UH engineering school rewards faculty

By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer

It's the oldest truism in the world: If you pay them, they will come.

But the School of Engineering at the University of Hawai'i is taking it several steps further: If you pay them better, they will stay.

More than a year ago, Engineering Dean Wai-Fah Chen did something virtually unknown at the University of Hawai'i: he launched a bonafide criteria-based system of faculty merit raises in his college.

He found the money by adjusting his internal budget and using some of the money freed up by faculty pulling in research money.

The new system called for bumping up professors by as much as 5 percent, or about $4,000 a year, for outstanding teaching, mentoring, research, service or scholarship. Those who provided exceptional contributions to fund-raising campaigns, founded a research center or major instructional facility, received prestigious awards, or stimulated an increase in enrollment were also evaluated for the raises.

At the end of last year 10 percent of his teaching staff, six people, received merit raises approved by UH President Evan Dobelle, and the union.

A pat on the back may be nice, Chen said, but a pay increase means more.

"The whole idea is to recognize the faculty with good performance and show appreciation for that," he says. "To motivate them, to recognize them, and to keep them here, this is a must."

While the Engineering School's merit system is unique, it's also the beginning of a long-overdue catch-up program to bring salaries more in line with Mainland institutions, and prevent the loss of good faculty to better-paying universities.

But it also serves as an example for much of the rest of the campus as each of the colleges begins an evaluation of teaching staff under stipulations in the new the University of Hawai'i Professional Assembly contract.

In April, the UHPA signed a contract that provides for 1 percent of the salary appropriation for adjustments that could include merit-based raises.

Throughout February, faculty members will be filing applications with their deans for salary adjustments under the new contract, and will be evaluated in the type of process Chen has already put into effect.

According to UHPA executive director J.N. Musto, there have only been a "handful" of merit increases throughout the 3,000-faculty system in the past three years. In the same time period, 140 faculty members have been nominated for increases in pay — primarily to keep them from going elsewhere.

Only now, said Musto, has there been actual money budgeted for salary adjustments, many of them based on merit.

"In the past, we've lost very good faculty because they thought there was no way to get ahead, only the union raises," said Bruce Liebert, chairman of the Mechanical Engineering Department in the School of Engineering, who applauds Chen's initiative.

"If you'd like to keep the better faculty who have other opportunities, then having them get salary increases based on their contribution is definitely going to help keep them," said Galen Sasaki, associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering.

"Just like in a business, the people who get more done should get paid more."

Although the merit raise system in the Engineering College went in before Dobelle's arrival, the new president is providing strong support for deans and faculty on this issue.

In the past few months, Dean Barry C. Raleigh of the School of Ocean and Earth Science & Technology has seen about a dozen of his top faculty receive merit pay increases he has requested, even though he has been making such requests for a decade with little success.

"It's been very difficult," said Raleigh. "Now we're getting them through reasonably fast, and I'm very happy to say the faculty are much happier."

It's a far cry from the past.

A May 31, 2000, memo to deans and directors at Manoa from former UH President Kenneth P. Mortimer reads in part:

"Although requests have been received for merit adjustments, very few have been approved even when a strong case was made for outstanding achievement in the profession."

In the past, retention raises to hold onto important faculty were often the only way to reward the best. The system was so faulty, said Chuck Hayes, interim dean of the College of Natural Sciences, that two years ago when he nominated two phenomenal professors for merit increases in his faculty of 125, both were turned down.

"I then had to go to Bachman Hall (the administration building), and ask for retention (raises) for these two people," said Hayes. "One of them I was able to hold, and the other I lost. That would not have happened if I was able to give merit. And it cost a lot more to retain (the one) than it would have if I had got them merit in the first place."

Merit-based salary increases are standard at universities across the country, and Dobelle has pledged support. "If you don't validate your employees tangibly with money then I don't know how else you reward them," said Dobelle. "To me, it's fundamental."

Dobelle said that in comparing salaries with Mainland colleges, Hawai'i ranks in the 20th percentile, and he wants to work together with the union to move that up to the 50th and then 80th percentile.

Part of his commitment to the faculty includes his personal efforts to raise outside money for merit raises, faculty endowments and endowed chairs. That will also be part of the expectation he has for the new chief operating officer and chief financial officer of the UH Foundation, whom he expects will be named in the next week or two. He has high hopes the foundation will raise $250 million over the next five years.

"You are the future of this institution and, in many ways, the future of Hawai'i," he told a meeting of outstanding faculty researchers this week. "If we don't have the appropriate incentives for you, or raise money for you, then we're denying you the ability to make your research happen."

Mehrdad G. Nejhad was one of those at the meeting and one of the six engineering faculty who won a merit raise last year based both on his teaching and his research.

As he moves forward with $2 million in financing from the Center for Space Technology of the Naval Research Laboratory, to build "intelligent" structures that could be used to repair systems problems in space, the raise meant a lot, he says.

"It creates a far-reaching effect in the whole university," said Nejhad. "We lose people to the Mainland because of the differences in salary, but this will fill that gap and will also attract new faculty if they know this reward system is in place."

Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.