for anyone seeking to explore the
broad concept of belief.
LSA senior Essie Shachar-Hill, a
co-organizer of the event, said they
did not want to limit performances
to established faiths and religions.
“Originally we were thinking
something along the lines of faith
and religion,” Shachar-Hill said.
“We wanted to be inclusive of
people who don’t necessarily have
a faith or religion.”
She said she thinks the way
organizers framed the theme was
effective in achieving the original
goal of the Diversity Monologues.
“There was a really good variety
of viewpoints,” Shachar-Hill said.
“It’s called the Diversity Mono-
logues so it’s always great when we
have diverse points of view.”
The nine performers employed
a variety of styles. Several shared
personal narratives about how
their upbringings and personal
experiences shaped their identi-
ties, and some read and performed
pieces of other literary modes.
Engineering
junior
Ahmad
Sakallah said his performance was
a mix of a ballad and a poem. He
said the event provided him a plat-
form to express his beliefs about
diversity.
“This school is kind of ‘token
diversity’ at this point and I really
want more unity,” Sakallah said.
“I’m trying to spread awareness
without making people upset.”
He said his performance was
based on personal experience liv-
ing in America as a Palestinian-
American and frustration with the
difficulties of achieving true toler-
ance.
“When I say, ‘talk about that
they hate that they fake,’ you know,
my Palestinian heritage, every-
one that I know is Palestinian says
Jewish people are lying and all my
Jewish friends say Palestinians
are lying,” Sakallah said. “I’m just
caught in the middle.”
LSA senior Leela Denver read a
poem she wrote called “Summer
in Phulgaon.” She said the poem
explored her identity through her
relationship with her mother and
her ties to India, where her mother
was raised.
“I grew up in a mixed race
household, so it wasn’t just Indian,
although that was the prominent
culture in my household,” she said.
“I definitely feel like that complete-
ly changed my experience as an
American.”
Kaur said the next Diversity
Monologues event will be held
April 1, and the theme will relate to
gender and sexual orientation.
3-News
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Wednesday, February 18, 2015 — 3A
versity as a math professor and
was promoted to associate dean
for planning and finance in LSA
in 2001. He also served as the
vice provost of academic and
budgetary affairs from 2004 to
2010.
As provost, he received a
starting salary of $470,000,
which increased to $509,292 by
2012.
Hanlon’s starting salary was
more than $100,000 greater
than Sullivan’s ending salary,
and it increased by an additional
$100,000 in half the time it had
taken for Sullivan’s to increase
$20,000.
At the time of Hanlon’s pro-
motion, Kelly Cunningham, then
a University spokesperson who
now serves as a special coun-
sel to the provost, said the wage
discrepancy was due to higher
provost salaries among peer insti-
tutions across the board.
“As is often the case, the Uni-
versity Human Resources Office
conducted phone surveys among
peer institutions to determine the
appropriate market rate,” Cun-
ningham wrote in a 2010 e-mail
interview with the Daily.
Hanlon left to serve as the
president of Dartmouth College
in 2013, at which point current
University Provost Martha Pol-
lack was promoted to the position.
Before coming to the Univer-
sity in 2000, Pollack worked at
the University of Pittsburgh as a
professor of computer science and
intelligent systems and as direc-
tor of the University’s Intelligent
Systems Program. She came to
the University as a professor of
computer science and engineer-
ing, and served as an associate
chair for that department from
2004 to 2007. In 2007, she became
dean of the School of Informa-
tion, and held that role until 2010.
Before her appointment to serve
as provost, she was vice pro-
vost for academic and budgetary
affairs from 2010 to 2013 — the
same position Hanlon held before
his promotion.
When Pollack took office,
the provost’s salary decreased
by nearly $60,000 — her salary,
which opened at $450,000, has
since been raised to $460,800.
This is still less than Hanlon’s
starting salary in 2010.
Hanlon held a place on the top
10 list of highest paid employees
for each year of his tenure. Sulli-
van never made the list; Pollack
did just once, in 2013.
