Dean of Students Lori Berquam presented their plans for funding for a project that would examine salaries of Division of Student Life employees at a meeting of the student government Tuesday evening.
Berquam and Associate Dean Kevin Helmkamp met with the Associated Students of Madison’s Coordinating Council to detail the reallocation of funding necessary for changes they plan to implement in the coming months to the program, which both Berquam and Helmkamp have worked on for five years.
Berquam and Helmkamp said they hoped to secure funding for the Fairness Project, an initiative launched to examine the salaries within the Division of Student Life for all staff members in the division.
“We do know that staff are departing; we don’t think it is solely based on salary but for better opportunities, which usually includes a better salary,” Berquam said.
Berquam said they only looked at academic and classified staff because they are the only two populations within DSL. She added the office does not employ any faculty members.
Berquam said in looking at those two populations, she and Helmkamp wanted to adjust the titles of what people were called to make sure they matched their job description and to make sure everyone was titled appropriately.
Berquam said they also looked at market value and similar positions at other campuses, both within the Big Ten and at other University of Wisconsin System schools.
“We really tried to look at market and what [were] the going salaries for staff both within the state and then nationally, trying to make sure that we wanted to be competitive,” she said.
Berquam said they consulted with academic personnel and have received support for carrying out the project. She also said it is a similar project to what other schools and departments use for their faculty.
“When we identified our target salary range, we had to spend four years saving and scrimping our money to get people to that minimum salary range,” she said.
Berquam said they took salaries of staff members who left UW and looked at their positions and salaries and determined if they could be classified as lower positions on their scale so they could take the excess money and redistribute it across DSL.
Berquam said the four different funding sources that come into DSL to finance positions are GPR and 101 funds, 402 diversity funds, 136 revenue generation and 128 segregated fee funds.
Helmkamp said the Fairness Project is still ongoing for the past four years, and because it is so complicated, they have had to take it one step at a time.
Berquam said ASM staff fits into this because they are a part of DSL and should be adequately compensated at the level of their Fairness Project.
“Candidly we have now on ASM [members] who are underpaid for our Fairness Project,” Berquam said, “This is something we have known about and need to address.”
ASM Press Office Director David Gardner said Chancellor David Ward and other officials in the administration came out with a report that said UW needs to find a way to keep staff on campus because many staff members are leaving for competitive wages.
Gardner said they found the need to revise compensation and in doing so had to come to ASM for their approval and to talk about the classified and academic staff paid through segregated fees.
