THE METROPOLITAN « NOVEMBER 29.
2007 « METRO « A5
Faculty votes on bonus pay options
By ANDREW FLOHR-SPENCE
spencand@mscd.edu
Metro professors have until noon
Nov. 29 to vote on a plan for award-
ing bonus pay that would change
the way they are evaluated each year
and, if they score high enough, could
reward them with a sum of money.
Proposed by the Board of Trust-
ees, (which says the extra pay would
encourage teachers to do a better
job), the pay for performance plan, or
P4P, has faced criticism from faculty
members who say that several other
problems, including the differences in
the level of teacher salaries, or equity
and parity, need to be addressed first.
“(Metro) President (Stephen) Jor-
dan has really made some progress
with equity within the institution,
but the salaries are still low with ex-
ception of the business school,” said
English professor Gene Saxe, who
is the faculty’s representative to the
trustees.
Saxe said that in 2006 the trust-
ees boosted the pay of the teachers
that were lagging furthest behind,
but much work needed to be done.
More than $2 million has been set
aside from the school’s budget to
fund the bonuses, but Saxe said when
Pepsi replaces Coke on campus to boost revenue
By JEREMY JOHNSON
jjohn308@mscd.edu
Auraria administrators recently
faced the same old question that’s
been plaguing America’s soft drink
connoisseurs since the turn of the
century: Coke or Pepsi?
Effective Nov. 26, in coordina-
tion with unanimous decisions by
the Auraria Board of Directors and
the Student Advisory Committee to
the Auraria Board, Auraria officially
switched from Coke to Pepsi products
and vending machines.
“The Coke agreement had ex-
pired, so we went out and solicited
for different proposals,” Finance and
Program Director of the Student and
Auxiliary Services Dave Caldwell
said. “(The proposal) was brought to
SACAB for review and they decided
to move forward with negotiations
and take it to the Auraria Board.”
After comparing other college
vending contracts, the board agreed to
a five-year initial term with a five-year
renewal option with both Pepsi and
collaborating food vendor Canteen.
“(The board goes) through a
whole bid process and considers the
different bids offered,” Division Di-
rector of SAS Barb Weiske said.
“There’s a lot of variables that
are considered including the product
line, product service and revenue.”
Weiske added that the revenue goes
directly back into the student bond
and helps to offset student fees.
Along with a $150,000 signing
compared to the nearly $45 million
faculty payroll, the money would not
go very far.
“There needs to be substantial
progress made (on equity) ... and this
(P4P) is not a salary improvement
program,” he said.
According to the first part of the
plan supported by both faculty and
administration, the teacher evalu-
ation system would change from
the current A – F grades to a three
category system, and the cost of liv-
ing increase added each year to the
teacher’s salary would be in line with
the raises the state gives all employ-
ees. The professors would be scored
in four areas – teaching, advising
and student support, college and
community service, and scholarship
– and those who do something ex-
traordinary in one or more area and
did not lag behind in any other area
would then qualify for the bonus part
of the plan. There are three levels of
money for exceeding standards in the
four categories, and officials have es-
timated the awards could be between
$2,000 and $10,000 per teacher.
The money would be paid out over
the course of the following year.
To make the plan a reality, a num-
ber of changes have to be made, such
bonus and an additional bonus of
$20,000 per year beginning the sec-
ond year of the contract, Auraria will
receive a commission of 23.2 percent
on snacks and 55 percent on bever-
ages.
Auraria’s snack commission is
nearly 5 percent higher than the Uni-
versity of Colorado at Boulder and Col-
orado State University. Beverage com-
missions are comparable to CU and
higher than those of CSU, though the
latter receives $885,000 from Pepsi in
athletic program funding.
Despite the revenue increase,
some students aren’t buying into the
switch.
“It’s not even that they got rid of
the Coke products,” senior biology
student Melodi Wood said. “They
only have (Pepsi) in bottles – plastic
bottles. And we don’t have a plas-
tic recycling program on campus,
which I think is an issue.”
Although the change officially
took place Nov. 26, many of the 183
vending machines on campus were
traded out during the Thanksgiving
holiday break. Like the Coke ma-
chines before them, the Pepsi models
offer the typical assortment of soft
drinks, including soda pop, juice,
sport drinks and water.
What sets the new machines
apart is their built-in credit and debit
card readers, located on the front of
the machines.
