Engineering Technology Faculty: Attract, Retain, And Motivate Through Total Compensation And Work Experiences

Since 1977, the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) has conducted and sponsored a national engineering technology faculty salary survey. The Engineering Technology Faculty Salary Survey is conducted annually in cooperation with the Engineering Technology Council (ETC) and the Engineering Technology Division (ETD) of the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE). The survey has approximately 75 to 90 twoand four-year engineering technology institutions nationwide who participate. The survey results provide engineering technology administrators with a list of participating schools; a summary of minimum, average, and maximum salaries reported separately for twoand four-year schools; a summary of minimum, average, and maximum salaries for all participating schools; raw data listed by code number for all schools; a ten-year salary summary for faculty and administrators; and graphs of the salary data by region and number of faculty. Reports such as the Engineering Technology Faculty Salary Survey have proven to be a reliable source for developing school compensation plans which seek to attract, retain, and motivate faculty. Some compensation plans not only incorporate guidelines for meritorious increases but also contain suggested plans for new faculty that may include reduced teaching loads, summer support, and/or start-up funds. This paper will include the 2001-02 Engineering Technology Faculty Salary Survey results. Results of mini-survey conducted in conjunction with the 2001-02 Engineering Technology Faculty Salary Survey concerning new faculty startup funds, new faculty summer support, and faculty teaching assistants will also be reported in this paper. New faculty teaching loads, the teaching of on-line courses, provisions of internal grants, requirements for participating in assessment, peer review, and post tenure review are some of the other questions which were included in the mini-survey. A discussion of how leaders in engineering technology can use total compensation and work experience to enhance their abilities to attract, retain, and motivate their faculty will also be included in this paper. Page 795.1 “Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright ” 2002, American Society for Engineering Education” Groundwork Before establishing a compensation plan or goal that will attract, retain and motivate faculty, you need to seek salary comparisons with other institutions, industry, and other similar professional groups. One of the first steps in establishing a faculty salary base to work from is to conduct a thorough examination of your own engineering technology faculty salaries taking into consideration faculty rank, number of years of experience, number of years in service, educational degrees, and performance. In addition, you need to look at the minimum, maximum, and average salaries for all disciplines and ranks in your institution, school, or program. This information is vital for national and professional comparisons. In addition, it is important to know the demand for engineers in industry and engineering salaries for the discipline. Higher education competes with industry for employees; therefore, you need to know what your competition is paying. Higher education will never be able to compete with industrial salaries for engineers, but we can put together a package that can attract, retain, and motivate our future and current faculty by knowing what our competition offers. Institutions can offer other types of incentives that will attract the right kind of faculty member. There are two national surveys for engineering technology faculty salaries. The Engineering Workforce Commission (EWC), which is a research and publications branch of the American Association of Engineering Societies (AAES), biennially surveys of universities and colleges employing engineering and engineering technology faculty. The latest edition available is entitled, Salaries of Engineers in Education, 1998. This particular survey contains engineering and engineering technology faculty salaries by years since bachelor degree for all ranks. The report provides salaries for six ranks; full professor, associate professor, assistant professor, instructors, researchers, and other non-teaching staff and administrators. The EWC also provides a survey of the professional income of engineers. The commission surveys companies, organizations, and agencies that employ engineers. The latest version available for this report is entitled, Engineers’ Salaries: Special Industry Report, 1999. As the oldest and largest salary survey of engineers, this report provides statistics on the salaries of approximately 45,000 engineers in industry and government. The report gives salary details by industry sectors, geographic regions, employer size, engineering experience, and supervisory position. These reports can be purchased at a considerable price through AAES. The Engineering Technology Faculty Salary Survey is another national engineering technology salary survey, which is conducted annually by the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology in cooperation with the Engineering Technology Division (ETD) and the Engineering Technology Council (ETC) of the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE). The latest version of the survey is the 2001-02 Engineering Faculty Salary Survey. The benefit of this particular faculty salary survey is that the results are provided free to participating institutions and schools. This survey has been conducted annually since 1976-77. Salary data is provided by rank and administrative level including averages by region and number of faculty.