The LSU Board of Supervisors will decide whether to approve the first salary raises for the University’s faculty and staff in four years in a meeting today.
On July 26, LSU President F. King Alexander announced the first system wide pay raises and the Board will be deciding whether to approve the increases for unclassified employees and faculty.
Robert Kuhn, vice provost and associate vice chancellor for budget and planning and interim CFO, said $8.3 million has been set aside for the raises by the University.
Funds for the raises were collected from various sources including tuition from increased enrollment, position vacancies and savings from closing certain scholarships.
Civil service employees, also known as classified employees, will go through a state mandated process to receive their raises on October 1, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Stuart Bell said.
Bell said because the fiscal year begins on July 1, the raises were adjusted to inflate according to each employee’s implementation day.
Thus, 12-month employee raises were chosen to start August 7 and nine-month employee increases will begin September 12.
“We choose implementation dates that would allow us to provide four percent salary raises,” Bell said.
Bell said the administration multiplied current employee salaries by four percent, but the pool the administration put together for salaries is about 90 percent of this number.
Kuhn said if the raises are approved by the Board, deans will be given 4 percent of the base salary of their faculty and they will distribute it based on cumulative performance and evaluations.
But deans are not limited to raising salaries by only 4 percent, according to Bell.
“It doesn’t mean you can’t go over four percent raises, but this is just the average,” Bell said.
For instance, if one professor has performed very well, his or her dean could give him or her a six percent raise, while a professor who’s evaluations have not been consistently positive will receive 2 percent.
However, Bell said the money deans are given is only to be used for salary increases.
If the raises are approved, employees will be told how much they are getting within a few days, then documentation of the increases will be published as soon as possible, Bell said.
“We choose implementation dates that would allow us to provide four percent salary raises.”