“That was a big highlight,”
Weiske said. “It really became an is-
sue of loose change versus credit and
as amending the school handbook,
reworking the student evaluations
and dealing with the rules govern-
ing how teachers are reviewed and
promoted. Changes made in the past
to such important areas, Saxe said,
have often taken more than a year to
get passed.
The pay for performance plan, if
approved by the faculty, would begin
in January before any of the corre-
sponding changes had been made.
Saxe said because so many other
areas were affected by the change that
still needed to be resolved, the teachers
were being asked to assume that all the
promised changes will be completed.
“They are asking people to take
things on trust and now, that’s OK,”
said Saxe, who has taught at Metro for
41 years. “But it will depend entirely
on how much trust the faculty have
for the administration and the com-
mittee.” Saxe repeated several times
during the interview that he did not
want to be misquoted as attacking the
plan, Jordan, or the many people had
worked very hard on the plan.
“They have all tried to work very
responsibly, and they have all worked
very hard on the plan,” he said. Other
members of the faculty, however, have
been quite vocal about their opposi-
Cole Cronk, a Metro junior, buys a Pepsi from one of the new machines Nov. 27. The decision was made by the Auraria
Board of Directors to change all Coke machines on campus to Pepsi. The new vending machines will continue to offer the
regular assortment of soft drinks, juice and water with a new feature that allows payments with credit and debit cards.
debit cards. That seemed to be the
biggest factor with the students.”
Weiske also added that if the
vending machine credit card read-
ers are popular, the change might
be made to vending machines cam-
puswide. But, alas, convenience will
cost you … about a quarter. Most of
the new Pepsi machines offer 20 oz.
drinks at $1.25, compared to the
previous Coke price of $1.
“The price is a little higher but I
tion to the plan.
History instructor and president
of the Metro State Faculty Federation,
Ellen Slatkin said she worked all year to
inform her fellow teachers about what
she says are problems with the plan.
She also said she respects the amount
of work the P4P committee and others
have put into working out this com-
promise, but the MSFF maintains that
not only does the inequity in salaries
need to be dealt with before any plan
for bonuses is implemented, but that
the entire system of merit bonuses
will end up encouraging the teachers
to work on special projects, while they
neglect the day- to- day duties.
Slatkin said studies done at Stan-
ford and Harvard indicate that pay
for performance is not always effec-
tive in raising productivity and has
been known to harm teamwork by
over-emphasizing competitiveness.
“We’ve hired a lot of brilliant pro-
fessors in the last few years,” Slatkin
said. “But under these conditions, I
think we could lose a lot of them.”
Jordan said he is very aware that
finding the best possible teachers de-
pends on Metro offering a competitive
salary to teachers, which he said is
largely decided by the market.
He said bringing wages in line
like (the Pepsi machines) because of
the whole credit card thing,” Metro
music education student C.J. Garbo
said, while sipping on a vitamin water
that once sold for $1.25 but that now
costs $1.50.
“It’s nice to have vending ma-
chines that take cards because there’s
only, like, three ATM machines that I
know of on campus, and I’m never
near any of them.”
So debit, credit or cash, it seems
with comparable schools is exactly
what he is trying to do.
“The truth of it is some people in
some professions get paid more than
other people in other professions,”
Jordan said. “There are clearly some
disciplines where the starting salaries
are much higher than in, for instance,
the liberal arts.”
Jordan said the administration
has spent adequate time trying to
amend the major differences in pay.
He said he understands the concern
of faculty on the subject of trust and
many of the handbook and other
small changes that need to be made
are minor and are not items that
should delay the plan. The work that
everyone involved had put in the last
year and a half has done a lot to show
how committed the sides were to an
agreement.
Jordan reiterated, however, there
were other offices such as Student Af-
fairs and Technology that needed at-
tention and that as president he had to
think of everyone’s needs.
“There is a limit on what we can
do,” Jordan said. “There are a whole
bunch of other issues that we have put
on hold while we address this issue …
and the board has hired me to make
some difficult decisions.”
Photo by JEREMY PAPASSO/jpapasso@mscd.edu
the big blue machines really are the
next generation of vending on Au-
raria, not only in product, but also
in convenience. Still, the decision of
Coke or Pepsi is ultimately up to the
consumer, and Coke products are
still available in the Tivoli food court
and Quick Zone convenience store.
“It doesn’t really matter to me,”
human services Metro student Elyse
Hughes said. “Whichever is avail-
able.”