When asked about this dis-
crepancy in an interview last
month, University spokesman
Rick Fitzgerald said Hanlon’s
higher salary stemmed from
his level of experience — when
he assumed the provost role in
2010, he had been a vice provost
for six years. Pollack had only
served as vice provost for three
years.
Fitzgerald added that Han-
lon’s experience as an associate
dean in LSA also contributed
critical skills, noting that the
college alone is larger than some
universities.
“It was a reflection of what he
was bringing to that position,”
Fitzgerald said.
Furthermore, Pollack’s con-
tract when she took the position
of provost was only for two years
— comparable to the number of
years interim executives often
serve. Fitzgerald said this short-
er-term appointment, combined
with previous experience that
was less extensive than Han-
lon’s, could be the reason for her
lower salary.
Pollack’s
contract
was
renewed through 2018 at the
University’s Board of Regents
meeting in December 2014.
Fitzgerald noted that execu-
tive officers can expect a pay
increase with reappointment.
“I would expect that Provost
Pollack … when her reappoint-
ment takes effect, she would
probably have a pay increase
along with that extension,” he
said.
However, not all interims
receive lower pay. When Suel-
lyn Scarnecchia, a former Uni-
versity general counsel, stepped
down from the position in 2012,
for example, the female inter-
im who replaced her received
a starting salary equivalent to
Scarnecchia’s.
Pollack’s case is not alone
in showcasing pay discrepan-
cies. Michael Johns, the interim
executive vice president of med-
ical affairs, earns 2 percent more
than Pescovitz did in that role.
He earns $769,080, while Pesco-
vitz received $753,805.
In reference to this raise,
Fitzgerald said Johns’ previ-
ous experience as the executive
vice president for health affairs
at Emory University made him a
remarkably qualified interim.
Both Pollack and Hanlon
were vice provosts for academic
and budgetary affairs. Pollack
had three years fewer experi-
ence at this job than Hanlon.
Prior to that, for three years
each, Hanlon was an association
dean for planning and finance at
LSA, while Pollack was a dean
at the School of Information.
Hanlon was a mathematics pro-
fessor before that — a faculty
member, not administrator. Pol-
lack was an associate chair for
computer science and engineer-
ing. She directed an engineer-
ing program at the University of
Pittsburgh prior to joining the
University’s faculty in 2000.
Before taking the provost
position, Pollack had 11 years of
administrative experience, and
Hanlon had nine years. Present-
ed with this summary, as well
as the fact that interims do not
always receive pay decreases,
Fitzgerald said he had no fur-
ther comment.
How the University decides
salaries
Both Fitzgerald and Laurita
Thomas, associate vice presi-
dent for human resources, said
setting salaries is a complex pro-
cess.
Thomas said University Presi-
dent Mark Schlissel ultimately
decides salaries for top adminis-
trators, such as the University’s
vice presidents or the athletic
director, because they report
directly to him. The presi-
dent may consult with human
resources or an outside search
firm for additional assistance in
determining salaries, Thomas
said. She added that the Board
of Regents determines the presi-
dent’s salary.
Thomas said, overall, sala-
ries are decided by the individ-
ual or body that supervises the
employee. These decisions are
influenced by an array of factors.
“The person doing the hiring
looks at market data, the knowl-
edge the candidate brings and
their performance data,” Thomas
said. “The hirer establishes val-
ues, comes up with a fair range
for a salary with those values and
the hirer and the candidate nego-
tiate within that range.”
These market rates are a sig-
nificant factor in determining
pay, Thomas said. Because the
University competes with other
collegiate institutions and pri-
vate sector corporations for fac-
ulty and administration, it must
ensure that its compensation
package is comparable.
“All executive positions are
market sensitive,” Thomas said.
“We depend on how fast the
market changes. We want top
leaders in this country, and we
have to be very market sensitive
in these roles.”
This means salaries are deter-
mined in a way that retains
employees and attracts new
ones. Both goals are meant to
ensure the University touts
high-caliber people who do
high-caliber work.
