'U' staff salaries hit new heights

University President Lee Bollinger was granted a 4.5 percent salary increase at Friday's meeting of the University Board of Regents.

The board also received the annual Faculty and Staff Salary Record, which lists all University employees' salaries for 1997-98. Topping the list was Gilbert Omenn, who serves in the newly created post of executive vice president for medical affairs and makes $500,000 annually.

Bollinger's raise brings his salary to $287,375, and was approved after the board's first evaluation of Bollinger since he became president.

Regent Andrea Fischer Newman (R-Ann Arbor) voted against the raise, but she said Bollinger "has done a fabulous job as president."

"I feel I'm always voting against tuition increases and housing rate increases," Newman said. "We can keep our increase to tuition and salary in line."

Bollinger will be evaluated by the regents again in Aug. 1998 with the possibility of another raise, in order to place him on the same track as the rest of the University's faculty.

But Bollinger's salary pales in comparison to Omenn's, whose $500,000 salary is nearly twice that of last year's top breadwinner, former University President and Engineering Prof. James Duderstadt. Duderstadt's 3.5 percent raise bumps his salary to $282,214.

"That's a national market issue," said Provost Nancy Cantor. Omenn's "peers in his profession at comparable institutions are extremely well compensated."

University administrators' pay increases dropped an average of 30 percent this year, making it the second year in a row that University faculty topped the pay increase list.

Faculty and administrative salaries rose an average of 4.9 and 2.89 percent, respectively. Despite a recent effort to boost faculty pay increases, administrative turnover and restructuring may account for the discrepancy.

"I don't think you can draw a conclusion on these areas," said Lisa Baker, associate vice president for University relations.

With four people new to the executive board this year, University officials attribute the low administrative increase average to the high flux among executive posts during the past year.

"There was a lot of turnover. So much of the top did not get merit raises for new positions - like Lee and myself - so they were not counted," Cantor said.

But Cantor said that although the new administrators throw off the average, a push has been made to lower administrators' pay increases.

"I think it is going down a little bit," Cantor said. "It has been a consistent intent to raise faculty salaries in line with what will keep an excellent faculty."

Physiology Prof. Louis D'Alecy, who chairs the faculty's governing body, said the faculty's increase is a way to correct past "inappropriate preferences."

"The administrators were getting increases when faculty was not getting increases," D'Alecy said. "That was inappropriate. They are trying now to get into a more equitable pattern."

Although the reported salaries of several Medical School faculty appeared to jump as much as 30 percent, the increases represent a new calculation system and not merit-based increases.

In the past, the reported salaries only included Medical faculty's base salaries, which excluded some of the money earned through the academic portions of their work, said Ken Trester, director of planning and marketing for the University's Health System. But a new budgeting system includes these portions in the base salary.

"On average, a Medical School faculty received an increase of less than 5 percent ... whereas some of these changes may reflect larger increases," Trester said.

Vice President for University Relations Walter Harrison said this year's salary increases represent healthy appropriations from the state.

"In the past year, the state legislature and governor have made a very thoughtful commitment to higher education," Harrison said.

Harrison said teaching ability is one of the main criteria for determining merit-based salary increases.

Yet some of the University's most revered teachers ranked low on the salary list. Biology lecturer Eric Mann, who received last year's Golden Apple award for outstanding teaching on the undergraduate level, received a 5 percent increase that raised his salary to $48,285.

Michigan football coach Lloyd Carr received a 3.5-percent increase to earn $266,512. Hockey coach Red Berenson's salary increased 3.5 percent, to $103,500.

- Daily Staff Reporters Katie Plona and Jenni Yachnin contributed to this report.

01-20-98