November 29, 2001
Filed under Campus News
The UW Board of Regents followed up on its newly granted authority to oversee pay increases of top administrators within the UW System.
On Nov. 19, the Executive Committee of the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents approved annual salary levels for the chancellors, vice chancellors and senior officers of the UW System.
Chancellor Donald Mash and UW-Stout Chancellor Charles Sorensen will now make $168,000 annually under the new salary increase plan – a 12.6 percent pay increase for both.
Mash’s office declined to comment on the pay raise.
The pay increases will have no effect on tuition or tax dollars, said Vice Chancellor Andy Soll. He said Mash’s pay hike will be funded partly by the pre-determined university pay plan as well as through the reallocation of available resources.
Mash and Sorensen, who each made $149,159 before the pay increase, will remain the top paid administrators in the UW System outside of UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee. Vice Chancellor Ronald Satz will also see his annual salary rise to $126,000.
UW System spokesman Kevin Boatright said pay plan increases are retroactive to July 1, 2001 under a plan approved in October by the legislature’s Joint Committee on Employment Relations.
Total salary increases is $323,000 out of a more than $3 billion system-wide budget.
“Within the context of the system budget, it’s a small amount of money,” Boatright said.
He said the salaries of Mash and Sorensen were set when compared to institutions with similar mission statements and enrollment figures.
“Those salary ranges reflect what people in similar positions at comparable universities are making,” Boatright said.
When the biennial budget was passed in August, he said the Board of Regents was given authority to set salaries within a given range.
For comprehensive chancellors, which Mash can be classified, the range was set with a minimum of $151,343 and a maximum of $184,974.
The new salaries were the first to be set by the board after it was granted management flexibility by the legislature and governor in the 2001-03 biennial budget.
Covered by the change are all 15 chancellors, the vice chancellors at UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee, the two System senior vice presidents, and the System president, Boatright said.
The board granted the largest pay increase to system President Katharine Lyall, from $208,000 to $299,000 – a 44 percent pay increase of more than $90,000.
Others receiving pay raises are UW-Milwaukee Chancellor Nancy Zimpher, from $185,000 to $215,000 and system Senior Vice President David Olien, from $175,000 to $199,000.
After addressing the five most serious cases, the total increase for all other UW executives is 3.2 percent, which is the same as the average increase for faculty and academic staff.
“We’re talking about a relatively small amount of money with only one position exceeding (3.2 percent),” Soll said.
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