In the case of a new employee,
other salary factors include but
are not limited to the candidate’s
background and experience, and
the costs required to bring that
candidate to the University.
Studies: Gender wage gaps
exist, even if it’s
unintentional
Whatever explanations there
may be for salary discrepancies
between those who have filled
the University’s provost position
in the last nine years, the female
provosts were paid less than the
male provost.
At the University, the top
10 highest base salaries have
belonged to mostly men since
2008. In the last seven years,
men have held 80 percent of the
top-paid positions — includ-
ing vice president for medical
affairs, chief financial officer,
vice president for development
and dean of the Law School.
Exceptions
to
this
trend
include President Emerita Cole-
man, whose salary, not includ-
ing bonuses, peaked at $603,357;
and Ora Pescovitz, who served
as EVPMA from 2009 to 2014
and whose ending salary was
$753,805. (Coleman declined sev-
eral offers for bonuses from the
regents throughout her tenure.)
Fitzgerald
re-emphasized
that salaries are based on indi-
vidual qualifications and the
responsibilities required of a
given position. Neither of these
criteria, he said, favor a certain
gender.
“If you are looking at the top
10 positions in any given year
and what those positions are, it’s
really more of a function of the
market for those specific posi-
tions,” Fitzgerald said. “And I
do not believe that it represents
or indicates any sort of gender
bias on the part of the Univer-
sity. I think it’s more of a func-
tion of the people recruited for
these high level positions, that
it’s unique to those individuals.”
Nationally, many studies have
attributed trends in pay gaps to
the existence of gender-based
biases in different fields of work.
Economics Prof. Martha Bailey, a
research associate for the Nation-
al Bureau of Economic Research,
has extensively studied labor eco-
nomics and gender wage gaps.
She said research affirms the
existence of wage discrimination
based on gender.
“I don’t think there’s any short-
age of evidence that there’s gen-
der discrimination in the world,”
she said.
Hard numbers confirm that
female job applicants to jobs tend
to be offered lower salaries than
their male equivalents.
In 2012, the scientific jour-
nal Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences published
a report that found female appli-
cants for lab manager positions at
Yale University were given lower
ratings and offered lower salaries
than their male equivalents.
A similar study out of Skid-
more College in 2014 found that
women in faculty positions at
the college for STEM fields were
seen as less competent and given
lower salaries than their male
counterparts.
“I would not be surprised at
all if there’s a difference in sal-
ary between men and women
at the University, even after
accounting for rank and years
of experience and publication
record and a variety of other
types of things,” Bailey said.
Is the provost example
universal?
Though anomalies do exist
when comparing female and
male salaries among University
executives, compiled data of 40
executive position salaries from
2002 to 2015 indicates that there
is not a statistical difference in
pay between men and women at
the University in the same posi-
tion.
The data was compiled using
the salaries of all University
vice president positions, deans,
UMHS leaders, directors and
assistant vice provosts. Origi-
nally, nearly 60 positions were
compiled. However, some were
ruled out either because they
had changed too much to be
comparable through a decade
period or because they had been
created during that period.
According to regression anal-
ysis — conducted by LSA senior
Jacob Light, who is majoring in
math and economics, and vetted
by Bailey, the labor economist
and economics professor — aver-
age salaries and gender do not
have a strong relationship. In
other words, gender is not a reli-
able factor in predicting salary
changes at the University.
While women have received
fewer significant increases than
men, Light found, the data does
not suggest that women are less
likely to receive larger boosts
in pay than their male counter-
parts.
The data was controlled for
gender, position, years with the
title, inflation and the status of
the incumbent — if they were
an interim or first-year candi-
date. Analyses focused on per-
cent changes from year to year
in each position, overall percent
change in the position base pay
and the genders of each execu-
tive in each position.
Comparing with
competitors
A University slide provided
by Fitzgerald outlines the 10 top
schools with which the Univer-
sity competes for faculty: Uni-
versity of California, Berkeley;
University of California, Los
Angeles; University of North
Carolina – Chapel Hill; Universi-
ty of Texas at Austin; University
of Chicago; Harvard University;
Stanford University; University
of Pennsylvania; Massachusetts
Institute of Technology; and
Columbia University.
