Page 4 Salary guide, Monday, February 24, 2014
By KATE LEWIS
Staff Reporter
Purdue’s department head positions
face differences in salary by gender and se-
lection which dates back to the time many
faculty received their doctoral degrees.
Purdue’s salary report for 2013 revealed
a more than $10,000 difference in average
pay between male and female department
heads. Men in this position earn an aver-
age of $194,602 annually, while women
earn $181,161 on average. Furthermore,
the highest paid female department head
makes $243,641 while seven male depart
-
ment heads make more than $250,000.
But the inequality doesn’t stop there.
Within Purdue’s 12 schools and colleges,
only 11 department heads are women
while 54 are men. Tom Brush, department
head of management within the Krannert
School of Management, is one of those 54.
Brush came to Purdue in 1992 and became
department head in October of 2013. While he’s
still figuring out what it’s like to be department
head, let alone any differences that might exist
between sexes in the role, Brush suggested that
the inequality might lie in the gender distribution
of professors at the University.
Department head is considered a senior
position within the faculty of a university.
While it is below the position of president,
provost, or dean, department head is only
available to tenured professors. Further-
more, Brush suggested that full professors
are preferred over associate professors.
“Nobody really wants to have a depart-
ment head who’s not a full professor because
they might get pushed around or annoy the
people who will make the decision to pro-
mote them to a full professor, so it’s a con-
ict that people try to avoid,” said Brush.
In order to be either an associate pro-
fessor or full professor, candidates must
have a doctoral degree. According to re-
ports from the National Center for Educa-
tion Statistics, a part of the U.S. Depart-
ment of Education, 2005 was the rst year
in which more women received doctoral
degrees than men. Up until then, men
received signicantly more Ph.D.s than
women, at least since the reports began in
1869. The group of professors that would
currently be eligible for department head
positions received their degrees before
gender equality in doctoral programs.
Ellen Gruenbaum, department head of
anthropology in the College of Liberal Arts,
came to Purdue in 2008. Since then, she has
seen rsthand how the College of Liberal
Arts has worked to change the male-domi-
nated culture of senior faculty positions.
“In just the ve and a half years that I’ve
been here, I’ve seen a big change,” said
Gruenbaum. “More women have begun
to rise to higher ranks of the professoriate
and be eligible for appointment to impor-
tant academic positions.”
When she arrived at Purdue, Gruen-
baum was one of just two women on the
Promotion and Tenure Committee within
the College of Liberal Arts. Now, ve of the
11 female department heads — almost half
— are within the College of Liberal Arts.
“The nature of your discipline also de-
termines the availability of women who
have experience,” said Gruenbaum. “If
you’re in a discipline that traditionally has
had very few women, it’s taken longer for
women to get up into leadership roles.”
This applies to the College of Agriculture and
the College of Engineering, where all department
heads are men. However, a balance of men and
women in these positions brings new adminis-
trative styles and ways of thinking.
“Now, you’ll notice I’m not a university
president, I’m not a provost, I’m not a
dean anymore, and you may say, ‘Why is
that?’” said Gruenbaum. “And some of the
men department heads get paid a lot more
than the women department heads ... but I
don’t think I’m doing this for the pay. I’m
doing this because I really care about what
my discipline can contribute.”
While Gruenbaum’s passion for anthro-
pology outweighs her concern for the pay
inequality, it may be years until the 2005
gender equality in doctoral degrees reach-
es senior positions within the University.
• The salary of Lt. Jerry Hubbard, de-
partment head of military science, is not
a part of the above averages because, as
military personnel, his salary is not avail-
able to the public.
Purdue department heads face gender inequality in salary, selection
By HALEy CHECKLEy
Features Editor
Purdue prides itself on being a highly
ranked university in the nation, but with
this reputation comes pay inequalities.
The highest ranked faculty member
earns $488,217 and the lowest earns
$29,928.01. In some cases, monetary val-
ue is directly reective of a faculty’s contri-
bution to their eld and in other cases it is
simply the eld itself.
Provost Tim Sands explained the sal-
ary guide was calculated differently this
year, which may account for some of the
wage gap. Two years ago, the only num
-
ber available would be the nine month
salary actually paid by the University.
Now, the number accounts for supple
-
mental wages faculty earn during the
summer months.
Glenn Sparks, a professor in the Brian
Lamb School of Communication, is the
third highest paid communication profes-
sor on campus with an annual salary of
$143,013. Yet, one only needs to look at his
resume to discern why this may be.
Quoted by publications such as News-
week, Time, AP Press and NPR, Sparks
is the author of various journal publica-
tions, a textbook entitled “Media Effects
Research: A Basic Overview” and co-au-
thor of an upcoming edition of Em Grif-
n’s text, “A First Look at Communication
Theory.”
“A faculty member’s salary is only one
part of their overall compensation package,”
Sparks said. “Other factors include retire-
ment compensation, health benets, addi-
tional teaching opportunities, start-up pack-
ages, internal grant opportunities, et cetera.”
Sands said most of wage pay is driven by
market forces. In order to stay in compe-
tition with other top universities, it is es-
sential to compete for the top talent in the
various academic elds.
“We compete globally for talent at Purdue
... So if a faculty member is a high perform-
ing faculty member, they have a global repu-
tation in a eld where salaries are typically
high,” Sands explained. “We want to go after
that person to bring them to Purdue, (so) we
will have to pay that market rate.”
He also said the struggle to retain faculty
doesn’t stop with the initial pay offer. The ef-
fort to balance between staying in the annual
budget as well as retaining as many employ-
ees as possible is a constant discussion.
“Most of our faculty are essentially on
the market at any time, even if they don’t
really want to be. They are still going to be
called,” Sands said. “If they are success-
ful, if they publish an important paper, or
they serve on a committee in Washington
... they may become very visible in terms
of their engagement with the public (and)
our competing institutions will be after
them.”
Sands said ideally the University
would pay faculty based on merit and
not because of outside politics. The over-
arching need to provide students with a
first-class education always superceeds
this notion.
Sparks understands the need to com-
pete directly with peer institutions and
the overall quality of instructors is es-
sential.
“If we weren’t competitive, that would
affect the overall quality of the faculty over
the long term,” Sparks said. “I’ve been
here 28 years and I’ve always regarded the
Purdue faculty to be a high quality collec-
tion of educators.”
Discrepancies in faculty’s salaries are dependent on external factors
COMPENSATION
PEERINSTITUTIONS
