WSU’s Top Teachers Lagging On Pay Scale Top Researchers Get $28,000 To $37,000 More Than Faculty Honored For Classroom Performance

Last spring, Washington State University joined other land-grant schools in pledging to provide students the best instruction that money can buy.

Too bad WSU’s best teachers weren’t in on the deal.

University payroll records show that teachers who have received WSU’s top faculty award earn $28,000 to $37,000 less than the school’s best research scientists.

Pending a review by WSU administrators, the difference in pay would seem to fly in the face of the university’s commitment to classroom instruction for the nearly 20,000 students beginning classes today at the Pullman university and its branches in Spokane and elsewhere. Salaries are one of the most effective ways to retain the best teachers - and show appreciation for their efforts.

The pay gap also may reflect how researchers, who pump out academic papers and attract large sums of grant money, capitalize on those tangible results while teachers languish in the classroom, pinning their hopes for monetary rewards on student evaluations and other subjective measures.

“WSU wants to come across as a university that prioritizes teaching as being very, very important,” said animal science professor Phil Senger. “That should be reflected in teaching salaries. But something’s not right.”

Complaints brought this summer by Senger and soil scientist John Reganold have triggered an investigation by WSU to determine if teachers are paid too little. No one, including Senger and Reganold, is suggesting that researchers are paid too much.

To prove their point, Senger and Reganold pointed to the salaries of the annual winners of the Sahlin Faculty Excellence Award, a prestigious honor given during spring commencement to a researcher, instructor and a faculty member engaged in public service.

Named after WSU alumni Lee and Jody Sahlin of Spokane, the Sahlin Award spotlights the university’s best faculty and comes with a $2,500 purse. Since 1982, only 46 of the approximately 1,200 faculty at WSU have won a Sahlin.

An analysis of the published monthly salaries for the 13 Sahlin teachers and 12 Sahlin researchers currently employed at WSU shows that on a nine-month contract basis, teachers earn $27,712 less than researchers. Teachers average $59,068, compared with $86,780 for researchers.

On a 12-month basis, the gap widens to $36,949. Teachers earn an average of $78,758, compared with $115,707 for researchers.

For faculty who have nine-month appointments, 12-month salary figures represent a projection of their earning potential, not actual pay.

Geoffrey Gamble, vice provost for academic affairs, said his office will spend the next six to eight weeks analyzing the professors’ complaint. That’s a shift from the cool reception that Senger and Reganold said they got from the administration when they first raised the teachers’ pay question in June.

Gamble suggested the salary differences might be due to market demand for researchers, who often require higher salaries to woo them from private industry. In addition, some of the best teachers may have yet to win a Sahlin Award, which could lower the average pay. Some researchers also may receive extra money for previously working in administration, he said.

“I don’t know if I disagree with them (Senger and Reganold),” Gamble said. “It could be that they are right.”

The outcome of the investigation is important to WSU’s public image. President Sam Smith and other members of the Kellogg Commission, a national group formed to promote major higher education reform, reaffirmed that universities should be “student centered, committed to excellence in teaching,” among other things.

The outcome also could change the way the university determines who gets merit pay in the future.

Internationally recognized biochemist Clarence “Bud” Ryan Jr. said that it is easier for a researcher to get a raise than a teacher, and those increases can add up over time. Ryan, a 33-year veteran of WSU, won the Sahlin Award in 1984 and is the highest paid winner, with an annual salary of $140,292.

“You can build a tremendous case for people very active in research,” Ryan said. “If a researcher publishes 12 papers and brings in $1 million in grants, it’s pretty apparent what they’ve done. If a teacher has done an outstanding job, who’s to know?”

, DataTimes