Compensation goals lead to pay increases at Wichita State

BY MIA HENNEN news@thesunflower.com

After $6 million in salary increases for 1,053 faculty and staff this fiscal year, the university is looking to provide another bump for eligible faculty and staff this summer, for about 1,700 employees.

These raises come after years of planning between Human Resources and university administration to solidify and grow a market-based compensation system that helps determine pay.

Vicki Whisenhant, HR executive director, broke down the relatively new market-based compensation structure for The Sunflower.

“It's a complicated subject,” Whisenhant said. “(Despite) having 30 years of HR experience, it’s still something I constantly ask the experts about.”

In a market-based approach to salary, individuals would get paid similarly to what others in their field would make. Whisenhant said this approach to compensation allows the university to compete for top faculty.

“As the talent pool … gets smaller and smaller, this is going to become even more important for us to get to the point where we are offering more competitive wages,” she said.

According to Whisenhant, Wichita State is at 86.4% of the median market pay, meaning the university lags behind what other universities pay their faculty.

“Our overall goal is to get to the median so that we're not leading or lagging the market,” she said.

Background

Wichita State began transitioning to a market-based compensation program in the fall of 2019 and launched the program at the start of the current fiscal year (FY23).

Whisenhant said that the market-based approach was adopted to ensure the university had equitable pay practices. Before the program, Whisenhant said that a set philosophy or methodology was not in place.

“It wasn't consistent,”

BY COURTNEY BROWN browncourtney2002@gmail.com

When a fellow female scientist told Moriah Beck to “act more like a man” to fit into their male-dominated field, she refused to take the advice to heart.

“[She was] telling me to be able to converse and network with people, you need to know about baseball and … feign interest in this,” Beck said. “I was like, ‘No, not gonna do that. Sorry.’”

Beck, a biochemistry professor, spoke on a panel focused on women in STEM careers on March 20. It was the last event of the eighth annual Diverse Women’s Summit, hosted by the Department of Women’s, Ethnicity and Intersectional Studies.

Panelists shared their experiences as women in science, technology, engineering and math fields.

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Whisenhant said. "There wasn't the real science behind it.”

The new program coincided with the beginning of the five-year Diversity, Equity and Inclusion plan.

"One of the key cornerstones of that plan was equity,” Whisenhant said. “And that’s where pay comes in, making sure we have pay equity across all the campus.”

Now, HR utilizes purchased salary market data from multiple sources to determine pay for employees.

“It's data that we purchase that's compiled by these professional organizations that we use to do the market part of the analysis,” Whisenhant said.

Whisenhant noted the distinction between HR and university leaders when it comes to compensation. While HR focuses more on compiling and providing recommendations, university leaders are in charge of making the final decision.

“We don't make all the decisions,” she said. “Anything with budget … those (decisions) are made by our provisional leaders of the university with (HR’s) recommendations that come from stakeholders.”

Goals for pay, then and now

After planning and mapping out different job categories, the university “started” the market-based program last year, when it first did an analysis of pay across the board.

With this analysis came a few goals:

Beck said negative comments usually come from male colleagues. One assumed it would be easier for her to receive a grant as a woman.

“I know he was just trying to be nice, but it hurt,” Beck said. “Then I get that grant. The reverse also happens: ‘Oh, she got it because she’s a woman.’”

Laila Cure, an assistant professor in the industrial and manufacturing engineering department, didn’t initially face the same challenges. Originally from Colombia, Cure said industrial engineers there are mostly women.

“I didn’t grow up in engineering with that feeling that we’re less or anything,” Cure said. “Now (in America) you start helping women every day and then getting invited to a lot of events … because they’re not that many of us.”

To combat misogyny, Catherine Searle said she

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-Determining if any inequities existed on the basis of race, ethnicity or gender (none were found)

-Analyzing equity based on similar positions

-Studying the market

“We do that in order to ensure that we're moving the needle forward,” Whisenhant said.

The goals last year did not account for faculty awards and achievements, like professor incentive reviews. The professor incentive review program allows tenured professors that have been at WSU for six years to undergo a voluntary review to receive some kind of pay bump.

