Merit Guidelines

FIN-ECO PPS 2.03

Policy Statement on: Merit Guidelines Texas State University

Department of Finance and Economics    
Adopted 12-1-2023
 

PURPOSE

This PPS explains the policies and procedures used to make merit pay decisions in the Department of Finance and Economics.

GENERAL INFORMATION

The University and the McCoy College of Business Administration have established policies and procedures for adjusting faculty salaries based on merit:

Following are some important features of these policies:

A.    McCoy College faculty are categorized as Scholarly Academic, Practice Academic, Scholarly Practitioner, Instructional Practitioner, or Other. Their workloads are dictated by the weights assigned to the teaching, scholarship, and service components of their workload plan [CBAPPS 5.01, 5.06, 5.07].

B.    Faculty are expected to contribute to the goals of the College through teaching, scholarship, and service, and to do so with integrity, professionalism, and a spirit of collegiality. Evaluation in these areas is the basis for salary decisions. Per College policy, the mandated weights for tenure- track faculty are 40% teaching, 50% scholarship, and 10% service/professional activities. The usual weights are 40-40-20% for tenured faculty, but they may request other weights within these ranges: 30-50% teaching, 30-50% scholarship, 10-20% service/professional. Non-tenure-line ranges are 60-80% teaching, 0-20% scholarship, 10-40% service/professional [AA/PPS 04.01.50, CBAPPS 5.01, 5.04, 5.06].

C.    Although University and College policies refer to performance and merit raises (AAPPS 7.10, CBAPPS 5.04), the practice is to award only merit. Faculty who meet the eligibility standards outlined in Section 3 below are eligible for a base merit raise, as explained below. Per Department policy, faculty who meet the eligibility standards are eligible for an additional raise.

PROCEDURES

1.    Evaluation Materials

Each year, by January 31, faculty shall submit the following documents to the Chair:

Activity Report. Faculty shall submit an activity report detailing their achievements in the prior year in teaching, scholarship, and service. Whether their performance was below, at, or above eligibility standards shall be assessed in light of their workload plan; points accumulated in teaching, scholarship, and service; and the goals set forth in their activity plan (see below) for that year.

Self-Assessment Form. Faculty shall submit a self-assessment form (see Appendix A) listing points claimed in teaching, scholarship and service. The Chair shall make any adjustments deemed  appropriate.   

Activity Plan. Faculty shall submit an activity plan for the coming year that identifies anticipated activities and goals in teaching, scholarship, and service. Faculty who request a workload  with other than the usual weights in these categories shall specify the desired weights in their activity plan. The Chair shall make the final decision regarding weights.

While faculty have some flexibility in requesting workload percentages that are different than the usual, any request must reflect the faculty members actual workload going forward and will be considered only in exceptional circumstances, normally for the period of one calendar year. Examples of appropriate adjustments are: a teaching load adjustment for a new course prep in the coming year; a service load adjustment for service activities that are assigned a teaching reduction; or a research load adjustment for a professorship. Workload percentage adjustments must be forward-looking, rather than based on past research or teaching activities.

The Chair shall not schedule the meeting discussed in Section 2 below until all three documents have been submitted. Faculty are encouraged, but not required, to meet with the chair. However, if a faculty member requests a workload with other than the usual weights (which should be specified in the Activity Plan as above) the faculty member is required to meet with the chair.

Faculty are also responsible for the following:

Digital Measures. The McCoy College uses Digital Measures for reports that must be submitted to the University and to its accrediting agencies. Faculty have an ongoing obligation to ensure that       their information is current and accurate, but in any event this requirement must be met by January   31.

Course Assessment. Course assessment for SACS and AACSB, in the form of common examination questions in core courses, is a mandatory part of the teaching process. A faculty member’s failure to participate fully in the assessment process in the prior year shall result in a lower score in teaching, as determined by the Chair.

2.    Meeting of Chair and Faculty

By March 1, the Chair will provide the opportunity for each faculty member to meet and discuss the following:

A.    The points assigned by the Chair for the prior year in teaching and any adjustments made in the  points claimed by the faculty member for scholarship and/or service.

B.    Whether the individual’s performance in the prior year was below, at, or above expectations.

C.    The workload plan (see CBAPPS 5.06) for the coming year and the weights for teaching, scholarship, and service. If, after this meeting, any adjustments in the faculty member’s activity plan are required, he/she shall make those changes and submit the revised plan to the Chair.

