A recent Boston University faculty survey revealed concerns about classroom size, minority opportunities and compensation, just as the administration moves to add 150 new faculty positions over the next decade.
Fifty-six percent of Charles River Campus faculty said they are dissatisfied with their salaries, according to the first Faculty Climate Survey conducted last fall by BU’s Council for Faculty Diversity and Inclusion.
“President [Robert] Brown and I have been open with the faculty that overall our salaries are somewhat below our peers, and that we are doing the best we can to increase faculty salaries within the constraints of fiscal responsibility,” Provost David Campbell said in an email.
Campbell, a CFDI chairman, said BU is committed to increasing the size of its faculty and providing “market-driven” salaries, but needs more resources to continue to do so. The results come in light of plans to expand the faculty.
As part of his Strategic Plan, Brown has called for the addition of 150 new professors to BU. The hiring process, which calls for 100 professors to boost the College of Arts and Sciences faculty, has already begun, CAS Dean Virgina Sapiro said in a Jan. 18 Daily Free Press article.
The CFDI survey, which was conducted by the independent Web Survey Service at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and polled more than 1,400 faculty members, included questions about overall job satisfaction, workload, tenure and research opportunities.
Participation in the survey included about 70 percent of Charles River professors and about half of those who teach on the Medical Campus.
Judith Jones, general dentistry department chairwoman, said she thought the survey effectively found out where faculty members stand on problems and how to initiate discussion about them.
Within the survey, faculty members said they were concerned about the availability of opportunities for minorities and females.
“Minority and female professors are not represented among the higher ranks,” Jones said. “I would like to see better mentoring for junior faculty – especially for women and minorities – helping them focus on what they need to contribute to be promoted to the next level.”
The Charles River faculty is 67 percent male and 88 percent Caucasian, according to January 2008 statistics from BU’s Office of Institutional Research.
CAS writing program lecturer Rebecca Kinraide said she wished there had been more questions pertaining to teaching methods and workload.
“I don’t know if the results can pinpoint where the university could improve the ways in which faculty are able to teach,” Kinraide said.
Faculty from both campuses said they felt most influential in their academic department decisions, but only 15 percent of Charles River faculty and 11 percent of professors on the Medical Campus said they believed they had a voice in decisions affecting BU as a whole.
“The departments tend to be much more open to faculty input,” Kinraide said. “The higher up you go, the less say you have. I feel that [a professor’s] comments would have no real impact at the university level.”
About 40 percent of Charles River faculty members said they were displeased with the lack of available classroom space.
“[My classroom is] much too small; I can’t see all my students,” Kinraide said. “We’re packed in there like sardines. It’s not a good learning environment under those conditions.”
Campbell said the Faculty Climate Survey will probably be conducted every three to four years.
“I have every faith that this survey was done because there was genuine interest on the part of the administration and faculty council,” School of Medicine anatomy and neurobiology professor Helen Tager-Flusberg said. “I think the results are going to be taken very seriously. I think were going to see a response to it.”