The University of Virginia Board of Visitors – and its subcommittees – held a series of meetings Thursday. Several big items on the agenda could be the springboard for changes at the university.
The opening session of the full board featured a report by President Teresa Sullivan, where she asked members to consider an important challenge. Sullivan says faculty salaries should be the single most important priority for the coming year.
During that presentation, we saw a very passionate president telling the board, "Almost nothing else we do this year will be as important."
She presented a goal to the board for it to adopt some of her proposed changes by the November meeting.
The goal is to put UVA in the top 20 in average faculty salaries by 2016-2017, compared to other Association of American Universities.
Sullivan said reaching this goal would require an additional $65 million by 2016-2017, but went on to say finding the money is essential to recruiting and maintaining talent.
"It's very important that we keep the top faculty that we have now. I can tell you already that the retention efforts to lure our faculty away to other schools is much more intensive this year than we saw in all of last year. It began in August. It is very important that we keep these faculty with us," she stated.
Sullivan said it is possible that she will ask the board to change the endowment payout to be able to meet this salary goal, but there's still nothing concrete on that front.
The UVA Board of Visitors also voted on a new vice rector at Thursday's meeting. The board elected George Keith Martin to take the position, second in line to UVA Rector Helen Dragas. Martin currently serves as a board member and is filling in the vacancy left by Mark Kington, who resigned on June 19.
Meanwhile, things got heated during the same meeting when Faculty Senate Chair George Cohen wanted to address what happened at the university over the summer.
"Mr. Goodwin expressed the view that he thought it was time for the faculty to sort of let this whole thing go, that we were asking about things we were never going to find the answer to, and that we were doing more harm to the university by continuing these discussions," said Cohen.
Cohen says the faculty is ready to move forward, but there are still some unanswered questions that need to be addressed.