3.    Evaluation System

The Department merit pool is a percentage, determined by the University, of the combined salaries        of Department faculty. In years in which merit money is available, the Department shall set aside 10% of this pool for the additional raise explained below. The remaining money (base merit pool) shall be given to faculty who qualify for a merit raise based on a percentage calculated by dividing the base merit pool by the sum of the salaries of faculty eligible for merit.

Thus, if 30 people each earn $100,000, total salaries are $3,000,000. If the University provides a 3% raise, the merit pool is $90,000. Of that, 10% is set aside for additional raises, leaving a base merit pool of $81,000. If two people are not eligible for a merit raise, the sum of salaries of those eligible is 28 x 100,000 = $2,800,000. Thus, the merit raise as a % of one’s salary is $81,000 ÷ $2,800,000 = 2.89%.

To be eligible for a base merit raise, faculty must be categorized as Scholarly Academic, Practice Academic, Scholarly Practitioner, or Instructional Practitioner; have an average score of 50 or more points for teaching, scholarship, and service for      the prior three years [CBAPPS 5.04]; and provide evidence of sustained engagement in teaching, scholarship, and service throughout the evaluation period.

The 10% set-aside shall be allocated as an additional raise to faculty who exceed expectations. To     do so, faculty must have an average score of 75 or more points for teaching, scholarship, and service for the prior three years or be in the top quarter of faculty who receive base merit pay in that three-year period, whichever number is higher. Eligible faculty shall share equally in the set- aside. Thus, if 9 faculty qualify for the additional raise and the set-aside is $9,000, each person will receive $1,000 in addition to their base merit raise.

Although the merit raise is based on a three-year average, faculty should submit a self-assessment  form related to accomplishments only in the prior calendar year. Faculty may claim up to a maximum in each category based on their classification and workload election. Thus, a faculty member with a 40-40-20% workload could claim up to 40 points in teaching and in scholarship and 20 points in service. As noted in Appendix A, some items can only be claimed once while others can be claimed per occurrence.

Teaching. Various measures allow faculty to earn points for Teaching. One measure is quality as demonstrated by University- and College-mandated student evaluations. In each course taught in       the Spring and Fall semesters of the reporting year, the scores on questions 1-16 of the student- evaluation forms shall be averaged; these per-course scores shall, in turn, be averaged and rounded up two decimal places to produce the overall average for the reporting period.

To receive points in the student-evaluation category, the overall average in the reporting year must  be at least 3.0, which represents an average score on the 1-5 range in the evaluation form. Points    for eligible faculty shall be calculated by multiplying their overall average by 15; these points shall  then be adjusted by factoring in the percentage of the faculty member’s workload that is allocated to teaching. Thus, a faculty member whose teaching workload is 60% and who has an average of 4.8 on student evaluations would accumulate 43 points (4.8 x 15 = 72 x .6 = 43.2). The Chair may  adjust the point total upward by as many as five points if, in his/her judgment, the nature of the written comments in the evaluation forms so warrants.

Faculty can also earn points for extended teaching responsibilities. For example, teaching a graduate, honors, or writing-intensive (W) course is worth 7 points per course. Faculty who teach two of these courses in a single semester can claim 14 points if the courses require separate preparations (for example, two different graduate courses, or a graduate and a W course). Faculty who receive a course load reduction specifically to teach multiple graduate courses receive 7 points if the two courses are different, and no points if they require a single preparation; this limitation does not apply if the reduced course load is for a different reason like having a professorship. The maximum points for graduate, honors, and W courses for the year is 15.

Other extended teaching responsibilities include additional course preparations, new course development, serving on graduate or honors thesis committees, directing independent studies, and teaching more than 150 students in a semester without a course load reduction. For theses and dissertations, the director can earn 5 points while committee members or second readers receive 1. These points are per thesis, though graduate thesis points can be claimed for each of two semesters while honors theses only for one. Directing an independent study is worth 3 points per graduate student and 2 points per undergraduate student, with a maximum of 8 points for the year. If faculty teach more than 150 students in a semester without a course load reduction, that earns 1 point for each 25 additional students (for example, 1 for up to 175 students, 2 for up to 200, etc.), with a maximum of 4 points.

