Background
The College wishes to have a summer pay policy that is best in class; while maintaining or improving student experiences and course access, ensuring salary equity, increasing opportunities for graduate students and non-tenure stream instructors, and valuing expert teaching, while also ensuring responsible management of unit OCCI funds.
The University has mandated a cap on the amount the College can earn in Off Campus Credit Instruction (OCCI), which emphasizes a need to control instruction cost. Responsible management of OCCI funds rooted in valued-based decision making is a must for multiple reasons, including:a) the faculty, academic staff, and students involved remain a primary focusb) College and units rely on these funds as an important source of revenue.To this end, the College is committed to a values-based approach to the Faculty Summer pay/selection process, and has formulated the policy and guidelines below guided by its values of equity, openness, and community.
College Summer Pay Policies
- Following university policy, faculty and academic staff on academic year (AY) contracts may not earn more than 3/9 of the previous year’s salary during a given summer.
- Faculty and academic staff on full-time, annual (AN = 12-month) contracts are compensated for their summer work as part of their regular annual salary and are not paid extra for summer work.
- For more information on the policy in the MSU Faculty Handbook, please see the following link: https://www.hr.msu.edu/policies-procedures/faculty-academic-staff/faculty-handbook/summer_session.html
College Summer Pay Guideline
The following values-based considerations are provided to departments, centers, and programs in the College when making decisions with regard to Summer pay and staffing.
- Salary equity: Each unit should identify the challenges, gaps, and opportunities with regard to questions of salary equity and summer teaching. It is important to acknowledge the sizable pay discrepancy between the lowest paid summer instructor and the highest paid senior tenured faculty member. Summer teaching also presents a valuable opportunity for faculty with greater financial need. Units should take the changing needs of the faculty and academic staff with regards to salary equity into consideration during the summer selection process.
- College priority – Enrich undergraduate and graduate education: The College wishes to maintain and improve student experience and course access in Summer courses. It also wants to promote high-quality teaching by expert faculty members and recognizes that a summer salary cap might create a disincentive for some that could impact student success goals.
- College priority – Enhance research and creative activity: The College recognizes the importance of the uninterrupted time available over the summer for faculty to devote to their research and creative projects. Units should support faculty with research and creative appointments in their need to prioritize this work over the summer. Accordingly, faculty whose majority effort is teaching can best help to meet summer instructional needs.
- Course enrollments – On-campus courses that are funded by the Provost’s Office have pre-determined enrollment minimums that each course must meet. Because unit budgets fund summer on-line course offerings, units have more flexibility in determining course minimums. Following a values-based approach, a unit head might decide to offer a course with low enrollment as long as it covers the overall course costs (instructor salary) that follow the College Summer pay policy.
Enrollment Standards: https://reg.msu.edu/Read/UCC/coursoff.pdf
Enrollment Limit Monitor: https://reg.msu.edu/UCC/EnrollmentMonitor.aspx
March 9, 2020