In an effort to make faculty salaries at Regency universities more competitive, the Board of Regents Thursday approved salary increases for faculty promoted to associate and full professors beginning this semester.

NIU and Illinois State University faculty promoted to full professors will receive a pay increase of $2,200 and faculty promoted to associate professors will receive an increase of $1,500 beginning next year.

NIU Provost Kendall Baker said faculty whose promotions were effective Jan. 1, 1989, will receive half of the approved increases. He said the increases are not retroactive to faculty members promoted in the fall 1988 semester.

Previous pay raises for associate and full professors at NIU were $50 and $60 per month, respectively, on a nine-month salary. ISU faculty members previously received no pay increases with promotions.

Promotional increments at Sangamon State University, the third Regency school, recently were established through collective bargaining. Faculty at SSU now will receive $2,000 for promotions to associate professor and $3,000 for promotions to full professor.

While Regents Chancellor Roderick Groves said he feels the increments are achievable, the Regents did not designate a funding source for the increases. Groves said the Regents wanted to allow the universities “freedom of strategy.”

Baker said NIU will use “whatever available resources we have” to fund the increases. The unusually warm temperatures in January are cutting utility costs at NIU, he said.

Gordon Dorn, member of the NIU Faculty Assembly and president of the NIU chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said “I am pleased the Regents and Northern Illinois University are attempting to do something in the area of trying to provide adequate salaries for professors.”

He said although he is pleased with the salary increase, he remains concerned about overall salary equity.

Although achieving salary equity would take many years and much more money, he is less interested in the promotional increments than in achieving salary equity, he added.

Dorn said NIU historically has had a problem with salary equity between and within departments.

“Phase one (the promotional increments) does very little, but it’s a beginning,” he said.

The approval of salary increases to promoted professors is a step in the right direction, he said. “I’m optimistic about what’s happening in this area.”

Dorn said Baker will meet with the Faculty Assembly Wednesday to discuss how salary equity might be achieved “over a period of years. I admire Provost Baker for taking the leadership (to discuss the issue), he said.

Baker said about 30 to 40 NIU faculty members are promoted each year, although the number often varies.

I am pleased the Regents and Northern Illinois University are attempting…to provide adequate salaries for professors.”

Gordon Dorn, member of the NIU Faculty Assembly