North Texas Daily

UNT will hold talks in January for a merit-pool raise for the highest performing faculty and staff. The raise is designed to show appreciation for the highest performing faculty and staff.

“The merit pool is money that the president makes available from university revenues for faculty and staff raises,” Provost and Vice President for academic affairs Finley Graves said. “The faculty merit pool is generally stated as a percentage of total faculty salaries at the university.”

The university has around $2 million budgeted for the merit pool, which will be awarded Jan. 1, 2017. The merit pool begins at 3 percent and each college will be allocated 3 percent of the sum of its faculty salaries for merit purposes. Raises will first be included in faculty salaries in their February 1 pay checks after the fiscal year begins.

“Merit is awarded on the basis of performance, i.e., on the basis of faculty evaluations,” said Graves. “The faculty evaluation process takes place in early spring and results in numerical scores for each faculty member.”

Departmental chairs award merit on that basis, and college deans review the allocations the chairs make to ensure consistency across the departments that make up the college.  Deans have discretion in holding some merit monies back for purposes of addressing market or equity issues for high performing faculty. Smatresk has asked deans to address these particular issues first this year, before allocating merit to the departments.

“Merit pools are created in years when there is adequate funding,” Graves said. “In years when there are budget cuts, or limited revenues simply do not permit the creation of merit pools, faculty go without raises.”