The Daily included The Uni-
versity of Virginia, another peer
public institution, in the analy-
sis to increase sample size.
Calculations show that the
average
disparity
between
female and male salaries at these
11 top colleges and the Univer-
sity shows that women earn
96 cents for every dollar a man
makes — 3.4 percent less. Fur-
thermore, these top universities
fill their most prominent posi-
tions with mostly men. Analysis
revealed that 37 percent of exec-
utive employees were female.
Sixty-three percent were men.
These calculations are based
on two data sets: the 2013 list of
salaries reported on the public
colleges’ respective state data-
bases, and the 2011 list of private
school salaries reported in the
Chronicle of Higher Education,
the only year for which data was
available. Private schools are not
required to disclose their salary
database to taxpayers, whereas
public schools are.
However, to provide full dis-
closure, salary figures were not
available for every position at
every school, either because cer-
tain positions, such as vice presi-
dent for student life, do not exist
at every school or because fig-
ures were simply not included in
available salary disclosures.
On average, salaries at the
University were 4 percent higher
than those of their counterpart
institutions. However, a gender
breakdown revealed a contrast:
While male University employ-
ees earned an average of 8 per-
cent more than their competitors
at other schools, female employ-
ees earned 1 percent more.
More discrepancies appear
in a comparison of average male
and female executive position
salaries.
Women serving as deans for
these universities’ LSA equiva-
lents earned 31 percent less than
their male counterparts; while
the men earned an average of
$426,000, the women earned
an average of $295,000. In a
10-year span, this means a man
would earn more than $1 million
more than his female equivalent.
Female vice presidents for
development earned 19 per-
cent less than men, and women
in medical dean roles earned
12.3 percent less than males.
Double-digit discrepancies also
existed for the positions of exec-
utive vice presidents for medi-
cal affairs and vice president of
development.
There was not a single execu-
tive position with fewer than
three men total out of the 12 sur-
veyed colleges. Perhaps the most
glaring example was in 2013,
when each of the 12 colleges had
a male provost.
Presidential salaries seem to
be higher for women. Exclud-
ing University of Pennsylvania
President Amy Gutmann, whose
total compensation is over $2
million, female presidential sal-
aries were $628,638 on average,
whereas men earned $677,000.
Gutmann’s salary is the high-
est of the sampled institutions
and comparatively high even
among peer institutions in the
Ivy League.
Otherwise, in only two posi-
tions does a female majority
exist — vice president for stu-
dent life and human resources
director.
A few positions reflect a
female pay advantage. Women
serving as general counsels
appear to earn more than men,
averaging $450,000 in compari-
son to the male $380,000. This
statistic may also be skewed —
on average, public schools pay
their general counsels 30.4 per-
cent less than do private schools.
Six of the total 12 surveyed insti-
tutions are public and in this
sample, each public institution
except the University had a male
incumbent.
Female vice presidents for
student life at public institutions
earn about 11 percent more than
their male counterparts. Two
men compared to four women
held that title. Only public insti-
tutions were considered, since
only two out of six private insti-
tutions considered in this study
employed vice presidents for
student life.
In
summary,
across
the
University and its 11 competi-
tor institutions, statistics are
clearly weighted in favor of male
executives, both in terms of pure
quantity and average salary.
Even in cases where it appears
that women have the upper hand
as far as average salary, those
positions don’t seem to repre-
sent the whole picture.
Conclusion
Cumulative data from 2002 to
2015 shows there is not a statis-
tical difference in pay between
men and women at the Univer-
sity in the same executive posi-
tions.
However, data across numer-
ous institutions of higher educa-
tion indicates that men tend to
earn more than do women, and
men tend to fill executive posi-
tions more than do women.