Because student evaluations reflect only a portion of one’s dedication to teaching, Appendix A provides additional measures of evaluation, e.g., class size and type, the number of preparations in a semester, innovation in teaching methods, creation of teaching materials, and self-improvement.

Scholarship. The primary measure for scholarship is articles published in quality peer-reviewed journals and in law reviews. Faculty can claim points for each article accepted or printed in the reviewing period, but the article can be claimed only once; thus, if a faculty member claims credit for an article accepted in Year 1, he/she cannot claim it again when it is printed in Year 2.    
The points awarded for each article relate to the journal’s rank of A (30 points), B (20 points), or C (10  points) on the McCoy College journal list, the departmental journal list, the ABDC journal list, or the CABS journal list. In the case of the CABS list, ranking will be assigned as follows: 4 and above = A; 3 = B; 2 and below = C. Articles in non-listed business or law journals receive 5 points. For interdisciplinary articles published in non-business or non-law journals, the journal will be given an A/B/C rank based upon a journal list maintained by a Texas State University department related to that journal’s subject. In the absence of a departmental list, the journal’s rank can be established by clear and convincing evidence provided by the faculty member that the journal is regarded as A, B, or C by the relevant discipline, such as through letters from faculty in that field, journal ranking indices, or data about citations and impact factor relative to other journals in the discipline. The department chair makes the ultimately decision about the rank of interdisciplinary journals, guided by the fact that the Department of Finance & Economics Journal Lists contain only a fraction of the total journals in their respective fields.  

If the faculty member’s article publication points exceed the maximum points available for Scholarship, he/she can bank up to 20 excess points earned from journal publications to be claimed the following year. Thus, a faculty member with a 40-40-20 allocation who published two A-quality articles worth 60 points would receive 40 points in Year 1 and have 20 remaining for Year 2. If he/she published one A-quality article and earned 15 points for book chapters and conferences for a total of 45 points, then he/she would claim 40 points in Year 1 and have no banked points for Year 2. Faculty are required to request the banking of points on the Activity Report of Section 1. Note that the banking of points is only associated with excess points earned for journal publications.

Points can also be earned for articles in refereed conference proceedings, scholarly books and book chapters, funded grants, conference presentations, and scholarly awards. For all scholarly activities, co-authorship is credited equally to single authorship.

For funded grants, points will be assigned only once, either in the year that the grant is awarded or in a single year covered by the length of the grant. Faculty are required to request the year in which they wish the points to count on the Activity Report of Section 1. For instance, for a three-year grant, the faculty member may choose to have the points assigned in Year 1, Year 2, or Year 3 of the grant; however, the points will only count once and not for each year of the grant.

Points for funded grants are assigned points on the total value of the grant and on a multiple for the type of grant and role of the faculty. Specifically, base points are listed below, with faculty getting double points for grants that add to Texas State’s NRUF total grant amount and double points for being the principal or co-principal investigator on the grant.

For example, a faculty member who is the principal investigator on an NSF research grant of $1,000,000 earns 32 points (8×2×2), while a faculty member who is a supporting investigator on the same grant would earn 16 points (8×2). Further, a faculty member who is awarded a research grant of $20,000 and is the sole or co-author of the grant will receive 2 points if the grant is from the McCoy College (1×2) but 4 points if it is from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1×2×2).

Service. Points are available for service to the University, McCoy College, and Department and to the faculty member’s profession, such as leadership in regional and national associations, serving as a peer reviewer, and writing book reviews. General community service does not count for merit unless the faculty member can demonstrate a link to his/her field (e.g., a BLAW faculty member providing legal advice to a non-profit organization), except that non-tenure-line faculty can claim points for business- and professional-related activities listed in CBAPPS 5.07.

First-year faculty may qualify for a base merit raise of 1/3 of the base merit percentage determined by the formula explained above. Eligibility shall depend on the Chair’s comprehensive assessment of the faculty member’s performance at Texas State; in this assessment, the Chair shall consider the points on the self-assessment form while accommodating the fact that the individual has only a partial year at Texas State. Second-year faculty shall qualify for the base merit raise – but not the additional raise – with an average score of 50 or more in the previous two reporting periods.

