I'm getting a raise!

Our President held a meeting Friday and announced all the faculty at IWU were getting raises. Not cost-of-living raises (we already got that) but an actual bump in salary on top of that. In fact we're getting a bump for each of the next three years in a row beyond COLAs. We are all quite happy here of course. The biggest raises will go to full professors with earned Doctorates of course, and the rest will get smaller raises but that is consistent with the current effort to push all faculty to finish their "terminal degrees."

IWU is already a great place to teach but this will make it even nicer--especially for the younger profs with kids-who-need-sneakers. It is not just nice for those already teaching but it will make us vastly more attractive to professors from other schools to come here. Not that they'd come for the money--but a bigger salary will make it easier to move for sure.

Oh yeah--Jim Lo is returning too--he'll be the professor of Spiritual Formation--not because of the salary, he just loves us all!

When all this is finished a full professor might still be able to earn more money at a few CCCU schools--like schools in California where housing costs a tad more than Marion. In this town a family of four can still buy a four bedroom house for $80,000... merely a down payment in some of the towns where CCU Universities have higher salaries.

And to boot the new Pres has figured out how to do this without adding it on to tuition. So, the faculty is in a big KUDOs mood right now, and might remain there for the next three years. Best of all I bet more will jump in and finish their PhDs.

It comes at a nice time for us all. Faculty get crabby at the end of the year. We get tired of the grind, tired of other faculty, tired of meetings and even tired of [some] students. This is a nice boost--like a Christmas present in summer!

As for me I think I will wait until I retire to do my PhD. I've always admired George Failing who started a PhD in his late 60's..or was it 70s? When people were astonished and asked why, he replied "I want to learn." Interesting notion!