Some faculty members are displeased with the way a $1 million salary pool is being disbursed to university professors.

The Board of Trustees allocated that salary pool to be disbursed to professors in the various colleges based on national salary averages and merit, in addition to annual raises.

Only full and associate professors were eligible for pay raises from the million-dollar salary pool, according to the Chair of Biological Sciences Brian Unsworth. Unsworth said he could see why some faculty members were upset about the decisions that were made regarding how the money would be disbursed.

"Well at first the faculty thought all salaries were going to be raised to the 60th percentile of American Association of University Professors average salaries," Unsworth said. "However, when we found only 30 percent of the faculty were going to be raised to that level is when the confusion started. I think they should have raised all the faculty members to that 60th percentile level, and then given these meritorious bonuses on top of everyone being raised."

Two-thirds of the biological sciences department received pay raises from the million-dollar salary pool, according to Unsworth.

Less than one-third of the faculty in the Department of Cultural and Social Sciences will see money from the million-dollar salary pool for faculty members, leaving Chair James Holstein unhappy with the disbursement process.

"I appreciate the university's desire to use its resources to reward its most productive faculty members, but as a department chair I would have preferred a policy that would have spread awards across a broader range of faculty members," Holstein said. "Marquette has a valuable and productive faculty, yet many of its members are not going to benefit from this extra salary pool of funds."

Holstein said the faculty's desire for more money isn't unfair because of disparities he sees between the schools involved with the AAUP and Marquette.

"Studies of the AAUP include two-year schools and community colleges that just are not comparable with Marquette," Holstein said. "The Provost also found studies of school salaries more comparable with Marquette University."

Chair of the Political Science Department Duane Swank had reservations about the disbursement policy as well.

"Generally, I am pleased with the way the pay raises were disbursed," he said. "However, like several other professors, I thought it could have been disbursed to a broader pool of faculty."

Of the 12 faculty members in the Department of Political Science, six received pay raises from the million-dollar salary pool, according to Swank.

Director of University Communication Ben Tracy said the university was doing the best it could to be fair to faculty with the resources they had.

"The university determined that this is the fairest way to disburse salary with the limited resources we have," Tracy said. "I am pleased that we have an extra $1 million to give to faculty members this year. We are committed to raising faculty salary and this is a good first step."

Provost Madeline Wake was unavailable for comment.

The salary pool was allocated to Wake following a proposal she had made to the Board of Trustees last comparing the salaries of Marquette professors with that of the average pay of professors around the nation.

In the proposal Wake cited that assistant, associate and full professors at Marquette had salaries below 60th percentile salaries of professors across the nation, according to numbers provided to her by the AAUP.

The Director of Research for the AAUP said the salaries for a professor in the 60th percentile were $58,125 for an assistant professor, $68,822 for an associate professor and $96,392 for a full professor.

Average salaries for a Marquette assistant professor were $54,500. The average salary of a Marquette associate professor was $64,600 and the average salary for a Marquette full professor was $85,200, according to AAUP.

The Board of Trustees gave Wake a million-dollar budget bonus for faculty salary increases to be awarded on the basis of merit. The Office of the Provost then told the deans of all the colleges at Marquette to disburse the allocations to the top 30 percent of professors on the basis of comparisons with national salary averages and merit, Wake told the Tribune for the Feb. 26 edition.