Additionally,
because
men
have held 80 percent of the Uni-
versity’s top-paid positions since
2008, it is quite possible that the
problem is not receiving ade-
quate pay when holding a posi-
tion, but acquiring a high-paying
position to begin with.
GENDER GAP
From Page 1A
MONOLOGUES
From Page 1A
proposal that aims to create an
additional “spirit song” for use
at University athletics events —
resurfaced Tuesday night.
The “Hail and Unite” project
was initially introduced with
a resolution requesting $2,750
in funding to support a promo-
tional video, recruit donations
and provide accommodations
for potential visiting contribu-
tors.
This resolution was later
pulled after “Hail and Unite”
stirred debate over the future
of the University’s fight song,
“The Victors.”
In an interview with The
Michigan Daily last week, LSA
senior Mike Weinberg, the
project’s founder, emphasized
the song was not intended to
replace the fight song.
The revised proposal asks
CSG to endorse the song rather
than fund it.
On Tuesday, Weinberg said
the project no longer needed
money from CSG for promo-
tional materials because recent
media attention generated a
great deal of publicity.
CSG representative Andrew
Loeb, an LSA senior, ques-
tioned whether or not the song
would benefit the communi-
ty, given the mixed response
among students and alumni.
“We’ve found thus far that
the biggest problem is lack
of information, ” Weinberg
said. “So far, whenever we’ve
pitched or talked to people,
they love the idea.”
The legislation was referred
to the resolutions committee
and will most likely be voted on
during the next CSG meeting.
Course evaluations
A second resolution pro-
posed during Tuesday’s meet-
ing asked the assembly to
support the release of course
evaluation ratings for profes-
sors and Graduate Student
Instructors.
The legislation was com-
posed by CSG president Bobby
Dishell, a Public Policy senior;
CSG
vice
president
Emily
Lustig, an LSA senior, and rep-
resentative Steven Halperin,
an LSA sophomore.
The resolution supports an
action request that will even-
tually go in front of the Sen-
ate Advisory Committee on
University
Affairs,
asking
SACUA
to
distribute
sum-
maries of numerical scores
and response rates for the fol-
lowing questions: “1. Overall,
this was an excellent course; 2.
Overall, the instructor was an
excellent teacher; 3. I learned a
great deal from this course; 4. I
had a strong desire to take this
course.”
The authors of the legislation
felt it would be useful for stu-
dents to see the feedback when
choosing
classes
for
future
semesters.
“We think this will help
us get away from more biased
websites
like
ratemyprofes-
sors.com
and
myedu.com,”
Lustig said.
Representatives
had
ques-
tions about whether the initia-
tive could increase the student
response rate to the course eval-
uations. Lustig said this was a
factor that could potentially be
mentioned in the final resolu-
tion.
The legislation was referred
to the resolutions committee and
will be voted on during the next
CSG meeting.
CSG
From Page 1A
(D–Ward 4), who voted against
the adoption, said the analysis
asks more from the city than sim-
ply buttressing affordable hous-
ing. He said the issue should be
addressed by the county govern-
ment, not the city.
“While
I
support
funding
affordable housing in Ann Arbor,
I don’t believe that we should be
trying to get wealthy young pro-
fessionals to move to Ypsilanti
and getting people who can afford
housing in Ypsilanti to move to
Ann Arbor to change our demo-
graphics. It is ill conceived.”
COUNCIL
From Page 2A
ect at a time you would get more
into it because you know you are
attached to it long-term,” Peterson
said. “There is more of a commit-
ment there.”
The program will work in tan-
dem with the Undergraduate
Research Opportunity Program,
with UROP students working on
VIP teams and eligible to receive
credits or a stipend for their
research.
Non-UROP
students
will receive credit hours.
Hohner said students can apply
for the VIP program during the
MDP
recruitment
process
in
October.
Peterson said she hopes the
initiative will help students feel
a sense of ownership over their
research projects and provide
an opportunity to take on more
responsibility.
“If the University took into
account that kind of connection
between the lab workers and the
project itself, it would improve
my vision of what research here
entails.”
GRANT
From Page 2A