Reappointment letters for 2019-2020 academic year available soon

July 18, 2019

Dear BGSU Faculty Colleagues,

In this second joint communication on implementing our new collective bargaining agreement, we want to let you know that reappointment letters for the 2019-2020 academic year, including your salary adjustments based on the new collective bargaining agreement, are expected to be out in late July or early August. Twelve-month faculty will see any salary adjustments reflected in the letter beginning with their August paychecks.

We also want to point out a couple of other important changes in the letters.

Non-Tenure-Track Ranks
Both parties to the collective bargaining agreement endorsed a change to the names of ranks for non-tenure-track faculty (NTTF). NTTF are now called qualified rank faculty (QRF) (Article 14, Section 2.3.1.2). This change aligns the University with what is becoming common professional practice at peer institutions. The ranks for QRF are now parallel in structure to those of tenure track faculty (TTF) with the inclusion of a qualifying descriptor (i.e., teaching, clinical, research, practitioner) designating the primary focus of their work (ex. assistant teaching professor instead of instructor, practitioner professor instead of senior lecturer). More information on these changes can be found on the collective bargaining agreement website. 

Salary Adjustments
As in previous years, reappointment letters list any salary adjustments for the coming academic year into four categories: promotion, across-the-board, merit and market pool.

• Promotion increases as established by the CBA (Article 17, Section 6)
• For the 2019-2020 academic year, bargaining unit faculty members (BUFM) who “met expectations” or higher for the 2017-2018 academic year will receive a 1.5 percent across-the-board/fixed market increase (Article 17, Section 3.1)
• For the 2019-2020 academic year, BUFM who “met expectations” or higher for the 2017-2018 academic year will be eligible for a merit increase from a merit/fixed market pool based on 1.5 percent of their unit’s total salaries (Article 17, Section 3.1)

In addition, a $300,000 market pool (Article 17, Section 7) will be distributed across three areas:

Market Compression Adjustment Fund
A total of $195,000 in year one of the CBA was designated for internal market compression salary adjustments. Faculty who were promoted to the highest rank before the first CBA and received a smaller promotion bump will receive an adjustment (i.e., TTF and QRF professors will receive $3,000 and $2,000, respectively). QRF with 12 or more years of service (excluding those QRF professors receiving a promotion bump) will receive $100 for each year of service preceding the 2007-2008 academic year up to a maximum of $1,000. Because the total amount of internal market compression salary adjustments totaled more than $195,000, eligible BUFM will receive 65 percent of their recommended adjustment in academic year 2019-2020 with the remainder coming in the following years.

President’s Excellence Fund
Up to $45,000 base salary increases to BUFM based on demonstrated excellence at the discretion of the President.

Provost Market Fund
Up to $60,000 base salary increases such as individual market adjustments, pre-emptive and counteroffers, and diversity retention efforts as they arise throughout the academic year.

Full details on the allocation of the Market Pool over the three years of this CBA can be found in Article 17, Section 7.

If you have any questions or believe an error has been made in your market pool adjustment, please contact Bill Balzer, vice president, Faculty Affairs & Strategic Initiatives, at wbalzer@bgsu.edu and Steve Demuth, vice president, BGSU Faculty Association, at demuth@bgsu.edu.

For your convenience, we will be archiving these joint communications on the Office of the Provost website.

Regards,

Joe Whitehead, Ph.D.
Provost and Senior Vice President

David Jackson, Ph.D.
President, BGSU Faculty Association