Chancellor's Task Force on Faculty Salary

Call to Action

The Boulder Faculty Assembly identified compensation as the top priority for faculty in its2024 Survey of BFA Priorities and Actions. Chancellor Schwartz shares the BFA’s commitment to exploring how 鶹ѰBoulder can offer more competitive compensation and address salary compression issues. To this end, in April 2025, he convened the Task Force on Faculty Salary to make recommendations regarding compensation enhancement options and strategies, with an initial focus on teaching professors and tenure-track/tenured faculty.

The Task Force is charged with the following actions and assessments:
  • Market and cost of living comparison:Benchmark 鶹ѰBoulder tenure-track/tenured faculty and teaching professor salaries against AAU public peers and make recommendations regarding ranks and disciplines at 鶹ѰBoulder in greatest need of market adjustments.
  • Promotion and tenure raises:Assess the impact of current tenure-track/tenured and teaching professor promotion raise levels, including in relation to the market and to positive and negative effects on salary compression. Make any pertinent recommendations about adjustments to raise amounts and/or decompression processes.
  • Retention offer processes:Evaluate current retention offer processes to determine appropriate criteria for retention offers, and make recommendations for updating or implementing 鶹ѰBoulder facultyretention offer guidelines as necessary.
  • Budget model:As preliminary work to assist with review of the 鶹ѰBoulder Budget Model, assess aspects of the budget model that positively or negatively impact faculty compensation practices; include consideration of the Faculty Actions component of the model and make relevant recommendations.
  • Total compensation vs. salary compensation: Benchmark total compensation against salary compensation to ensure comprehensive and competitive faculty compensation packages.
  • Teaching loads: Conduct a peer comparison of tenure-track/tenured and teaching professor teaching loads, by discipline, and review existing policies and best practices to provide recommendations for optimal teaching loads. Assess utilization ofdifferentiated workloads.
  • College/department planning tools:Develop or recommend planning tools for use at the college and department levels to better manage faculty salary and workload planning.
  • Compensation levers:Recommend a range of department/program, school/college, and central administrative levers for achieving enhanced faculty compensation.
  • Faculty Salary Procedures Working Group:Draw on the recommendations of the 2022-23Faculty Salary Procedures Working Group to address items above, as relevant; coordinate recommendations with Faculty Fellows for Faculty Salary Procedures.

Task Force members will make recommendations in alignment with鶹ѰBoulder’scompensation philosophy, which “lays out the values and principles in which the university’s compensation structure and practices are grounded. The values and principles themselves derive from the university’s mission and the campus’s strategic imperatives. The key values include fairness, transparency, consistency, equity, competitiveness, and merit. These values and the values of Shared Equity Leadership inform the guiding principles and compensation practices.”

The Task Force will utilize the compensation philosophy, includingcompensation terms Իguiding principles, and ensure that recommendations comply with the.

Timeline

  • The Task Force will submit its recommendations in October 2025.