A majority of the faculty hold appropriate terminal degrees in their disciplines. The current collective bargaining agreement is a three year agreement initially signed in July 1995. It has been extended annually while negotiations for a new contract continue. It is useful to note that the current agreement places greater emphasis upon continuing scholarship than the previous contract.

Since "excellence in teaching" is the primary qualification for faculty status at Salem State College, the contractual emphasis upon scholarship re-enforces the dictum that quality teaching requires active scholarship. Faculty may apply for release time to conduct "alternative professional responsibilities", such as scholarship/research or to perform particular administrative activities. A department chair automatically receives release time proportional to the size of the department.

According to the collective bargaining agreement faculty are required to teach 12 credits per semester. In addition the contract stipulates the equivalent of an additional three credit hour course for advising students. In departments with particularly large numbers of majors additional assistance in advising is provided by the Academic Advising Center and/or by part-time faculty hired for that purpose.

Faculty members are expected, of course, to participate in the governance of the Salem State community from the departmental to the college-wide level. Faculty participation in governance is described in Standard 3. During normal contractual operations the faculty clearly is large enough to allow active participation in governance. During academic year 1997-98, the last year of College governance under the current collective bargaining agreement, numerous faculty served either on contract or non-contract committees including search committees. Faculty members often organize themselves into ad hoc groups for specific purposes, e.g. the On-Line Educators Group.

Initial interviews of applicants for faculty positions are conducted by phone or PicturTel. Finalists are invited to campus for personal interviews by the committee, the department chair and the Dean of the appropriate School. The committee submits three to five names unranked to the Department Chair who meets with the Dean to determine to whom an offer will be made. The Dean procures the approval of the Academic Vice President including an acceptable salary range. Once the candidate indicates acceptance his/her papers are forwarded to the President for final review and a contract is prepared.

The contract letter essentially is a form letter but any specific expectations are included where applicable. The Union, the MSCA-Salem Chapter makes available to the future faculty member a copy of the collective bargaining agreement.

The collective bargaining agreement specifies minimum salaries as well as responsibilities and benefits. Ordinarily salaries paid to faculty, at least those recruited since the last NEASC report, exceed the contractual minimum.

Professional administrators including laboratory assistants are members of the Association of Professional Administrators (APA) and are governed by the APA collective bargaining agreement. The APA recruitment and hiring process is akin to that described above for faculty. Effort is made to ensure that such administrators come from diverse background and possess appropriate professional training. Their professional development opportunities are outlined in the APA collective bargaining agreement.

The employment of the clerical support staff is governed by the AFSCME collective bargaining agreement.

At the same time the College is in the throes of adjusting to ever worsening salary compression particularly as a result of the need to pay significantly higher salaries in select disciplines, e.g. Business and Computer Science. Additionally, the current confusion surrounding Teacher Education in the Commonwealth makes planning in the School of Education especially difficult.

The principal difficulties of the faculty are low pay and overlong contract negotiations. There is a growing recognition in the Commonwealth that state college faculty salaries require major enhancement in addition to annual percentage increases. While salary always is a point of unhappiness a significant across the board increase would do much to enhance morale.

While faculty offices are less than conducive to student contact and individual scholarship it is clear that faculty increasingly are engaging students in collaborative research work. The appointment of a Coordinator of Undergraduate Research is indicative of institutional support, but funds for research projects are minimal. In addition, faculty are increasingly engaged in scholarly pursuits appropriate to the College’s mission. Current support for these efforts needs to be centralized and rationalized.

The development of new programs and the expansion of some established programs suggest the need for a re-allocation of faculty lines or the creation of a significant number of new positions. The latter action will place additional stress on a strained budget and is not the desirable solution. Full-time faculty numbers are more than adequate given the College’s overall enrollment. Faculty and Librarians have generous access to release time, but the vast majority of such time is given for administrative purposes. A very small amount is granted for scholarly development. As retirements occur a re-allocation of positions reflecting programmatic changes as well as student/faculty ratios should occur.

Currently the full-time faculty numbers 331, only a small percentage of these individuals identify themselves as members of a minority group. While the College declares its desire to increase diversity among the faculty at least at a level equal to the percentage of minority students, it has not been particularly successful. Organized efforts to achieve this goal have operated in fits and starts without sufficient administrative support. Indeed, the climate for minority faculty at Salem State requires improvement in much the same way the climate for lesbian and gay students has improved in the last decade.

Twice during the last decade negotiators failed to agree in a timely manner upon a new faculty contract with significant disruption to the governance process. The current contract expired in 1998. These disruptions in College governance underscore the need for the faculty to develop its own procedures to allow it to act as a faculty to ensure quality teaching and curricular and program development as well as to participate effectively in planning without jeopardizing the effectiveness of the union as a bargaining agent.

In addition, the College's development of the Central Campus will address some of the "space issues" that confront the faculty. As a result office space needs to be improved. While the goal of private office space is unlikely to be achieved all at once, space for seminars, scientific research and scholarly development will be made available. The development of the Center for Teaching in the Library is such an example of space utilization.

The council on Teaching and Learning will become part of the Carnegie Teaching Academy (The Scholarship of Teaching) and will use its Center for Teaching to establish a dynamic presence on campus. The Center will receive additional funding and space accommodations.

A study of faculty release time will be conducted. The College's research/scholarship efforts increasingly will focus upon student/faculty collaborative efforts, and the various sources for individual faculty research will be centralized.