. Thus a full load would be six hours of teaching and three hours other duties. A person could also have either a six hour part-time load teaching six hours with no other responsibilities (somewhat like an adjunct); a six hour part-time load teaching three hours and three hours conducting other duties; or a part-time three hour load either teaching three hours only, or conducting other duties only. Even here, the arrangement is extremely beneficial to the university in that a six hour summer teaching load equates to a 7.5 fall or spring load, or 2.5 courses. Thus the per course, per month pay in the summer for full professors would still be only $1,266 ($9500 divided by three divided by 2.5) as compared to $1,978 during fall and spring months. This still represents only 64% of what the average full professor earns per course during the nine-month contract period based on the official twelve hour load, or, conversely, a 36% pay cut compared to the nine-month contract period.

Last Modified: November 12, 2007 8:25 AM
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