“That was not one of the pain variables that we looked at last year,” Whisenhant said at a Budget Advisory Committee meeting last month. “It wasn't a part of the analysis, so it's created some issues with not having that in place.” ensures her conferences have gender parity. The professor of mathematics also created a website that lists women in geometry.

Additionally, last summer, the university’s remedial pay increases to those who were lagging behind others in their field only applied to select individuals and, for the most part, didn’t include employees with more experience.

“We knew that employees with more years of service received little or no pay adjustments last year,” Whisenhant said.

Randy Sessions, tech consultant for the WSUPD and Staff Senate senator, said that since the university has begun adjusting the pay process, longevity hasn’t been addressed enough.

“I got really tired of listening to my male co-organizers say there are no women to invite,” Searle said.

The panelists also encouraged students to seek out mentors and a support system. Beck said she appreciated that a former mentor recognized his own gaps in knowledge and directed her to reach out to another mentor.

“He had me write a letter to a professor at Harvard,” Beck said. “It just sounded absolutely crazy to me as an undergrad in Eastern Kentucky University, but the guy wrote me back.”

Searle also agreed on the importance of connections. She organizes a female-identifying workshop to foster networking.

“There's this idea of wanting to go off into the wilderness,”

“It needs to be transparent with stuff like that, rather than say, ‘well, everything's gonna get a raise,’” Sessions said. “There's a lot of people that have been here 20 plus years, (and) there's no recognition given for that. It used to be that there was recognition for that.”

Whisenhant presented budget and compensation goals for this summer, the start of fiscal year ‘24, to the Faculty Senate, where some pointed out issues with the current process.

“The idea of market-based compensation was to look at where all of the faculty are comprehensively and bring them up to the market,” Chase Billingham, at-large senator, said. “Now, we're already in year two, and the goal seems to be to help out the people that got left behind in year one, and then do across the board.

Billingham said that acrossthe-board pay increases are the “opposite of market-based compensation.”

Whisenhant said the goal is to get more consistency, as the university is in year two of the program.

In light of the non-merit-based raises last summer, HR plans to examine pay for those with one or more professor incentive reviews, alongside providing an all-across pay increase next summer.

Who’s part of the program?

Many employed at or through the university are not part of a market-based program.

Primarily, it includes benefit-eligible employees, like full-time faculty and staff. For example, adjuncts or lecturers would be excluded from this approach.

Additionally, some who work for entities on campus, like the Rhatigan Student Center would not be included because the RSC is a separate entity from the university.

Those with questions about market-based compensation can email hr.servicecenter@wichita. edu or visit wichita.edu/services/ humanresources.

Wichita State announced plans to build a National Forensic Laboratory last week.

The $75 million laboratory will process shell casings — a case that surrounds a gun bullet — to help law enforcement agencies solve gun-related crimes across the U.S. Steven Dettelbach, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and Sen. Jerry Moran visited the university to announce the plans.

According to Dettelbach and Moran, the laboratory will complement the Gun Crime Intelligence Center of Excellence as well as the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network Correlation and Training Center; both centers were announced last summer.

According to a WSU news release, the lab will lead to the addition of 100 jobs for students and full-time staff.

Construction on the laboratory is expected to start in several months. WSU Tech president testifies at U.S. Senate hearing

Sheree Utash, WSU Tech president and VP of workforce development at WSU, testified before the U.S. Senate last week to highlight the importance of aviation training. The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation brought various stakeholders together to discuss opportunities for improvement, increased representation and more.

Many speakers noted the importance of working to recruit students into aviation before college, as well as the gap between male and female aviation professionals.

To hear more about what was discussed at the hearing, visit commerce.senate.gov/2023/3/ strengthening-the-aviationwork force.

Searle said. “The reality of science is done collaboratively.”

When asked for advice for women entering the industry, the panelists recommended not taking rejection personally and remaining determined. “If you know what you want to do, then nobody gets to tell you that you don’t get to do it,” Searle said.

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