At its September 2013 meeting, the LSU Board of Supervisors approved salary raises averaging at 4 percent for faculty and staff system-wide, the first in four years.
This year, according to the board’s agenda for its meeting today, pay raises are on the table again with the fiscal year 2014-15 operating budget.
LSU President F. King Alexander said the administration spent a great deal of time this past summer trying to pull together the 3 percent salary increases for this year.
There are $21.9 million additional funds in the operating budget for the LSU System this year, owing to an increase of self-generated funds, according to the agenda.
Alexander said at a Faculty Senate meeting last week that the University is gaining back financial ground lost in previous years or decades causing the University to become less competitive compared to other universities in terms of salary.
He said the University’s professors have gone from 13.7 percent down in terms of salary comparisons to their peers to 11 percent down.
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Stuart Bell said last week it will take as many years to bring the University’s salaries up to previous levels as it took for the University to get to where they are today.
The Board of Supervisors will discuss an update on the Leverage Innovation for Technology Transfer, created in January of this year. The LIFT Fund provides research funding for University professors who need additional funding to move their inventions into the marketplace, The Daily Reveille previously reported.
The board will vote on the extension of Vice Chancellor and Director of Athletics Joe Alleva and on extensions to the contracts of two coaches hired by Alleva, LSU women’s basketball coach Nikki Caldwell and LSU softball coach Beth Torina, The Daily Reveille previously reported.
Former member of the United States House of Representatives Jim McCrery will take former LSU Board of Supervisors member John George’s place at the meeting today.
George, a Shreveport doctor who resigned from the board in June, was also a board member of the private foundation taking over operation of the LSU hospitals in Shreveport and Monroe, said Assistant Vice President of Public Policy Doreen Brasseaux in August.
This month marks one year since the board approved the administrative consolidation of the LSU Agricultural Center and the College of Agriculture.
The AgCenter and College of Agriculture separated in 1972 when the AgCenter’s research and extension goals could not line up with the University’s teaching program, The Daily Reveille previously reported.
According to the Reveille, since the approval of the realignment a year ago, AgCenter Chancellor Bill Richardson has taken on a second role, serving as dean of the college as well as head of the AgCenter after former dean Kenneth Koonce retired in October.