Committee on the Economic Status of the Faculty (CESOF) Report

[Summary: This message provides links to two documents: the 2020-21 report of the FAS Committee on the Economic Status of the Faculty (CESOF), and a written response to the report, jointly prepared by Deans Tamar Gendler and Jeffrey Brock. Discussion of the report will take place at the full-faculty FAS/SEAS faculty meeting that will take place on Zoom at 4:00 PM on Thursday, November 10.]

To: FAS and SEAS Ladder Faculty, Full-Time, Multi-year Instructional Faculty and Research Faculty
cc: FAS Steering, FAS Dean’s Office, SEAS Dean’s Office

Dear FAS and SEAS colleagues,

We are pleased to share with you the 2020-21 report of the FAS Committee on the Economic Status of the Faculty (CESOF), as well as our response to the committee’s recommendations. While you should feel free to discuss its content with your FAS and SEAS colleagues, we ask that you not share the report with anyone who has not been given a direct link to it. (Those who are receiving this message include all ladder faculty with voting appointments in FAS and SEAS departments or programs, and all full-time multi-year instructional and research faculty in the FAS and SEAS.)

Committee members

We are grateful to Professor Costas Arkolakis (Professor of Economics, FAS) for his leadership of the 2020-21 CESOF committee, and to the other committee members: Veneeta Dayal, Dorothy R. Diebold Professor of Linguistics (FAS), Casey Dunn, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (FAS), Milette Gaifman, Andrew Downey Orrick Professor of Classics and History of Art (FAS), Beverly Gage, Professor of History and American Studies (FAS), Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio, John J. Lee Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science (SEAS), Elka KristoNagy, Lector, English Language Program (FAS), and Douglas Rogers, Professor of Anthropology (FAS) for their extraordinary efforts in preparing this report.

Thanks also to J.C. Salevan (Senior Research Analyst) and Lily Svensen (Director) from the Office of Institutional Research for their invaluable assistance throughout this process. The committee was staffed by Bob Burger (Senior Associate Dean) from the FAS Dean’s office.

Previous reports

The CESOF Report is a long-standing FAS tradition. For over 40 years, small committees of faculty have been charged with the task of documenting and assessing the economic status of the FAS faculty. The scope of the committee’s work includes the examination of salaries, benefits, and any other issues and policies that play a role in determining the faculty’s economic well-being. If you visit the website where these reports have been collected, you will see that the committee has traditionally been constituted on a two-year (or occasionally three-year) cycle. The last CESOF report appeared in 2018. The current report covers faculty data up to 2020-21, and includes all departments that were part of the FAS at the time, including those now part of SEAS.

Response to report

We have jointly prepared a written response to the recommendations in this report, which outlines our thoughts about, and for the most part agreement with, the points raised by the committee, as well as descriptions of past and planned actions addressing those topics. We would be pleased to receive any feedback you may have about the report and/or response. We have set time aside for discussion of the report at the the full-faculty FAS/SEAS faculty meeting that will take place on Zoom at 4:00 PM on Thursday, November 10. The report will also be presented by the committee to the FAS Senate at their December meeting. We hope that this information is informative to you all, and we once again thank the committee for their hard work on this important endeavor.

Best,

Tamar and Jeff