Dear President Petersen, Regarding your email of May 26 to all UT employees, this is to ask for clarification of an issue that affects a significant number of faculty system-wide. Your email noted that there will be a minimum raise for all staff of $600, independent of their performance, whereas for faculty the minimum raise is 1% of current salary, with a potential for a higher raise based upon performance. This places us in the unusual situation that the minimum specified raise for staff is higher than that of a significant fraction of faculty. For example, on the Knoxville campus approximately 21% of the faculty have 2005-6 salaries below $60,000. If these faculty were not provided any merit-based increase, a 1% increase would provide a raise less than that provided to all staff. Does the $600 minimum raise for staff also apply to faculty, or is it indeed intended that significant numbers of faculty, with particular emphasis on the faculty at Assistant Professor level who make up the majority of those with salaries below $60,000, be provided a raise below that of all staff? I would appreciate a rapid response to this question as I am being asked to make statements regarding salaries from a Faculty Senate perspective to the news media and have been receiving regular questions from Faculty Senate members about the raise guidelines for this year. With no other guidelines offered than those in your email, I am referring this question to you. Sincerely, Louis J. Gross Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Mathematics Director, The Institute for Environmental Modeling University of Tennessee - Knoxville President-Elect, UTK Faculty Senate Past-President, Society for Mathematical Biology (www.smb.org) gross@tiem.utk.edu http://www.tiem.utk.edu/~gross/ http://atlss.org/ (ATLSS Project Home Page) http://www.tiem.utk.edu/bioed/ (Quantitative Life Sciences Education) 6/13/06