For faculty who take a Faculty Development Leave during one semester of the reporting period, teaching and service activities conducted in the non-leave semester should be considered as applying to the entire year. If Faculty Development Leave encompasses the entire reporting period (Spring and Fall semester of the calendar year), points will be assigned for teaching and service based on the average of points in these two areas from the previous two reporting periods.

Individuals coming back to full-time faculty from full- or part-time administrative positions will automatically be given the full raise for their first year back as full-time faculty. For instance, if the university allocates a 3% raise, returning administrators will be given a 3% raise in their first year back. If the university allocates a different percentage amount, returning administrators will be given the full percentage. For returning administrators in year 2, points in each category (scholarship, teaching, and service) from their first year will count as the 3-year average. For year 3, points in the first two years will be averaged, and in year 4, returning administrators will have the normal 3-year average.

4.    Merit Advisory Committee

A Merit Advisory Committee [MAC] shall assist in resolving disputes between faculty and the Chair regarding point assessments in teaching, scholarship, or service; whether the faculty member’s performance in the prior year was below, at, or above expectations; and/or the proper workload plan for the faculty member and weights to be given teaching, scholarship, or service.

The Personnel Committee [PC] shall elect three tenured faculty members, one each from Business Law, Economics, and Finance, to serve staggered three-year terms on the MAC. Elections shall occur in the August Department faculty meeting each year.

The members of the MAC shall designate one member to serve as Chair for the year.

If a faculty member and the Department Chair cannot resolve a dispute regarding merit-point allocation, the faculty member may appeal to the MAC within five (5) working days of his/her meeting with the Chair. The appeal must be submitted in writing to the MAC Chair, identify the grounds for the appeal, and specify the desired remedy. On receipt of any appeal(s), the MAC Chair shall convene the MAC to review the case and arrive at a judgment. In conducting its review, the MAC may consult any resources or with any person(s) it deems relevant.

After the MAC has arrived at its judgment, the MAC Chair and Department Chair shall meet to resolve the dispute. The Department Chair shall notify the faculty member of the outcome. If the faculty member is dissatisfied with the resolution, or if there is no resolution, the matter shall be referred to the PC for a final decision, which shall be by majority vote of the members present at the meeting scheduled for that purpose. If the faculty member is not satisfied with the PC’s decision, he/she may appeal to the Dean of the College.

If a member of the MAC files an appeal, the Personnel Committee shall elect a tenured faculty member from the affected discipline to replace him/her for purposes of dealing with that appeal.

5.    Review of this PPS

This policy shall be reviewed at least once every five years. To that end, every fifth year, or upon request of the Chair or the Personnel Committee (see below), the Chair shall convene a committee of four tenured and two non-tenured faculty to review the policy and make any recommendations for change. The Personnel Committee shall meet to vote on these recommendations, with adoption requiring a majority vote of those present.

Before the fixed five-year review, the Chair or a majority of the Personnel Committee may request reconsideration of this PPS. Upon such request, the procedure noted in the preceding paragraph shall be followed.

 
APPENDIX A

The items listed below are drawn from CBAPPS 5.01 and 5.07. Unless otherwise noted, points can be awarded per event (e.g., new course developed, article published, or manuscript reviewed). Those denoted with an “*” may only be awarded up to the maximum of the range indicated. If an award is given at multiple levels, the faculty member can claim only the highest amount. For example, a departmental teaching award that leads to a McCoy College teaching award is worth 2  points.

APPENDIX B

A.    Items categorized as “Other Documented Teaching Activities” are at the discretion of the chair. Appropriate activities include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Revising an existing textbook (with lower points than initial edition)

B.    Items categorized as “Other Documented Research Activities” are at the discretion of the chair. Appropriate activities include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Unfunded grant proposals
• Participation in conference or training to improve or upgrade research skills
• Grant reporting over expectation of original proposal

C.    Points for committee membership (and committee chair positions) are be based on the characteristics of the committee including: 

• Number of meetings scheduled and attended
• Frequency of meetings scheduled and attended
• Extent of work produced by the committee
• Extent of work by committee members outside of meetings
• Number of committee members available to handle the committee workload
• Input from committee members and chair regarding the work of the committee

D.    The following is a non-exhaustive list of committees with suggested point allocations. Note that each committee member will be awarded either 1, 2, or 3 points based on committee characteristics listed above and that the committee chair will be awarded 3 times the points for a committee member. Additional points may be awarded at the discretion of the chair.