Faculty
continued from page 1
At the UO
At the University last year, 18
professors resigned their positions
and an above-average number of
faculty retired, according to Lor
raine Davis, vice provost for aca
demic affairs. While that number
might not seem high, it’s much
higher than the school’s yearly av
erage, Davis said.
“My guess is that we’ll see a few
more resignations than has been
the pattern,” Davis said.
Though the University has a
good record overall in retaining
professors, Davis said she does an
ticipate that up to a quarter of the
assistant professors she hires will
use their jobs at the University as a
stepping-stone to larger schools.
“That’s not to say that we
wouldn’t hope they’d stay here for
their entire academic careers,” she
said. “But face it—we all have dif
ferent kinds of aspirations. So I re
ally don’t expect that everybody
that we hire, or even a large major
ity of those we hire, would come
here and stay for their entire aca
demic career.”
Professors who choose to leave
typically move to universities that
are in the University’s peer group, or
larger, Davis said,such as University
of California schools, the University
of Washington, Michigan State Uni
versity and Duke University.
Quality of education
A school’s reputation for aca
demic excellence is tied to the
quality of its faculty, and some stu
dents are worried that an exodus
of faculty could lessen the quality
of their education.
“We’re having excellent profes
sors leave campus,” ASUO Presi
dent Wylie Chen said. “And it’s
going to be very difficult for us to
hire good professors, especially
when we’re competing with other
universities that have more re
sources available to them.”
All OUS schools and their qual
ity of education are affected by the
trend, said John Wykoff, Oregon
Students Association spokesman.
“You have to have goo^ faculty
or the quality of education suf
fers,” he said. “It hurts the stu
dents; it hurts the reputation of the
state and of the institutions. If the
school doesn’t have a good reputa
tion, it can’t attract students.”
Faculty searches are a major in
dicator of a school’s ability to re
cruit quality applicants. But more
often, OUS schools are watching
applicants slip through their fin
gers once they find out how low
the salaries are.
Such is the dilemma at Western
Oregon University, where nine
faculty searches have failed in the
past year, faculty union president
Dean Braa said.
“Our biggest problem is recruit
ment,” he said. “We lose profes
sors, and we can’t replace them.”
That is what many in the Univer
sity community fear could happen
if faculty salaries aren’t brought up
to the industry average.
“We operate in a market econo
my,” said Wayne Westling, a law
professor and member of the Uni
versity Senate Budget Committee,
which is looking at ways to in
crease faculty salaries. “We have
to keep our salaries in line with
the ones at other schools.”
The bottom line
Members of the State Board of
Higher Education and University
President Dave Frohnmayer have
indicated that increasing funding
for faculty salaries is one of their pri
orities in the next few years, a move
that’s designed to help stop the flow
of faculty to other universities.
“It would be to our liking if those
that we have mentored would stay
here,’’Davis said. “But we’ve served
them well to put them in a position to
be recruited, so it’s not as if we should
feel embarrassed about that at all.”
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