Although the Lilly Endowment grant will be used to attract and retain qualified professors with research perks, the $4.9 million grant will not raise current faculty salaries.
The grant is part of the Lilly Endowment's Building Intellectual Capital initiative, which set aside $100 million for Indiana universities and was distributed based on each university's enrollment, according to a press release.
Deborah Balogh, associate provost who wrote Ball State's plan for using the grant, said the grant didn't allow universities to include salary increases in their proposals. However, she doesn't dismiss the fact that something needs to be done.
"I don't disagree with the point that we will still need to address the issue of faculty salaries -- that was a point that the university acknowledged in its self-study last year," she said.
"The Intellectual Capital initiative allows us to address faculty recruitment and retention in a different way. Seeking and obtaining support from the Endowment does not diminish our goal of continuing to work on making salaries at Ball State more competitive," she said.
Joe Losco, Ball State Chapter of the American Association of University Professor, said that while Ball State's plan offers research perks, it won't be enough to attract and retain faculty at the university.
"If we want the best faculty available to teach our students we need to pay them competitive wages. Higher ranking faculty salaries have suffered the most," said Losco. "If you want the best you have to pay them more."
Ball State has historically been at the bottom ranking professor salaries in the Mid-American Conference. The university currently ranks second to last in the MAC. Losco said Ball State has actually lost ground in the last 10 years rather than improved.
"They might have asked a few select faculty," said Losco," but instead of being part of the process we've been circumvented. I think at the very least it's incumbent on consulting the governing bodies that are supposed to have a hand in fashioning these policies."
Losco said that he feels that unless something is done soon about faculty salaries than the university's chances of success will be seriously jeopardized.
"It should be our number one priority," he said. "We've had some changes at the top and I hope the new president involves the faculty . . . to fashion a plan to improve salaries. It's going to take more than some money from the Lily Endowment, it's going to take reallocating money in the university budget."
Ball State's plan, written by Balogh, consists of four ideas to accomplish that goal. These goals focus on science research in order to build faculty and student brainpower. Balogh said this will not only help Ball State be a nationally recognized university in the sciences but it will also help Ball State contribute to Indiana's economic growth as part of what state leaders call a "university plus industry partnership."
"This is a wonderful opportunity for the university to support all the sciences because it provides resources for equipment," Provost Beverley Pitts said.
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The plan's first aim is to attract and keep faculty by offering them what Balogh defines as early career awards, to be given within the first four years of assistant professorship in the physical, life, health, environmental, information and communication sciences. These awards are research based.
"The funds provided by the Intellectual Capital grant can be used to support various research needs," said Balogh. "For example, the money could be used for specialized equipment, for graduate assistantships, or for extra assigned time for research."
The second proposal is to expand the iCommunication program by creating a distinguished professorship in the field. Balogh said these professorships have been used to retain high quality faculty.
She said this proposal also calls for the recruitment of research fellows and industry experts recruited for short-term projects.
The third initiative is to create an undergraduate research fellows program. Students would apply for the research scholarship and be given a faculty mentor. Balogh said a typical student would receive the grant after completing the sophomore year and continue his or her research in the junior year and end the summer before beginning the senior year.
Finally, the plan calls for visiting professorships, which Balogh said are generally advertised in national publications in the specific discipline. She added that the most active laboratories in science consist of visiting professors and graduate students.
"Ball State has the potential to expand research efforts in the sciences and attract large external grants," she said.
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